Donie's Ireland news Blog Saturday

Donegal double killer Gallagher is released from Central mental hospital

    

Donegal’s killer of Mother and daughter John Gallagher was released from the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin yesterday, according to members of his estranged family who were contacted prior to his release.

Gallagher, who killed mother and daughter Annie and Anne Gillespie in the grounds of Sligo Hospital in 1988, was released just after 4pm following a review by the Mental Health Review Board.

Some conditions have been imposed on him. He is allowed to visit his mother in Lifford, Co Donegal, and his father’s grave, but has been banned from having any contact with members of the Gillespie family or estranged members of his own family.

A spokesman for the Gallagher family said they were distraught at his release. “We have had no say or we have not been able to put our case forward. We are living in complete fear of him and now he will be allowed to walk among us again. We do not think the authorities thought this through properly and we have never been consulted on the matter. If anything else happens then the authorities will have blood on their hands,” he said.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said the Minister for Justice, Alan Shatter, understood Mr Gallagher had been granted conditional discharge. She said the board operated independently of the Minister, who had “no role” in its decisions.

Gallagher absconded from the Central Mental Hospital in 2000 having been found guilty but insane of the murder of the two women at his trial, held in 1989.

He has been living in Strabane, across the Border from his home place in Lifford, since 2003 but could not be arrested as he had committed no crime in that jurisdiction. He signed himself back into the Central Mental Hospital last month, where his case was reviewed as per the provisions of legislation introduced in 2006.

Irish Government to focus on three aspects of stimulus for economy growth

      

The Germany chancellor Angela Merkel with Taoiseach Enda Kenny during a meeting at the EU summit in Brussels yesterday.

The Irish Government is hoping that three elements of the planned EU growth pact will help to stimulate the Irish economy.

Those elements involve investment by the European Investment Bank (EIB) in worthwhile projects, flexible rules for an innovative scheme called project bonds, and new rules for drawing down unused structural funds.

It will take serious negotiation on all three issues to ensure that Ireland can derive maximum benefit from the growth pact.

Persuading the EIB to support substantial investments in bailout countries who can demonstrate that they are making progress in implementing their programmes would assist Ireland.

Redefining the nature of how EIB funds can be used and the purposes for which they can be applied is one of the objectives of the Government. The head of the EIB is due to visit Ireland next week and will meet Taoiseach Enda Kenny during his visit.

The Taoiseach has stated his intention of having a serious discussion with him about the progress Ireland has made since entering the EU/IMF programme and the hopes he has about availing of the new EIB funding.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore also pointed out the prospects of availing of EIB funding.

Project bonds represent another aspect of the growth initiative that could have an impact on this country if the rules governing them are sufficiently flexible. As first envisaged, these bonds would be of no help to Ireland because they are designed for big transnational infrastructure projects such as autobahns or rail lines.

Ireland’s status as an island nation means that major transnational projects are not an option and, in any case, they are more applicable to the big economies such as Spain and Italy.

Nonetheless, the move to develop the project bonds idea is welcomed by Irish officials as it has potential to stimulate growth across the EU and there is a belief that the scheme can be adapted for smaller countries.

A third element of the package which the Government is hoping can be of use is a change in the rules governing structural funds. Ireland has spent all of the structural funds that were available but not all of the other countries entitled to use them have done so.

Mr Kenny said Greece, for instance, had been allocated €16 billion in structural funds which had not been spent as it did not have the capacity to put up co-financing.

He has expressed the hope that a creative way to apply unused structural funds can be found through negotiation. Under current rules, structural funds cannot be taken out of an envelope that is allocated to one particular country and given to another.

The number of Ireland’s carers increases by 22,000 as nearly 600,000 claim a disability

  

The number of people listed as being carers in Ireland has increased by 21,967 to a total of 160,917, according to the latest census figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

Currently, 4.1 per cent of the population are now listed as being carers, after the census office more broadly defined who is and is not one.

“In the past the census only asked about people who were carers and over the age of 15. Now they looked for people who were 15 and over,” Catherine Cox of the Carers Association told TheJournal.ie.

A small minority of people may have defined themselves as carers in order to come off unemployment and claim the carers allowance, she said. However, the number was probably very minute she said.

“The difference between unemployment benefit and the carers allowance is €12. To get it you have to prove that you are doing 45 hours or more a week of caring. It is strictly means tested and you need to get a medical cert from your doctor.”

It is very difficult for someone to prove that they are a carer.

Elsewhere, the census report said:

A total of 595,335 people claimed to have a disability, up from 393,784 in 2006.
Broadband use in homes increased from 21.2 per cent in 2006 to 65.3 per cent in 2011
Car ownership rose to 1.36 million households having at least one car, up 186,000 from 2006.

Some 88% of Irish people consider themselves to be in ‘good health’

 

More than 60% of the Irish population consider themselves to be in very good health, according to the findings of the 2011 census.

The occurrence of health failing with age is reflected with just one in three people aged 65 and over saying they were in very good health, compared to 87 per cent of those aged between 10 and 14.

More than four million respondents (88 per cent) said their health was either very good (2.77 million) or good (1.28 million), with just 69,661 (1.5 per cent) reporting that they were in a bad (57,243) or very bad (12,418) condition.

Six of the seven counties where the best health was reported were in greater Dublin (excluding the city), with Cork the only county outside Leinster in the top seven.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown residents rated themselves the healthiest in Ireland, while those in Limerick city reported the worst health.

In demographic terms, 76 per cent of social class one (professional workers) believed their health to be very good but this fell to just 45 per cent in class six (unskilled workers).

The proportion of the population with a disability increased from 9.3 per cent (393,785) in 2006 to 13 per cent (595,335) in 2011, up 201,550. The spike can be attributed to changes to the census disability question, which now includes ailments such as asthma and chronic pain, according to the CSO.

The number of people aged over 15 who classified themselves as carers rose by 13 per cent to 182,884. The number of male carers increased by 20 per cent to 72,999, but women carers continued to outnumber men at 114,113.

Researchers at NUIG Galway now developed a DNA test for TB

   

Researchers at NUI Galway develop DNA test for TB

Research from NUI Galway recently published in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology and PLoS ONE details a new DNA test for TB that can detect all bacteria associated with the disease.

According to the World Health Organisation, TB is one of the greatest killers due to a single infectious agent worldwide, second only to HIV/AIDS. In 2010, 8.8m people contracted TB, and 1.4m died from it.

More than 95pc of these cases occurred in developing countries, and optimal treatment for TB can vary depending on what bacteria is causing it.

TB is caused by a group of bacteria known as Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTC). Some of these bacteria are naturally resistant to commonly used anti-TB drugs.

SEEK TB – AN INTERNATIONAL CO-OPERATION

The Molecular Diagnostics Research Group at NUI Galway has developed and validated a new assay, or laboratory test, called SeekTB, to identify all bacteria from MTC.

The new test could also help centralised clinical reference labs to track the disease and conduct epidemiological studies on the various bacteria species comprising the complex.

“Identifying the specific member of the MTC is currently not routinely performed in testing laboratories and therefore it is unknown what the true impact each member of the MTC has on the global TB epidemic,” said Dr Thomas Barry, who lectures in microbiology at NUI Galway.

Development of the test has been an international co-operation, as the technology was initially validated by Prof Dick van Soolingen in the Netherlands and Dr Stefan Niemann in Germany, and was used by Prof Alimuddin Zumla and Dr Matthew Bates in University College London to analyse patient samples from Zambia.

FURTHER RESEARCH COULD LEAD TO TESTING ON HANDHELD DEVICES

The test takes only 1.5-3 hours to complete and, in the future, could be configured to a handheld device for use at point-of-care in resource-poor settings. “This could be a huge benefit to medical care provision in remote areas,” said Barry. “However, it will likely take years of research and development to achieve such a goal.”

In its current format, SeekTB is likely to be predominantly used on culture-positive TB patient samples in central testing laboratories in places like Africa, to guide appropriate treatment and control measures.

Galway home records Radon gas at 19 times the acceptable level of 200 Bq/m3

    

Radon levels equivalent to 13 chest X-rays per day were identified in a home in Galway city, the highest level of radon gas ever discovered in a home in the county, according to the Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland (RPII).

Radon levels at 19 times the acceptable level of 200 Bq/m3 were discovered in the home which was one of five dwellings in Co Galway. One home in Kerry also recorded levels of radon – a cancer-causing odourless, tasteless and colourless gas – at over 10 times this level.

A total of 341 homes were identified as having excessive radon gas levels. The majority, or 293 dwellings, had levels up to four times the acceptable level.

A further 42 homes had levels between four and 10 times the acceptable level, 31 of which were located in Galway; three in Tipperary; two each in Clare, Cork and Wexford; one in Kerry and one in Sligo.

Stephanie Long, senior scientist with the RPII, reiterated that Ireland has a significant radon problem, with some of the highest levels found in Europe:

“Our research indicates that there are more than 91,000 homes with high levels of radon and only about 7,500 have been found to date.”

Radon is the second biggest cause of lung cancer after smoking, and is directly linked to up to 200 lung cancer deaths in Ireland each year.

“Exposure to high radon levels causes lung cancer and many families are unknowingly living with a high risk to their health. People need to take the radon test and if high levels are found the problem should be fixed,” she said.

The RPII encourages people to test their homes for radon, which can be done by placing one radon detector in a bedroom and a second in a living room for a three-month period. The cost of a measurement stands at about €50. An interactive map is available on the RPII’s website rpii.iewhere people can do a search to see if their home or workplace is located in an area with high radon levels.