Troika review pushes for progress on property tax in Ireland
A bailout troika review is expected to push for a faster introduction of the property tax, amid reports that most households will pay an annual charge of between €250 and €400 from next year.
In a quarterly report on Ireland due out today, the IMF will caution the Government about potential delays rolling out the tax.
The IMF is also set to push for reform of universal social welfare payments and to raise concern about reform of health services.
The critical review comes amid reports that most households will pay an annual property charge of between €250 and €400 from next year.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny has told his Cabinet of the amounts and that he wants details of the tax announced soon, The Sunday Times said. The tax will replace the €100 household charge and is likely to be pitched at between 0.2% and 0.25% of the value of a house, it added.
A spokesman for Mr Kenny said the only decision taken on the tax so far was that Revenue would collect it.
The Socialist Party said that a tax of €400 was just a starting point and it would “rise relentlessly each year, like refuse and other charges”.
Sinn Féin said Mr Kenny’s assurance gave little comfort to families already struggling with cuts and charges.
The Irish Examiner has also learned that over €7m in household charges paid by property owners is being used to finance the agency collecting the levy, despite communities facing cuts to services and facilities.
The millions of euro — equating to charges paid on about 72,000 properties — are being deducted from charges collected in order to pay for staff, the household charge database, and other administration costs mounting up for the Local Government Management Agency.
The IMF report today is expected to call for an early deal on restructuring part of the €64bn in debt related to the bank bailout.
Central Bank governor Patrick Honohan yesterday said that the Government’s talks with the EU to secure funding to support the bailout of Anglo Irish Bank were not difficult and the country should get a lot.
Mr Honohan said that time was on Ireland’s side and the final outcome would come after the European Commission dealt with the problems of Spain.
However, Leo Varadkar, the transport minister, said that it may be “difficult” to achieve any deal before an October deadline, originally set by the ECB.
Michael Noonan, the finance minister, will hold talks with his counterparts in Paris, Berlin, Rome, and Nicosia this week on the debt.
His spokesman last night said there was no “anticipation of a significant announcement this week”.
He added: “A timeline is set out and we’re working towards it.”
The spokesman also stressed that today’s IMF report was entirely separate to Ireland’s bailout and was a “strategic review” of Ireland, as well as other programme countries.
Government’s across Europe continue to push on high-priced drugs to get savings on medical bills
All across Europe, the pharmaceutical sector has been forced to reduce profits as governments went in search of savings on medical bills. Nothing like that rigour was applied here, although prices have fallen since 2009. In the past decade, the cost to the State of drugs and medicines has risen at three times the European average and pharmaceuticals are among the most expensive in the world.
Against that background, reported progress in talks between the Department of Health and drug manufacturers on a deal to cut the State’s annual drug bill by up to €400 million is welcome – though belated. Minister for Health James Reilly promised significant savings from this area in last year’s budget. But the legislation needed to implement the reforms reached the Seanad only before the summer recess.
The intention behind the Health (Pricing and Supply of Medical Goods) Bill is to promote competition between suppliers and ensure value for money. It will allow patients to opt for lower-cost medicines than those prescribed by doctors; establish a system of reference pricing for generic drugs; and allow the Health Service Executive to specify a list of medicines and non-drug items that will be reimbursed.
As a large employer that accounts for some 50 per cent of all exports, the pharmaceutical industry is of great importance to the economy. Some big-selling drugs are about to come off patent and the companies concerned will have to decide on continued production here, with lower prices, or an exit from the market.
Budget cuts are supposed to be tough but fair. Since 2008, however, State spending on child benefit has fallen by almost one-third, the largest reduction in any of the welfare sectors. This fall has been accompanied by an increasing incidence of child poverty. Lobbying by powerful commercial interests should not succeed in tilting the balance against social equity.
Crisis-hit Sligo county council & other Irish councils still pay generous ‘retirement packages’
COUNCILS across the country are running out of money while continuing to pay former members tens of thousands of euro in generous retirement packages.
And more than half our city and county councils are being forced to rely on borrowings to pay day-to-day expenses.
But new figures show that former councillors elected to the Dail and Seanad will be paid as much as €1.1m in “retirement gratuity” payments before the next general election.
Last week, the Irish Independent revealed how 22 Oireachtas members were paid a total of €750,000 in lump sums last year, with payments averaging €34,300 each.
However, it has now emerged that 11 more TDs and four more senators are eligible for the payments before the next election.
This is on top of their lucrative salaries of €92,000 for TDs and €65,000 for senators.
The payments are made to any councillor with more than two years’ service who retires, loses their seat or is elected to the Dail or Seanad. The payments are made when the politician reaches 50 years of age.
Some have already received generous sums in recent months, including Tipperary Senator Denis Landy (Lab) who received around €43,200 last February.
“The package was in place in legislation,” he said. He added he did not have a view on whether the payments should be scrapped.
Others entitled to the payments are Junior Education Minister Ciaran Cannon, who should receive about €10,000, and Fine Gael TD Michael Creed, in line for €32,000.
Under-fire Galway senator Fidelma Healy-Eames (FG), who received a €10,000 retirement payment last year, said the system needed to be changed so no one received the gratuity until they turned 65.
Scrapped
A spokesman for Environment Minister Phil Hogan would not say if the gratuity payments would be scrapped in a reform of local government expected to be announced in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, documents released under the Freedom of Information Act show the financial situation of Sligo County Council became so bad in March it could no longer make payments to suppliers because it had exceeded its overdraft limit of €7.5m.
A letter was sent by Sligo to the department last March. “We are totally dependent on a significant funding package to deal with the situation, if there are any options available,” it said.
The following day, it emailed the department asking that its quarterly government grant of €3.4m be paid early, which was approved.
The council has now sought permission to ask Bank of Ireland to extend and increase its overdraft to €11m.
But the bank has previously refused to increase the limit because it is so concerned about the council’s reliance on borrowings to pay its debts.
This is despite the overdraft being sanctioned by the department — meaning that it would have to pay back the money in the event of Sligo going bust.
New research says it really does work. So what is the truth about acupuncture?
For critics of acupuncture, last week’s headlines provided ready ammunition.
News reports revealed that hundreds of NHS patients undergoing the treatment have suffered complications including fainting and dizziness.
A study said there were 325 reports of patients coming to harm after having acupuncture on the NHS in just two years.
In conditions such as arthritis and chronic headache, acupuncture was twice as effective as the drugs and exercise recommended by most doctors
These included 100 cases of needles being left inside the body, and five patients who suffered collapsed lungs after a needle accidentally penetrated their chests.
Proof, according to acupuncture’s critics, that its claims to be an effective form of pain relief are not just mumbo-jumbo, but dangerous mumbo-jumbo. But is that the whole story?
Many would argue that all treatments have side-effects — especially if mistakes are made — and that the number of problems reported was relatively small.
Now a major analysis, published yesterday, suggests the sceptics are also wrong about acupuncture’s benefits: it really does control pain.
Practitioners claim that by inserting fine needles at 400 specific points on the skin, they can affect the ‘meridians’ — channels of energy that run up and down the body, blocking pain. Critics claim any relief comes purely from the placebo effect.
The new report, the largest analysis of acupuncture ever conducted, involved nearly 18,000 patients and doctors from eight universities and hospitals in the UK, the U.S. and Germany.
They found that traditional acupuncture worked better than a placebo.
In fact, in conditions such as arthritis and chronic headache, acupuncture was twice as effective as the drugs and exercise recommended by most doctors, according to the analysis published in the authoritative Archives of Internal Medicine.
Acupuncture originated in China more than 2,000 years ago. It was brought to Europe in the 1500s by French missionaries.
The Lancet medical journal first ran an article about it in 1823.
Then it faded from the medical map until the Seventies following U.S. President Nixon’s historic visit to China and dramatic reports of operations with acupuncture as the only anaesthetic.
Experts have always disagreed about its benefits, though there are 15,000 doctors and physiotherapists working in the NHS trained to deliver it.
The National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommends it for back pain and arthritis, but is considering whether to add headache.
Patients can have it on the NHS for other conditions if their doctor prescribes it.
Patients can have it on the NHS for other conditions if their doctor prescribes it.
Experts have always disagreed about its benefits, though there are 15,000 doctors and physiotherapists working in the NHS trained to deliver acupuncture
When Sally Wright asked her GP to refer her for treatment, he laughed.
‘He told me it was a waste of time, but agreed to refer me if I wanted,’ says the 37-year-old office administrator from Essex.
‘I’ve had bad headaches and migraine since I was a teenager.
‘I tried all sorts of painkillers and my doctor prescribed calcium blockers, antidepressants, beta-blockers and migraine drugs called triptans. But nothing really helped.’
By the time she was 30, Sally was having three or four attacks a month.
‘I was afraid to drive because my vision suddenly went strange,’ she says.
In 2006 her consultant said he was going to put her on a much more powerful drug, with potentially strong side-effects, but Sally was keen to try other options, such as acupuncture.
‘I had two sessions a week for two weeks, then one a week and finally one a month,’ she says.
Within a couple of months, her attacks had virtually disappeared.
‘It was extraordinary. I haven’t stopped telling people about it.’
Sally has a few sessions on the NHS every couple of years to keep her headaches at bay.
But sceptic Professor David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at Imperial College London, is a vehement opponent.
He has described talk of energy and meridians as ‘pure gobbledygook’ and campaigned for university acupuncture courses to be closed on the grounds that they should not ‘teach such nonsense’.
One common medical view is that if it does work, it is only because of the personality of the acupuncturist — the placebo effect.
‘That’s not medicine, that’s showbiz!’ said one GP recently.
Several major trials in the past few years seem to support this. These found that acupuncture is better than standard treatment — possibly because of the care and attention given by the practitioner — but there’s only a small difference between pseudo acupuncture (a placebo), which could involve pricking points at random on the body, and the traditional version.
So what makes this latest piece of research any more authoritative than the thousands of previous studies?
To begin with, its size. Researchers analysed the results from 29 high quality trials involving 17,922 patients.
All the patients had different sorts of chronic pain — arthritic, back and neck, headaches and shoulder pain — and were already being treated for it by their doctors; the acupuncture was an added treatment.
‘At the start, an average patient would reported a pain level of 60/100, that’s pretty bad,’ says lead author on the paper, Professor Andrew Vickers, an expert in biostatistics and research methods at Memorial Sloane Kettering Hospital in New York.
‘It’s known that just being in a trial makes people feel better so, as expected, the average pain rating went down to 43.
‘Getting sham acupuncture lowered the rating further to 35. But patients who got traditional acupuncture with all the needles carefully inserted into the correct point on a meridian over several weeks rated their pain at 30.
‘That means they felt it was half as bad as it had been with standard treatment.’
You don’t have to be an expert in statistics to see that the difference between sham and traditional isn’t that big.
But partly because the number of patients is so large it’s unlikely to have happened by chance. Statisticians call such a result ‘significant’.
‘The difference between traditional and sham acupuncture in this study is greater than the difference between painkilling aspirin-like drugs and a sham pill or placebo,’ says Professor George Lewith, head of the complementary medicine research unit at the University of Southampton and another author on the paper.
All music to the ears of acupuncture supporters — but there was a twist.
Even though acupuncture came out with flying colours, researchers say it looks as if it doesn’t work in the way traditionalists think it does.
Inserting the needle at just the right point on a meridian or putting it in to precisely the right depth made a significant difference, but it was not massive.
Inserting the needle at just the right point on a meridian or putting it in to precisely the right depth made a significant difference, but it was not massive.
So does this mean acupuncture is still mumbo-jumbo? Or could it be that simply putting a needle into the body, whether in a meridian or at random, helps beat pain?
Past studies have already shown that just giving an injection makes a difference to those in pain, regardless of what the jab contains.
But Vitaly Napadow, professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, who has run a number of studies on the way the brain changes in response to acupuncture, is convinced that there’s more to it.
He has reported that sham and traditional acupuncture affect different areas of the brain.
The latter stimulates pathways that are involved with producing endorphins, natural painkillers.
‘Areas of the brain that process pain are stimulated by traditional acupuncture, not by sham,’ he says.
‘So, it does look as if something extra is going on, but exactly why and how is still unclear.’
And what of the risks?
‘The risk of puncturing the lung is well-known and anyone trained by us is trained to warn about it,’ says Dr Mike Cummings, medical director of the British Medical Acupuncture Society.
‘What the study didn’t tell us is how many people get acupuncture on the NHS. A German study found there were just two cases of a punctured lung out of 2.2 million treatments.
‘We aim to keep harm to an absolute minimum but it looks as if the benefits outweigh the risks.’
In the meantime, the latest report may help change attitudes towards use of the treatment.
‘This study certainly forms a good basis for expanding the use of acupuncture,’ says Professor Lewith.
‘It could become a routine part of physiotherapy and with funding, GPs could do it in their surgeries. It’s effective and the cost is well below the NICE threshold for approving treatments.’
‘These results are robust evidence that it’s not just a placebo,’ says statistican Professor Vickers.
‘I hope clinicians will feel more comfortable using it in the future and encourage more research to find out what is going on.’
New Mars theory casts doubt on planet’s habitability
A study of clays suggests they might have been formed in hot magma rich in water — too hot to support microbial life. A Caltech planetary geologist is coauthor.
A standing theory about water on Mars is linked to blueberry-shaped formations
A new theory is pouring some cold — actually, some really hot — water on the idea that Mars could have been habitable in the past.
Planetary scientists searching the Red Planet for places that could have contained the building blocks for life look for clues in clays, which can offer some indication that water must have flowed on or just under Mars’ surface. But a new study suggests that, at least in some cases, those clays might be a red herring.
A paper published online Sunday by the journal Nature Geoscience argues that such clays might have been formed in hot Martian magma rich in water. If so, that water would have been far too hot to support microbial life.
The argument stands in contrast to two more common theories, said study coauthor Bethany Ehlmann, a planetary geologist at Caltech. One of them is that liquid water flowing across the Martian surface would have interacted with surrounding minerals, forming the clays. In another scenario, underground water warmed by the planet’s internal heat could have provided a comfortable living before it got bound up in the mineral structure of clays.
On Earth, clays are remarkably good at trapping organic material. So if organic compounds existed on Mars, clays would be a good place to find them.
If either of the prevailing theories about water is true, the Martian environment could have been hospitable for life, Ehlmann said. Superheated water and magma? Not so much.
“The clays would form as the lava cools from 1,500 degrees Celsius,” she said. “That would not be a good habitat.”
Ehlmann and her colleagues examined clay minerals similar to ones observed on Mars that were found in spots like Brazil and French Polynesia where water vapor escaping from the Earth’s interior formed bubbles in the magma, which hardened into pockets of clay.
The light signatures of these Earthly clays are very similar to some Martian deposits. And some — but not all — Martian meteorites collected here on Earth appear to support the new theory, the study authors wrote.
It’s possible that all three models could be right, depending on where you’re looking, said Ralph Milliken, a planetary scientist at Brown University who was not involved in the study.
“It’s certainly a different take on trying to explain the origin of some clay minerals on Mars,” he said. “It does have some merit, and alternative hypotheses need to be considered fully.”
But he said the story laid out in the new paper doesn’t explain why the Martian surface appears to have tracks cut by flowing liquid. Nor does it account for blueberry-shaped mineral deposits of hematite that scientists believe may have formed when water ran past them.
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