Ireland to Canada visa access to widen to 6,350 and for two years
Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore and Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney sign a revised memorandum of understanding relating to working holiday visas.
The number of Canadian working holiday visas available to young Irish people is to be doubled and the length of stay extended from one year to two under a new agreement announced today.
A total of 6,350 visas will be available in 2013, up from 5,350 this year. This will rise to 10,700 in 2014.
The agreement was signed by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore and the Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney in Dublin this afternoon.
The quota of International Experience Canada (IEC) visas, which allow people aged 18 to 35 to work legally in the country for up to 12 months, was filled by 30th May this year, three months earlier than the quota of 5,000 was filled in 2011.
The number of Canadian working holiday visas issued to Irish passport holders has increased dramatically in the last two years, up from 4,229 in 2010 and 2,500 in 2009.
Mr Kenney said he hoped the expanded visa programme would help to meet the increasing demand for Canadian visas among Irish people looking to work abroad.
“Canada is facing significant labour shortages,” he said.
“We know young Irish men and women to phenomenonly well. They are welcome by the vibrant Irish community in Canada. There are tremendous economic opportunities, they can come and make very good money, send some of that home, and come back.”
Mr Kenney said the extension of the work permit period to two years would enable Irish people to find better jobs that suited their skill levels, by reassuring employers that workers would be in the country for a longer period of time.
Mr Gilmore said it was the Government’s “primary priority” to create jobs and an economic climate in Ireland that would allow emigrants to return, but that the visa programme was “not just about short-term emigration”.
“Canada is one of the biggest investors in Ireland and Irish companies now employ 60,000 people in Canada,” he said.
“This new generation working holiday programme will continue to facilitate economic ties betweeen Ireland and Canada.”
Mr Kenney will attend the Working Abroad Expo in the RDS this weekend to support a number of Canadian companies who are in Ireland to recruit skilled workers.
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) will be allowed to buy Irish banks
The ESM rescue fund will be allowed to buy Ireland’s banks, allowing the State to recoup some of the money pumped into them.
However, taxpayers will continue to be liable for unforeseen bank debts for a period of years afterwards.
This is according to plans being drawn up to allow the ESM to directly recapitalise banks — the details of which are hotly contested by the German, Dutch, and Finnish governments, and which will be discussed by eurozone finance ministers meeting on Monday.
The Government is waiting to see how Ireland can benefit from the arrangements to reduce debt before it proceeds with arrangements to reduce the impact of the €31bn Anglo Irish Bank promissory notes, according to EU officials.
Intense talks on what the ESM can and cannot do have been under way in Brussels for the past few days between representatives of the finance ministries of the member states, while in Luxembourg 60 staff are ready to transfer to the new ESM institution when it officially launches on Monday.
A statement from the finance ministers of Germany, the Netherlands, and Finland last week caused uproar when they appeared to suggest that the €500bn fund would not deal with legacy assets of troubled banks, but only debts incurred once the ECB takes over supervision of the eurozone’s banks.
While Irish bank debt has been taken over by the State at a cost of about €32bn, much of it from the pension reserve fund, the Government hopes to sell its 95% stake in AIB and its stake in Bank of Ireland.
However, it is likely to receive only the current value of the shareholding, likely to be no more than €8bn. The ESM’s shares will be senior, making the rest of the shares in the banks less attractive to investors.
The revelation that any unforeseen debt which arises for a specified period after the purchase would have to be picked up by the taxpayer, could make it less attractive to member states.
The plan for the ESM does not in effect break the link between the banks and the sovereign, but this may be the compromise the Germans will insist on for agreeing to the ESM dealing with legacy assets.
Decisions on taking over legacy assets or individual banks will be made on a bank by bank basis, the EU officials said. It could even cover bad banks, but only to the value of its good assets.
While the figures for any specific transaction will be important in reaching a decision on bailing out a bank, for which agreement of all EU states is required, the final decision will be a political one, officials say.
Plans for the ECB to take over the role of banking supervisor are proceeding but will not be ready by January and consequently the ESM will not be in a position to invest directly in banks before that happens.
Spain has not asked for a bailout and if it were to come, it is not imminent, said an official, adding that Spain was a long way away from being a concern. The markets had confidence in the country, he added.
“We need to remember that Spain has a thriving, world-class export sector.”
The measures being put forward by Spain on budget adjustment and implementing recommendations appeared to fulfil the necessary requirements, but given the economic circumstances, the budget target will not be easy to achieve, he said.
Talks were under way to allow the ESM the same flexibility as the EFSF in terms of lending to countries that do not need a bailout but are experiencing turbulence on the markets.
This will include guaranteeing up to 30% of bonds issued by the country — in effect the EU taxpayer would take the first loss for investors if a country found itself in a credit event.
Talks were under way between the troika and Greece about the adjustments they need to make and the next tranche of funding will not be paid out for at least the next few weeks.
It will receive the €900m which it must contribute to the ESM fund by way of a loan which would be added to its debt.
Ireland could make a similar arrangement if it wished for the €1.27bn it must pay in over the next three years, the official confirmed.
What's this all about?
As Taoiseach Enda Kenny makes the cover of Time magazine
The Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny has become the first Irish leader since Sean Lemass to make the cover of Time magazine.
Even the colour of the famous “Time” red logo was changed to green on the front cover, which contains the headline “The Celtic Comeback” alongside Mr Kenny’s photo.
He gave an interview to the international weekly news magazine for its European edition in Government Buildings, which said he was “leading Ireland’s fight to recover from the bust”.
And it said that with Ireland’s Gross Domestic Product beginning to sneak upward once again, Mr Kenny may prove himself anything but the “fool” that his predecessor (then taoiseachBrian Cowen) called him in 2010.
Mr Kenny is following the footsteps of former taoiseach Sean Lemass. The late Fianna Failleader was put on the cover of Time Magazinein July 1963 behind an illustration of factory buildings to symbolise the new industrial development in Ireland. The cover also featured an Irish leprechaun.
Mr Kenny was asked by Time magazine why there had been no large-scale demonstrations in Ireland against cutbacks as there had been in other European countries.
“People understand that you have to do difficult things to sort out our own public finances,” he said.
And Mr Kenny was also quizzed about what motivated him in his political career.
“I’ve no interest in looking for credit or thanks. Providing a prosperous future for all our people, that’s what drives me,” he said.
Time’s Europe editor Catherine Mayer was complimentary about Mr Kenny in her article and her own question-and-answer article afterwards. She wrote that “if words were money, Kenny could have easily cleared the national debt since coming to power in February 2011”.
And she said that Mr Kenny was “extremely likable”.
“What I was really trying to see was what was behind that likability. In small groups he is much more fluent and compelling than he would appear to be were you to judge him from his big media set pieces. When cameras train on him he seems to freeze up, which is an interesting problem for somebody in that position. But when he’s relaxed he’s interesting and has a lot to say,” she said.
Time Magazine has a circulation of 3.3m in the USA and has been described as the most influential mainstream magazine for political coverage in the country.
Australia launches colossal radio telescope to study the origins of our universe
In the remote Australian outback, scientists launch the world’s fastest radio telescope which will exponentially increase astronomers’ ability to survey the universe, mapping black holes and shedding new light on the origins of galaxies.
The Australia Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (Askap), with an array of 36 antennas each 40 feet across, started peering into the universe on Friday from a far-flung cattle station in Western Australia state.
The A$152 million (£96m) telescope will “listen” to radio waves from the cosmos that might give astronomers insights into the beginnings of the universe.
The Askap telescope is located in the Shire of Murchison, an area of 19,300 square miles, or the size of Costa Rica, with barely 120 people. The location is ideal because it is “radio quiet”, or lacks man-made radio signals that would interfere with the antennas picking up astronomical radio signals.
Using new “radio cameras” called phased array feeds, the telescope will be able scan the sky much more rapidly than existing radio telescopes and will give the telescope a field of view about 150 times the area of the full Moon.
Askap is also the first building block in the world’s largest telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) which will be based in both Australia and South Africa.
Construction of the SKA will begin in 2016 and Australia will add another 60 antennas to its current 36 as part of the project.
The ability of the Askap telescope to scan so much of the universe will generate immense amounts of data.
On its first day in full operation, Askap will collect more data than is currently contained in all current radio astronomy archives or the US Library of Congress.
Using existing radio telescopes, an image of Centaurus A, the closest galaxy to earth with a black hole, would have required some 400 images, two years of observation, and 10,000 hours of computer time. The Askap will take a mere two images and five minutes of observation and computer time.
“The thing that is most telling for me is we have not yet built a computer that can cope with the data we will generate. We are going to have to design and build a super computer way beyond the super computers we have now, way beyond that capability to deal with the amount of data,” said Australia’s Science Minister Chris Evans at the official switch on ceremony.
Askap is already fully booked for the next five years with scientists from all over the world using it for research.
Some of the first areas of enquiry will include a census of all galaxies within two billion light years, which may shed light on how the Milky Way was formed.
Another research project will look for black holes, which astronomers think may be the seeds of galaxies.
New DNA study on Viking legacy in Galway to be examined
Vikings may be more commonly associated with the “rape and pillage” reputation they have acquired over the years but a new DNA study is set to examine their long term impact on Galway.
A team of scientists from the Mary Immaculate College in Limerick and the University of Leiceister are looking for specific Galway families to undergo DNA tests in order to discover the genetic and social legacy of the Vikings in the area. The project is looking for volunteers aged 18 or over from a list of established Galway surnames to undergo DNA testing in Kelly’s Bar in Galway on October 21.
The study will reveal whether Galway’s medieval families are genetically linked to Normans or to Vikings, and it will investigate the extent to which the Vikings intermarried with the native population. One of the reasons for choosing people with traditional Galway surnames for the test is the extent to which internal migration has affected the Irish population in recent centuries.
Dr Catherine Swift of Mary Immaculate College revealed that they chose a selection of roughly 80 Galway families using medieval records and documents to try and find people with long term links to the city.
“If they have a surname like Fahey, Kelly or Broderick – these are all Galway names and so if they have been there for three generations or more you are pretty sure that they are from Galway.”
The DNA testing involves a simple cheek swab and volunteers will subsequently receive a free sample of their Y Chromosome results, which are normally quite expensive to obtain. Y Chromosomes are transferred through the male side, as is the familial name, which is why the volunteers must be male.
“Surnames are generally passed down from father to son and so is the Y Chromosome. The hope is that in the Irish context you can do the DNA and the historical investigation. The Irish records from the medieval period are far better than they are in other parts of Europe and the Irish had a particular interest in genealogy as well. That makes Ireland ideal for this project.
“A lot of archaeologists are saying that there were Vikings up and down the west coast. So there is a big question. Just because we don’t have a record of Vikings in Galway doesn’t mean they weren’t here.”
The information gathered in the study will be treated with the strictest confidence and any published information will remain anonymous.
Among the surnames eligible for the test are Broderick, Browne, Burke, Carr, Casey, Clancy, Collins, Donnellan, Lally, Lee, Moran, Morris, Murray, Naughton,, O’Flaherty, Regan, Tighe, Tully and Walsh.
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