Donie's Ireland news BLOG Wednesday

One in nine (11%) of Irish men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer

     

Over 2,800 of Irish men were diagnosed with prostate cancer in Ireland in 2010. After skin cancer, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men with one in nine Irish men being diagnosed with prostate cancer during their lifetime. Prosta-Check is a new simple, one step home test that can help men to monitor their prostate health.

  Prosta-Check tests for elevated levels of a protein called Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA) which can be an early indication of prostate cancer. Early cancer detection is critical to successful cancer therapy treatments and it is quite common for men with prostate cancer to have no symptoms at all.

Cancer treatment typically becomes less effective once the disease has progressed and new research just published in the US Journal of The National Cancer Institute highlights the need for more targeted screening amongst young and healthy men and particularly those at high risk of prostate cancer.

Prosta-Check does not diagnose prostate cancer, instead it detects high levels of the PSA protein. PSA is produced by normal prostate cells and then released in small amounts into a man’s bloodstream by the prostate gland. While a high level of PSA can be associated with prostate cancer, it may also indicate that there is a benign prostate condition e.g. a urinary infection or even inflammation. A GP visit for further investigation is strongly recommended.

Prosta-Check in an important home prostate health check kit as it can provide reassurance, particularly if there is any personal or family history of prostate cancer. If prostate cancer has been diagnosed, Prosta-Check may also be used as a monitoring tool after treatment, to monitor PSA levels.

As PSA increases with age, there is growing consensus that men should test themselves aged 40+ when PSA levels are lower, as PSA levels increase with age. In a US study, Dr Hans Lilja from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre in New York found that PSA testing of men in their 40s was predictive of developing prostate cancer later.

The study found that the higher the initial PSA, the greater the probability that the cancer would be aggressive.
While there are no agreed public screening protocols in Ireland, screening earlier at the age 40, and repeating every five years thereafter would recognise those with a high likelihood of developing prostate cancer, but also those who will not need further screening because their chance of ever developing prostate cancer is not significant.

Prosta-Check is available from pharmacies RRP €15.00.
How to Use Prosta-Check:
1) Wash hands; 2) Open protective pouch and take out device and pipette; 3) Push small orange rod into body of lancet, until a click is heard (device activated); 4) Remove orange rod by turning left or right; 5) Press lancet onto finger and press trigger; 6) Massage finger that was pricked to obtain blood; 7) Put pipette into contact with blood; 8) Pipette blood into device; 9) Wait for blood to totally enter well; 10) Add 4-5 drops of diluent; 11) Read results after 10 minutes.

We in Ireland are throwing out some €1,000 worth of food each year

  

Households are throwing away up to €1,000 a year of wasted food.

Even though one in every 10 families is unable to afford nutritious meals, official figures reveal that consumers here are also tossing away a million tonnes of food a year.

That equates to €700 worth of food per household on average, with many families wasting around €1,000 a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In a bid to cut down on the unnecessary waste, Safefood will launch a campaign in the coming weeks aimed at educating consumers on what’s safe to eat.

“Many of us are throwing away perfectly nutritious foodstuffs because we misinterpret labels such as ‘Best Before’ and ‘Display Until’ and assume items are no longer safe to eat,” a spokesperson for the food safety body said.

The EPA said that we throw away up to a third of the food we buy, with each household generating around 100kg a year of food waste that we pay for twice — at the time of purchase and for waste collection.

That includes half the salad, a third of the bread and a quarter of all the fruit we buy.

As well as the costs for households, institutions and businesses face high bills through food waste — both in unnecessary purchases and high disposal costs.

One hospital found wasted food was costing it around €230,000 a year as a third of the food on patients’ trays was coming back untouched, an EPA report found.

Significant savings could be made by introducing more precise ordering by patients and controlling portion sizes.

Irish restaurants are also throwing away €125m a year of food, mainly because of overly generous portions, Unilever Food Solution Ireland said at a recent Resource Ireland conference.

But while all this food is being thrown away, charities report a surge in demand for basic food from many hardpressed families.

The St Vincent de Paul has seen a 50% surge in the demand for food in the past few years and is now spending close to €10m a year on supermarket vouchers to help families, up from €6.1m in 2008.

A number of food banks are also working with food suppliers and wholesalers to recover unwanted food that can be accessed by charities, homeless groups and community services such as meals on wheels.

“This can range from damaged pallets of food or dented cans that don’t meet supermarket standards but are perfectly safe, to wonky carrots that are nutritious but don’t look the best,” said Sinead Keenan of Healthy Food For All, which works to improve nutrition for impoverished families.

Offers

The EPA said that while some food waste, such as vegetable peelings, teabags and meat bones, were unavoidable, much of the rest was down to bulk buying and not planning our meals properly.

The agency urged consumers to resist special offers that encouraged shoppers to buy too much as these were “good for toilet rolls but bad for fruit, vegetables and salad”.

It also urged people not to be unrealistic about buying lots of healthy products that they never actually eat.

Ireland’s first-ever Feed the 5,000 event will be held in Dublin on November 24, with 5,000 consumers treated to a meal made entirely of misshapen vegetables that would otherwise go to waste.

The event was inspired by international campaigner Tristram Stuart and highlights the amount of food needlessly thrown away.

Tesco and Lidl to test Irish market with traffic type warning labels on foods

      

It will be green for go when a new system of ‘traffic light labels’ hits our grocery shelves.

Plans are in place for supermarkets to adopt a new system to make it easier for customers to know which foods are healthiest before they buy.

The project, which was agreed by all major UK supermarkets in recent days, will be tried here by Tesco and Lidl.

It will involve the stores placing red, amber and green labels for packaged foods to indicate if they are high in calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar and salt.

obesity

In the simplest terms, red means that the food should be avoided, amber stock should be eaten in moderation while items with a green symbol can be freely consumed.

The idea is that consumers will be able to understand the make-up of food they are buying without having to read the full label. It is hoped that the move will help the fight against our growing obesity problem.

Tesco Ireland said it intends to roll out traffic light labelling here, but the details have not yet been worked out.

It is expected to be next year when the new labels are introduced here and in the UK.

Lidl said it will also roll out the new traffic light labels at its Irish outlets.

“Lidl Ireland can confirm that it will be adopting a hybrid labelling system that will incorporate the existing Guideline Daily Amounts (GDA) with the ‘traffic light’ colour coding system,” a spokesperson said.

Aldi Ireland could not say if it will use the system here .

The Consumers Association of Ireland welcomed the move, even if it was “by the back door” via the UK.

Safefood, which promotes healthy eating in Ireland, said it welcomed anything which made it easier for consumers.

“We welcome anything that makes nutritional information easy to understand” a spokesperson said.

Ash tree disease threatens 400 Irish Hurley jobs

  

The fungus, Chalara fraxinea, which has spread across 21 countries in Europe has now reached Ireland. It kills ash trees by stripping their leaves from the top down.

The Irish Guild of Ash Hurley makers has expressed its concern that the disease could devastate their industry.

Damian Larkin, of TJ Larkin Hurleys, said that they were on high alert for the disease.

“It’s a real concern for the industry and we’re watching this very closely,” he said

The spread of the disease to Ireland is being blamed on a batch of infected ash trees, imported from Europe.

produced

It will pose a particular threat to the hurley making industry, with hurley manufacturing responsible for supplying at least 400 full-time jobs.

Around 350,000 hurleys are produced annually in Ireland, though more than 70pc of the ash wood used to make them is now imported.

The new disease could pose further threat to the Irish-made hurley manufacturers, most of whom are members of the Irish Guild of Ash Hurley makers, set up in 1998 to preserve the industry and battle against foreign-imported hurleys.

An outbreak of the fungus has been detected in Co Leitrim.

Minister of State for Food, Horticulture and Food Safety Shane McEntee met with groups from the ash hurley-makers and forestry organisations to discuss the detection of ash dieback disease and the measures being taken to prevent the spread of the disease.

The Department for Food, Agriculture and the Marine (DAFM) has introduced emergency measures under the Plant Health Directive which requires that any ash plants imported into the country must come from an area known to be free of the disease.

Members of the Department have also met with officials in Northern Ireland in order to organise an All-Ireland approach to tackling the disease.

Department officials have said that they are also working closely with the relevant authorities in Britain, where the disease is rampant.

ravaged

The highly destructive fungus was discovered in fully-grown trees in the British countryside for the first time this week and the Forestry Commission in Britain have reported that almost all woodland in Britain is at risk of being ravaged by the disease.

Comreg warns & signals its intention to control postal costs with An Post

  

The states communications watchdog/regulator signalled yesterday that it intends controlling postal costs to ensure their affordability.

The Commission for Communications Regulation (Comreg) yesterday published a statement outlining its strategy for overseeing the postal service between now and 2014.

The statement warns that all postal prices must be affordable in order to ensure that all customers can use the service.

It also says that charges have to reflect the actual cost of providing the service and have to be transparent.

State-owned An Post recently asked Comreg to allow it increase the cost of stamps.

The company did not specify an amount, but reports indicate that the standard cost may rise to 65 cent from 55 cent.

Comreg has yet to rule one way or the other on the State company’s request.

An Post’s response to Comreg’s strategy document, which is separate from its request for a price rise, calls for “appropriate” increases.

The company published details earlier this year of plans to cut 1,500 jobs between now and the year 2016.

Its response, made to Comreg last October, says it will cut 1,500 “full-time equivalents”.

That terms indicates that it may not necessarily reduce numbers by 1,500, but could make savings through other means, including over time cuts or reducing part-time hours.

However, a company spokesman said yesterday that “1,500 full-time equivalents will still be very close to 1,500 jobs”.

The spokesman pointed out that An Post has cut 1,100 jobs since 2008. The plan to increase this to 2,600 by 2016 is part of an overall strategy.

That also involves increasing charges for providing the Republic’s universal postal services. Comreg regulates charges such as the price of stamps.

An Post argues that the importance of maintaining the universal postal service overrides Comreg’s other aims.

It also points out that the programme for government recognises the importance of its services.

Recent litigation has soured relations between the regulator and An Post.

Comreg intends appealing a recent High Court decision in An Post’s favour in a case dealing with disputed addresses.

A row over the regulator’s decision to fine An Post €12 million for failing to maintain quality standards in some of its services, also looks destined for courts, as the company wants to challenge the ruling.

Celebrations for Ireland’s oldest worker a 90 year old Donegal  woman

     

Mary blows out the candles on her cake and Mary with her friends.

Ireland’s oldest working woman was celebrated on Friday when Mary Lafferty’s colleagues at Killybegs Community Hospital marked her birthday.

Mary had been selected Ireland’s oldest working woman last year in a national competition organised by TV3, and received her prize on the television programme, “Ireland AM”.

Mary helps to teach computers at the hospital, where she also leads other clients in a keep-fit class.

Mary celebrated nine decades on Friday with hospital staff and clients, enjoying a cake staff members organised. She was set for another celebration with family yesterday, the date of her actual birthday.

Donie's news Ireland daily BLOG Tuesday

Hurricane Sandy reeks havoc in New York & New Jersey as storm hits land

  

Left picture a man made his way along a flooded street in Lower Manhattan and the Inlet section of Atlantic City, N.J., was flooded

Deaths reported in New York as the historic storm hits land in southern New Jersey.

 Death toll climbs as storm hits New Jersey 
• More than 2.5 million people without power
• Sandy unravels into post-tropical storm
• Obama and Romney cancel campaign events
• One HMS Bounty sailor found dead, other missing

More than two million Americans in 11 states and the District of Columbia were without electricity last night, when Hurricane Sandy, believed to be the biggest storm ever recorded in the Atlantic, made landfall in southern New Jersey.

The mammoth and merciless storm made landfall near Atlantic City around 8 p.m., with maximum sustained winds of about 80 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. That was shortly after the center had reclassified the storm as a post-tropical cyclone, a scientific renaming that had no bearing on the powerful winds, driving rains and life-threatening storm surge expected to accompany its push onto land.

The storm had unexpectedly picked up speed as it roared over the Atlantic Ocean on a slate-gray day and went on to paralyse life for millions of people in more than a half-dozen states, with extensive evacuations that turned shore-fronts & neighbourhoods into ghost towns.

The police said a tree fell on a house in Queens New York shortly after 7 p.m., killing a 30-year-old man. In Manhattan a few hours earlier, a construction crane atop one of the tallest buildings in the city came loose and dangled 80 stories over West 57th Street, across the street from Carnegie Hall.

  Soon power was going out and water was rushing in. Waves topped the sea wall in the financial district in Manhattan, sending cars floating downstream. West Street, along the western edge of Lower Manhattan, looked like a river. The Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, known officially as the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel in memory of a former governor, flooded hours after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York ordered it closed to traffic.

The US Coastguard said Claudene Christian, a sailor from the HMS Bounty, a replica of the historic ship, was found dead after it sank off the coast of North Carolina. Fourteen crew members were rescued, but the captain, Robin Walbridge, was still missing. Dubbed “the Frankenstorm” because of her hybrid, monster nature, Sandy killed 67 people in the Caribbean last week.

 High winds and rising flood waters battered the Atlantic coast from the Carolinas to Maine. The façade of a building collapsed in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, and much of West 57th street had to be evacuated because a construction crane dangled precariously over the street.

  Cars were under water in Atlantic City, where part of the fabled boardwalk was torn up by the storm on the northern coast of Long Island, 94 mph winds were recorded.

In the same area, water surged 12.4 feet above its normal level. Nine eastern US states have declared a state of emergency.

Sixty million people, or almost 20 per cent of the US population, live in the path of the storm.

As the storm approached the Atlantic seaboard, some Americans tempted fate. Gamblers squeezed in a few more games of blackjack in Atlantic City casinos before Governor Chris Christie shut them down on Sunday night.

  Thrill-seekers walked on a jetty in the Rockaways section of Queens.

At least one surfer flew from California to New Jersey to ride the waves as the storm hit. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said police had to arrest surfers.

In the hours before the storm, shoppers hoarded tinned food, bottled water, candles, torches and batteries, and filled their bathtubs. Electrical generators sold out. Petrol stations in Connecticut ran out of fuel during the exodus from New York.

Shopkeepers and restaurateurs took out plywood sheets they’d used to protect their businesses from Hurricane Irene last year. They used black spray paint to cross out “Irene,” so the graffiti now reads “Go Away Sandy” and “Be kind to us Sandy”.

Just one week before the presidential election, neither Mitt Romney nor Barack Obama wants to appear to exploit the hurricane for political advantage. Both men called off campaign events yesterday and today. “The election will take care of itself next week,” Mr Obama said.

Mr. Obama dispatched the former president Bill Clinton to campaign for him in Minnesota and Colorado.

In Virginia, where two former governors are embroiled in a race for the US Senate, both candidates asked supporters to take down yard signs. “The last thing we want is for yard signs to become projectiles,” the Democratic candidate Tim Kaine said in an email.

In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg once more urged residents to stay indoors. “This is a storm that could easily kill you,” he said.

The mayor’s office has advised almost 400,000 people to evacuate the city, and shelters have already accepted 3,000 residents affected by the hurricane.

A spokeswoman for the NYC Department of Education said that 76 public school buildings are being used as evacuation centres across the city.

High Intake of Omega-3 Enhances Working memory and body functions

     

Omega-3 fatty acids have now and then been linked by studies with boosting memories. A recent study has suggested that higher the intake of these fatty acids, the more one can enhance their working memory and also can improve their body functioning.

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have asserted that young adults aged between 18 and 25 can attain the benefits of Omega-3 essential fatty acids by increasing the intake of foods rich in it, including fish and grass-fed livestock.

The study led by Rajesh Narendarn, project principal investigator and associate professor of radiology, included healthy young women and men and provided them with supplements, Lovaza, for six months to increase their omega-3 fatty acid consumption.

Prior to providing the supplements, positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and blood test of each of the participant was carried out.

Further, the participants were asked to undergo a working memory test, during which they were shown letters and numbers. The participants were to memorize the sequence of the series.

After six months of intake of supplement, the young adults were requested to complete the series again. Narendarn said, “Diets enriched with Omega-3 fatty acid can enhance cognition. It was a bit disappointing that our imaging studies were unable to clarify the mechanisms by which it enhances working memory”.

‘Smoking will kill up to a billion people this century’

  

Smoking, which is described as the biggest public health disaster in the history of the world with its perpetrators likened to terrorists, will kill up to a billion people worldwide this century unless governments across the world stamp down on the half-trillion-dollar tobacco industry, cancer experts have warned.

John Seffrin, chief executive of the American Cancer Society, issued this warning while speaking at a high-level forum of the world’s 100 leading cancer experts gathered in the Swiss resort of Lugano.

They said governments must do far more than they have done to control the global tobacco industry, either by raising cigarette prices dramatically, outlawing tobacco marketing or by taxing the multinational profits of the big cigarette firms.

European countries need to raise cigarette prices significantly because this is the one proven method of reducing consumption, Sir Richard said. They should adopt a “triple-half-double” strategy, which was tried in France in the 1990s, when cigarette prices were tripled, consumption halved and the tobacco tax revenues to the French government doubled.

  According to scientists, smoking kills more than half of all smokers, mostly from cancer, and yet despite it being the single biggest avoidable risk of premature death, there are about 30 million new smokers a year.

They said that if the current trends continue – with cigarette companies targeting the non-smoking populations of the developing world – then hundreds of millions of people will be dying of cancer in the second half of this century.

Some of the experts attending the World Oncology Forum went further by calling for an outright ban on cigarettes and for the tobacco industry to be treated as a terrorist movement for the way it targets new markets with a product that it knows to be deadly when used as intended.

“We have a major global industry producing a product that is lethal to at least half the people who use it. It will kill, if current trends continue, a billion people this century,” the Independentquoted Dr Seffrin as saying.

“It killed 100 million in the last century and we thought that was outrageous, but this will be the biggest public health disaster in the history of the world, bar none. It all could be avoided if we could prevent the terroristic tactics of the tobacco industry in marketing its products to children.

“There is a purposeful intent to market a product that they know full well will harm their customers and over time will kill more than half of them. The industry needs to be reined in and regulated,” he said.

Worldwide, tobacco causes about 22 percent of cancer deaths each year, killing some 1.7 million people, with almost 1 million of them dying from lung cancer. Yet the numbers of new smokers among the young is rising faster than the numbers giving up.

 Healthy Lungs vs Smokers Lungs.  The latest study into the health effects of smoking, which was published in The Lancet and involved 1.3 million women, showed that tobacco is even more dangerous than previously supposed but the benefits of giving up smoking are greater than expected.

Sir Richard Peto of Oxford University, a co-author of the Million Women study who worked closely with Sir Richard Doll, is also the scientist who first calculated how many people this century will die from tobacco-induced cancers.

“We have about 30 million new smokers a year in the world. On present patterns, most of them are not going to stop, and if they don’t stop, and if half of them die from it, then that means more than 10 million a year will die – that’s 100 million a decade in the second half of the century,” Professor Peto said.

“So this century we’re going to see something like a billion deaths from smoking if we carry on as we are. In Europe we have about 1.3 million premature deaths per year now, of which about 0.3 million are deaths by tobacco. There’s nothing else as big as that.

“If you put all causes together, you wouldn’t get a total that’s half of that caused by tobacco, and tobacco kills more people by cancer than other diseases. Smoking is still the most important cause of cancer… If you smoke a few cigarettes a day, it will be the most dangerous thing you do,” he added.

Irish retail sales post first annual rise this year

      

Irish retail sales volumes posted their first growth this year on an annualised basis, climbing 1.4 percent in September from a year earlier after eight months of contraction, government figures showed on Friday. Volumes were 0.9 percent higher in September than in August, their largest monthly rise since July, data from the Central Statistics office showed.

The statistics office confirmed provisional data that retail volumes climbed 0.4 percent in August. Sales volumes fell 0.7 percent in the year to August, compared to a fall of 0.6 percent indicated in provisional figures last month. Economists expect retail sales to fall 2.3 percent this year, according to the latest Reuters poll.

Just how are our Dail ministers & TD’s’ pensions worked out?

 

A TD who has also served at least two years as a minister receives a pension based on service as a TD plus a separate pension based on service as a minister, which are calculated on different criteria. The two sums are then added

1 Working out a TD’s pension entitlement.

To work out a TD’s basic pension you divide his or her salary by 40 and then multiply it by the number of years they’ve served in the Dáil. A cap of 20 years service applies.

If we take a TD with 20 years’ service, whose salary is €92,672, then to calculate that TD’s pension entitlement, we divide the salary by 40 and multiply it by 20, which means the TD is entitled to a €46,336 a year pension once they reach retirement age. TDs are also entitled to a one-off pension lump sum of three times their pension. So, in this example, the TD would receive three times €46,336 – a lump sum of €139,008

On top of this, TDs who have served more than six months in the Oireachtas are also entitled to a termination lump sum equal to two months’ salary (€15,445).

If TDs have served for longer than three years they are also entitled to up to 12 monthly payments based on their length of service (for a TD the maximum payment total over 12 months is €57,920). Only after these payments end do they receive their pension proper.

2 Working out the pension of a minister.

A number of positions attract a pension entitlement over and above that earned by a TD or senator. These positions are taoiseach, tánaiste, minister, attorney general and ceann comhairle (called “ministerial” offices for pension purposes) and minister of state, leas cheann comhairle, cathaoirleach, leas-chathaoirleach and leader of the Seanad (called “secretarial” posts for pension purposes).

To receive this pension entitlement you have to have served for at least two years in one of these offices. The pension is then worked out as a percentage of the office holder’s salary. After two years a retiring minister is entitled to a pension equal to 20 per cent of his or her salary. After three years this becomes 25 per cent, four years 30 per cent, and five years 35 per cent.

The maximum entitlement is 60 per cent after 10 years’ service. Service as a minister of state is reckonable for ministerial pension calculations, with half the service accrued being counted for pension purposes.

If you are entitled to receive a “ministerial” pension but previously served in a “secretarial” post then half the time you spent in the latter post is reckonable at the “ministerial” rate.

So a minister with the standard salary of €76,603 (this excludes the €92,672 they earn as a TD) and a maximum 10 years’ “ministerial” service would be entitled to 60 per cent of €76,603, making for a “ministerial” pension of €45,962.

3 Working out an office-holder’s long-term pension projection (ie how much the annuities would cost in the private sector).

Add together the pension entitlements reached in steps 1 and 2 above. So a senior minister who has served 20 years or more would be entitled to €46,336 (their TD pension) plus €45,962 (their “ministerial” pension), making a total pension entitlement of €92,298.

This sum is then entered into a pension calculator using an inflation cap of 3 per cent.

4 Working out an office-holder’s long-term pension projection (ie how much the annuities would cost in the private sector) in cases where the TD is not yet the requisite age to receive a pension.

In the case of office holders who would not yet be entitled to a pension, you use a further calculation to work out the annuity cost.

You first calculate how much the pension would cost in the private sector (as per steps 1, 2 and 3 above).

The resulting figure is then divided by 1.02 (where 1.02 represents a 3 per cent inflation cap and a 5 per cent return on investment – a net 2 per cent).

This figure (which we will call x) is put to the power of the number of years until the minister reaches retirement age.

(So if a minister has seven years before he/she reaches retirement age, the calculation is x to the power of 7.)

THE SMALL PRINT

All calculations (both here and in the accompanying table) are estimations based on Oireachtas/government guidelines and are based on “new scheme” pension arrangements that have been in place since 1993. Lengths of service were based on information on the Oireachtas website.

Those entitled to “ministerial” or “secretarial” pensions can either take their pension straight away or avail of a ministerial lump sum and a ministerial severance payment (payable for up to two years) – but they cannot draw down both at once.

All TDs elected after April 1st, 2004, cannot receive a pension or pension lump sum until they reach 65 years of age unless they served in a public service body prior to April 1st, 2004.

Those who served in the Dáil prior to this date are not entitled to a full pension until they reach the age of 50 (although they may receive a reduced pension and pension lump sum at any time between the ages of 45 and 49).

In calculating an officeholder’s long-term pension projection, spouses were included in the calculation where the officeholder is married. On the death of a former officeholder, his/her spouse is eligible for 50 per cent of the pension.

For the purposes of calculating an officeholder’s long-term pension projection, where he or she was married, wives were assumed to be two years younger than their husbands while husbands were assumed to be two years older than their wives.

Since May 1st, 2009, public servants’ remuneration is subject to the following annual pension-related deductions: up to €15,000 – exempt; between €15,000 and €20,000 – 5 per cent; between €20,000 and €60,000 – 10 per cent; above €60,000 – 10.5 per cent.

Is it any wonder we are gone bust in this wee country of ours?

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Some one in eight of Ireland’s super-rich are tax exiles, reveals Irish revenue

  

Almost one-in-eight 12.5% of Ireland’s richest people like Denis O’Brien and Michael Smurfit are are tax exiles, according to the Revenue Commissioners.

Of the 450 “high wealth” individuals, 54 are resident abroad for tax purposes.

This is the first time the tax authorities have released figures relating to how many Irish tax exiles are in the super-rich league.

Revenue said that last year its “high wealth” section dealt with 450 individuals who have net assets worth more than €50m and non-residents with “substantial economic interests” in Ireland.

It said the “number of non-resident individuals that are considered by Revenue to be high-wealth individuals is currently 54″.

Membership of the “54″ club is confidential. But some of Ireland’s biggest business figures are known to have moved their bases to generous foreign tax shelters. This means they only have to pay tax on Irish earnings and not on their worldwide income.

Denis O’Brien, the telecoms entrepreneur and significant stakeholder in Independent News & Media (INM), is tax resident in Malta. Dermot Desmond, the founder of NCB stockbrokers and another shareholder in INM, is tax resident in Gibraltar.

Michael Smurfit, the paper packaging tycoon, has moved toMonaco while the racehorse magnates JP McManus and John Magnier are both tax resident in Switzerland. The supergroup U2 moved part of their business from Ireland to Holland after the Government capped the tax exemption scheme for artists.

In contrast, Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive whose wealth is estimated at €438m by rich lists, famously said he is happy to pay his taxes here.

While the official number of “tax exiles” is 10,781, some are people who moved abroad, rent their homes and pay tax here on the rental income. Others are foreigners working for multinationals here, or who have investments here.

Collectively they generated €49m in tax last year although it’s not clear how much the super-rich club of 54 contributed.

The issue of tax exiles has riled the taxpaying public, according to recent research by theLabour Party which showed that tax exiles were one of the main issues exercising voters. The Government plans to examine the issue of tax exiles in the Budget, with Labour pressing to tighten up the residency rules.

To qualify as “non-resident”, they must spend less than 183 days a year in Ireland, or 280 days over two years.

Michael Noonan, the Finance Minister, has been lobbied by business interests claiming that any attempt to tighten tax exile rules would scare off investors. A “domicile levy” of €200,000 imposed on wealthy Irish citizens living abroad for tax purposes raised just €1.6m in 2010.

Gerald Nash, a Labour TD for Louth, said: “While it is a fact that Ireland now has a taxation system that is considered by international standards to be among the fairest in the world, the system at the higher end needs to be radically altered to ensure that exacting standards are applied to so-called tax exiles in terms of their treatment for tax purposes.”

Call’s for Government septic tank repair grants

  

The Irish GOVERNMENT has been urged to introduce a grant scheme covering the entire cost of septic tank repairs, following the introduction of the septic tank inspection scheme earlier this year.

The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers’ Association (ICSA) made the call in its pre-budget submission published yesterday.

ICSA president Gabriel Gilmartin said rural dwellers must be treated equally with their urban counterparts “and this is the only way that can be achieved”.

The submission points out that all urban households have full sewage disposal costs covered “and recent evidence suggests that the cost per house in urban housing developments is actually more than the potential cost of a 100 per cent grant for rural households to upgrade septic tanks”.

Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan opened the septic tank registration scheme in June. A reduced €5 registration fee was available until the end of September but fewer than 40 per cent of septic tank owners availed of the lower rate. The fee is now €50.

The ICSA submission also called for a tougher stance on public sector pay and allowances.

Mr Gilmartin said the Government had a stated policy of expenditure cuts rather than tax increases to meet fiscal targets but this was being curbed by the Croke Park agreement.

“The focus on reducing staff numbers rather than pay is hindering any real progress,” he said.

“The refusal to target increments and failure to make savings on allowances means that a disproportionately high number of cuts are made to vital schemes, frontline services and capital investment.”

The farm organisation has also urged that farm schemes be protected from cuts. “For example, the Disadvantaged Area Scheme, which is vital for many livestock farmers, has taken a cut of more than 25 per cent over recent budgets,” Mr Gilmartin said.

Mayo Council 1^st county to begin court proceedings over household charge

      

Sinn Féin has criticised Mayo County Council for becoming the first local authority in the country to begin issuing court summonses to people who have not paid the household charge.

It is understood about one in four homeowners in Mayo have failed to pay the charge.

Sinn Féin’s environment and local government spokesperson Brian Stanley has condemned Mayo County Council for its actions, describing them as “bully boy tactics”.

A number of court dates have been set for the coming weeks for those who have failed to pay the €100 charge and Deputy Stanley is urging Mayo County Council to withdraw the summons immediately.

It is estimated around 500,000 people around the country have yet to pay this controversial tax, which is a predecessor to the property tax which is expected to be introduced next July.

New marine team to protect Irish coastal waters

  

A new marine division has been created to deliver policy and legislation to promote, protect and sustain coastal waters.

Environment Minister Alex Attwood revealed his department will run the dedicated unit, which will also be responsible for implementing national, European and international laws.

Mr Attwood said coastal waters play a massive role in the lives of the people of Northern Ireland.

“The wealth of its resources, the splendour of its biodiversity, the simple fact of it being a huge natural resource to be enjoyed, means it is vital that we concentrate our efforts to protect and sustain it,” he said. “Therefore we need to make sure we are managing it properly.”

Mr Attwood is calling on his colleagues in Stormont to back his plan to bring all marine functions across government departments into an independent marine management organisation.

“This new marine division is an important step towards developing fully integrated marine management across government,” he added.

“It sends out the message we will strongly protect the marine, look for sustainable development and ensure the marine interest punches to its weight in government.”

Protecting the ash trees of Ireland

   

As we enter the season for planting trees, it is timely to note that the presence of a “new” fungal disease, ash dieback (Chalara fraxinea), has been widely reported in the last few weeks.

Outbreaks have been detected across Britain and, unfortunately, in Ireland.  The response of the relevant European authorities to this disease has been very ineffective. Since the discovery in Poland in 1992, ash dieback has devastated Europe’s forests, killing 90 per cent of ash trees in Denmark alone.

Strangely, given the fact that Department of Agriculture officials assure me they have been monitoring the disease’s progress, limits on the importation of saplings have still not been imposed.

The “voluntary moratorium” that Ireland’s plant suppliers have been asked to respect is not enough, especially as Coillte’s decision to stop selling trees to the public has accelerated demand for imports in the last few years.Urgent action is required if we are not to lose our native ash trees to a preventable, imported disease.

Dual imaging modalities can detect breast cancer at early stages

   

The diagnostic accuracy of breast cancerat early stages can be enhanced by adapting to dual imaging modalities, said senior radiologist Arjan Bhatia, head of radiology unit at AIMS Hospital in Aundh. October is observed as breast cancer awareness month.

Most of us know that mammography remains the gold standard for screening women in general population, however it has limitation in dense breast and cancer can be hidden in some cases.

The recent research by American association for cancer research revealed that women with a breast density of 75% were 4-5 times more likely to develop breast cancer then women with little or no density, said Bhatia whose many research articles have found place in various prestigious medical journals.

Elaborating, Bhatia said, Mammography has limitation for dense breast and also cysts and solid tumor can t be defiantly differentiated by mammography. The America Cancer Society (ACS) has recently updated their breast screening guidelines by recommending an overlapping approach for high risk patients using dual modalities.

Breast cancer is the common cancer that affect women, however men can develop breast cancer as well. “Besides ultrasound and mammography, new imaging techniques have evolved which have proven to be of great importance for female having dense breast,” Bhatia said.

Among the new imaging techniques which are found most useful for breast cancer detection are digital mammography and breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Breast MRI is recommended for screening high risk women as it further defines the tumor mass and shape. It cannot be performed in females who are claustrophobic or in those who have metal implants,

Bhatia said, adding, “Nuclear breast imaging is a genetic term than that covers many different form of nuclear medicine like Positrons Emission Mammography(PEM), breast specific gamma images (BSGI), Molecular Breast Images (MBI) scan. These techniques are based on gamma camera.”