Ireland’s water meters installation now likely to be delayed until ‘at least 2016′
The plan to install water meters nationally may be delayed until 2016.
Homeowners already facing the new property charge in 2013 may now get a reprieve on the water charge.
The Government has said it will not charge for water until meters have been installed nationally, but it could still decided to impose a flat rate.
It could be four years before national metering for water is achieved, reports said today.
The flat rate water annual water tax is expected to be around €175 per house.
Metering was to have been in place by 2014.
Remote
One estimate is that it would cost €500m to install meters and installation would take four years. Tenders for the supply have yet to be advertised.
Householders are already bracing themselves for the December Budget which will bring in a “value-based” property tax next year, expected to cost hundreds of euro per home.
Reports today said that Government plans to start installing water meters by the end of this year were looking increasingly remote — due to a lack of information on the location of stopcocks or water supply points.
Senior water industry sources were quoted as saying it would be “inconceivable” that universal metering could be in place by 2014, the date the Government has committed itself to for charging for water.
They also warned that the upfront installation by the target date of 2014 would be “prohibitively expensive” and could lead to households being charged more than if a flat charge was used initially.
Environment Minister Phil Hogan said in April that the installation of meters would start before the end of the year.
A pilot survey to establish the number and location of stopcocks in Fingal, Kerry and Wexford is due to start in October, but it could take up to six months to complete.
It is not known when the other 30 local authorities will start trying to determine the location of their stopcocks.
One senior figure in the local authority water sector was quoted as saying: “I can’t see how there’ll be meters in the ground on a national basis in 2014.
“If everything went extremely smoothly in the procurement process they could be finished in spring 2016, but that would be a best case scenario.”
The Government is committed under the EU/IMF bailout to start charging households for water in 2014.
However, it is not committed to the installation of meters.
A new utility, Irish Water, a subsidiary of Bord Gais, is being set up to run the scheme.
Less than a week after Mr Hogan made his April announcement, a senior Dublin City Council official said approximately one third of homes could not be metered because they shared supply pipes with neighbours, or their mains water supply entered the house under the back gardens.
Estates
This was not only a problem with apartments, but with a large part of the housing stock, particularly in estates built from the 1940s to the 1960s.
However a spokeswoman for Mr Hogan rejected the claim.
She said a “a maximum of 300,000 homes” would be without water meters after the initial metering process.
The exact number of homes that would be metered during the initial process “was a matter for Irish Water” she added.
Staffing level concerns at Sligo General Hospital
INMO accuses management at Sligo General hospital of ignoring safety concerns
Concerns have been raised this afternoon over staffing levels at Sligo General hospital.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) said there have been severe staffing shortages at the hospital because of the non-replacement of personel on maternity or sick leave.
INMO warned of increased risks to patients and staff and called for further information on whether management plans to open empty beds in some wards will proceed.
The union today accused management of ignoring safety concerns.
“It is unacceptable that the HSE would seek to impose such draconian measures which can and will result in serious patient safety issues,” she added.
Ireland’s petrol prices ranked 17th of 60 in world’s most expensive fuel table survey
Irish petrol prices are among the dearest in the world, but still far below those in expensive Norway, a new survey has shown.
Ireland ranked 17th of 60 countries when it comes to the cost of petrol at the pumps, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Good quality petrol cost $7.34 (€5.87) a gallon in Ireland last month compared with $10.12 (€8.10) in top-ranked Norway. A gallon cost just 9 cents (€0.07) in Venezuela and 61 cents (€0.49) in Saudi Arabia.
The Irish price was lower than Britain and Germany but higher than the US, New Zealand and Japan.
While Europeans pay high petrol prices, they also mainly have high car ownership rates. The US is ranked 25th in the world by number of cars per person, just above Ireland which has some of the lowest rates in Europe.
The number of cars is higher in nearly all of the rest of western Europe including the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy as well as in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
Separate figures from Bloomberg which look at how expensive fuel is compared to wages paints a different picture. Drivers in Ireland have to spend an average 5.9pc of their daily income to buy a gallon of petrol.
FLUCTUATES
In India, a gallon of petrol costs 37pc more than what a worker earns in one day. In Norway, which has some of the highest salaries in the world, a gallon cost 3.7pc of a day’s wages.
The survey showed that US drivers paid less than half the European price and $1.15 (€0.92) per gallon below the world average.
Jacob Correll, a Kentucky-based analyst at Summit Energy, said: “Gasoline is relatively cheap in the US, but it fluctuates with the market a lot and that’s one of the reasons you hear a lot of complaints. It’s not necessarily the price level, it’s how fast things can change.”
Irish prices have dropped 12pc since April as global oil prices have fallen. That was one of the biggest drops in the world. In Norway, western Europe’s biggest crude exporter, the July cost of petrol was 4.4pc up from April.
The Turks pay $9.41 (€7.53) a gallon, the second-highest price in the ranking. In China, the second-biggest oil consumer, the price was $4.89 (€3.92). The Japanese paid $7.15 (€5.72). India ranked 44th with a gallon costing $5.44 (€4.35).
Senior citizens who maintain a healthy lifestyle can expect to live up to six years longer
- Getting healthy and quitting smoking can add five years to women’s live and six years to men’s
- Study also found former smokers lived just as long as those who never smoked
Living a healthy lifestyle well into old age can add six years to people’s lives – even if they have a chronic disease – according to new research.
A study of over 75s found exercise, a vibrant social life and quitting smoking can add five years to women’s lives and six years to men’s.
Fighting fit: A healthy lifestyle can add six years to the life expectancy of elderly people
Researchers measured the longevity of a group of adults aged 75 and over – basing results on factors such as lifestyle behaviours, leisure activities and social networks.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) study followed over 1,800 people for 18 years, with data on age, sex, occupation and education also measured.
During the follow up period, 92 per cent of participants died, but half of the survivors lived longer than 90 years – with women more likely to have survived.
Results also showed survivors were more likely to be highly educated, have healthy lifestyle behaviours, have a better social network and participate in more leisure activities.
However, smokers died one year earlier than non-smokers, and former smokers exhibited similar survival patterns than those who never touched a cigarette – suggesting quitting in middle age reduces the effect on mortality.
Quit and live longer: Smokers studied died a year earlier than non-smokers
Exercise was most strongly associated with survival – the average age at death of those who regularly swam, walked or did gymnastics was two years greater than those who did not.
Overall, the average survival of people with a low risk profile – healthy lifestyle, doing at least one leisure activity and a vibrant or moderate social circle – was 5.4 years longer than those with a high risk profile.
Researchers at Stockholm University in Sweden also found those aged 85 or older with chronic conditions and a low risk profile added four years to their lives compared to participants with a high risk profile.
PhD student Debora Rizzuto said: ‘This is the first study that directly provides information about differences in longevity according to several modifiable factors.
‘The associations between leisure activity, not smoking, and increased survival still existed in those aged 75 years or more, with women’s lives prolonged by five years and men’s by six years.
‘These associations, although attenuated, were still present among people aged 85 or more and in those with chronic conditions.
‘Our results suggest that encouraging favourable lifestyle behaviours even at advanced ages may enhance life expectancy, probably by reducing morbidity.’
How our DNA differs from that of Denisovans,
Cave people of our extinct cousins from the Altai Mountains of Siberia
Scientists recently reported they had pieced together a high-quality sequence of an archaic human relative, the Denisovans.
Among other things, the researchers took a close look at the ways in which we differ from these people, who were named after the place where their traces were discovered: Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia..
It’s “fascinating” to see the DNA changes that spread to most or all modern humans since our line split off from that of the Denisovans and the Neanderthals, said senior author Svante Paabo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. It’s like taking a look at the last steps in human evolutionary history.
“The amazing thing to me is that [it is] not an astronomically long list,” he said at a press conference on Wednesday.
THE TALLY:
About 100,000 places where single nucleotides — the individual building blocks of DNA — have changed, so that one type of nucleotide has been swapped out for another.
About 10,000 places where a piece of DNA has been lost, or a new bit added.
Most of the changes will make no difference to the structure of proteins our genomes carry codes for. But the scientists identified 260 changes that would alter a protein’s form by changing one of the amino acids it contains.
Boring down even further, the researchers found 23 amino-acid changes that we have but Denisovans and monkeys and apes don’t have. These might be especially likely to be important in making us who we are, Paabo said.
“It’s quite interesting to me that eight have to do with brain function and brain development … and some of them have to do with genes which, for example, can cause autism when the genes are mutated,” he said.
That these genes affect the way nerves wire up is interesting because enlargement of the brain happened quite early — Neanderthals already had large heads — so alterations in connectivity could have a big part to play in the modern human ability to create large, complicated societies and rich culture, Paabo said.
And the autism-linked genes are interesting because a lot of what it takes to get by in human society, with all its politics and manipulation, has to do with being able to “read” the likely feelings of others, to get inside the head of another person.
Not that it will be easy to track down the crucial alterations. “Unfortunately,” Paabo said, “at the moment we know too little about the genome to really say what these things mean.”
Adding to the complexity, some key changes may have nothing to do with altered protein structure. They will affect how different genes turn on and off — in what cells, and at what moments in time. Scientists know that such changes in so-called gene expression can have large effects on the development and function of a creature and have had important parts to play in evolution.
But they are harder to identify based on scientists’ current state of knowledge, says John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who wasn’t an author of the paper.
“The first strategy is to look at what you can see,” Hawks says.
Runaway car hits girl (6) at Donegal playschool
A SIX-year-old girl is fighting for her life in a Dublin hospital after a ‘freak’ accident outside a playschool.
Little Roisin Sweeney was knocked down by a runaway Seat people carrier, which had been parked outside the playgroup in Rossnakill on Donegal’s Fanad peninsula.
It’s understood a handbrake may have been accidentally let off before the vehicle ran into the child.
Rushed
The family live a short distance from the village of Portsalon, a few kilometers from the school. Roisin was rushed to Letterkenny General Hospital after the incident at lunchtime on Wednesday before being transferred to Temple Street Children’s Hospital in Dublin. Roisin was with her mother Anne, who was at the Rossnakill Resource Centre picking up another child from a playgroup there. The family have five children.
Other parents ran to help the girl and comfort her mother. Local parish priest Father Pat McGarvey drove Ann and her husband Francis to Dublin so they could be at Roisin’s bedside.
Gardai in Milford have confirmed an investigation is under way into the incident.
The vehicle will be examined by Garda crash investigators.
“Everyone in Fanad is praying for Roisin,” said one local parent. “It appears to have been a freak accident.
“The Sweeneys are a quiet family who keep themselves to themselves. Ann would have moved back here to Donegal a while back after several years in England.
“Everyone just wants Roisin to get better again.”
The little girl is a pupil at Little Angels Special School in Letterkenny. It is due to reopen again next week.
Distraught
One local man who was in the playgroup car park told the Herald: “It’s hard to know exactly what happened.
“Somehow, the car rolled forward and Roisin mustn’t have seen it coming.
“Mrs Sweeney was absolutely distraught. The car appeared to roll over Roisin and left her with dreadful injuries.
“We are all just praying for her.”
What is really in the Cigarette you smoke?
Ammonia, sugars, cocoa and more. Once-secret documents reveal some surprising ingredients
There are lots of myths about cigarettes: that “lights” offer protection, for one, or that filters actually filter.
Yet another myth is that cigarettes are just tobacco rolled in paper. Nothing could be further from the truth. The cigarette is a surprisingly complex artifact, as we now know from the treasure trove of documents released in the course of litigation. The tobacco archives online at legacy.library.ucsf.edu contain some 80 million pages of formerly secret industry documents, almost all of which were unavailable before the Big Tobacco trials of recent years. Access to these archives has improved over time, and all are now full-text searchable, meaning that anyone with an Internet connection can pull up all documents containing expressions such as “doubt is our product” or “friends in Congress.”
What the documents also reveal is a witches’ brew of ingredients used in cigarettes. A 1992 document drawn up by Covington & Burling, a leading tobacco law firm, lists 614 different additives in cigarettes. Here are some of the choicer items, along with poundages added to cigarettes in 1991:
Glycerol 24,910,166
Propylene glycol 22,803,628
Cocoa and cocoa shells 9,302,784
Licorice 8,140,074
Diammonium phosphate 6,065,511
Urea 2,376,000
Menthol 1,564,759
St. John’s Bread 979,780
Chocolate 841,405
Potassium sorbate 296,984
Prune juice and concentrate 156,093
Levulinic acid 13,413
Angelica Root 5,128
Nutmeg powder and oil 2,359
Dandelion root solid extract 2,044
Twenty years later, the exact formulas of cigarettes on the market remain trade secrets, but the companies now publicly disclose the chemicals they add. On their websites, Philip Morris lists more than 100 different additives, Reynolds lists 158 and Lorillard lists 137. Many of these are flavorants; that is presumably why the list includes bergamot oil, fenugreek extract, geranium bourbon oil, ethyl vanillin, tangerine oil, sandalwood and something called “immortelle extract.”
Under “c” alone we find cardamom oil, carob bean extract, cinnamon oil, coffee extract, coriander oil, corn syrup and an oil made from camomile flowers. Gone, apparently, are some that appear in earlier lists: “civet absolute,” for example, which turns out to be a secretion from the anal gland of the civet cat, and castoreum, a comparable secretion from the Siberian beaver.
Some compounds are added for physiological effects. Menthol adds a cool, minty taste, for example, but also has anesthetic effects, helping starters start and smokers get a “medicinal” feeling. Sugars are added to produce a milder, more inhalable smoke—but also because, when burned, they generate acetaldehydes, boosting the addictive potency of the resulting smoke.
Nicotine per se isn’t typically added, apart from what is already found in precision-bred and blended tobacco leaf, but ammonia is used in abundance—millions of pounds per year in fact—to push the nicotine molecule from a “bound” into a “free base” state, creating a kind of crack nicotine. Levulinic acid is similarly added to increase the efficiency of nicotine binding in the brain. Cocoa is added for aroma but also for its impact as a bronchodilator: Cocoa contains the alkaloid theobromine, which helps open up the lungs to “receive” smoke.
Of course, whenever you smoke a cigarette you are also smoking cigarette paper, which contains bleaches and glues and sometimes burn accelerants (typically sodium or potassium citrates). Chemicals are added to adjust the color of the ash or the optical qualities of the smoke.
The archives are also full of complaints from ordinary smokers finding oddities in their cigarettes: A 1994 Philip Morris document records contamination from rubber bands, machine belts and lubricants, ink and tax stamp solvents, glass fibers and plastics, and color stains “consistent with blood.” Smokers also complain about finding bugs or worms, sometimes dead, sometimes alive.
Global consumption of cigarettes has now reached six trillion sticks a year, which turns out to be more than 300 million miles of cigarettes—enough to make a continuous chain from the Earth to the sun and back, with enough left over for a couple of side trips to Mars. On that long journey, smokers deserve to know exactly what’s in their cigarettes, and why.
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