Allied Irish Banks are closing 44 branches in Ireland today
AIB is closing 44 of its branches across the country today, in a bid to reduce costs.
AIB is closing 44 of its branches across the country today, in a bid to reduce costs after reporting a loss of €1.1 billion for the first half of the year.
The State-controlled bank aims to shut one in four of its branches as part of efforts to return to profitability by 2014.
The branches being closed typically carried out about 20 per cent of the volume of transactions at other branches, according to AIB chief executive David Duffy.
The closures will not lead to compulsory redundancies, the bank said, and EBS branches will not be affected by the move.
The same services will be on offer to customers of closed branches at 90 post offices through the extension of an existing arrangement with An Post. An Post’s arrangement with AIB dates back a decade.
Customers will be able to make cash and cheque lodgements, withdraw cash and make credit card payments with the An Post service.
All customer account numbers, cheque books, direct debits, standing orders, ATM and debit cards and any credit facilities will not be affected by the closures.
Branches in Rush, Schull, Tarbert, Moate, Waterville, Thomastown, Baylldehob, Cootehill and Dunboyne are among the branches that will be shut today.
Branches in Kilkee, Buttevant, Corbally, Dunshaughlin, Glin and Innishannon will also be closed.
The move is part of an overall plan to close a total of 67 outlets by next year. AIB said the mass closure and amalgamation of some branches followed a review of services and was a bid to return the bank to viability.
Head of branch banking Denis O’Callaghan said many outlets had seen a decline in customer visits.
“We have seen a very significant change in the way our customers wish to do their banking,” said Mr O’Callaghan. “As a result of this, many of our branches have seen a large decline in customer visits.
“Notwithstanding this, branches will remain an important part of AIB’s overall distribution strategy and will be complemented by an enhanced online service.”
To coincide with the closures, AIB launched a community mobile bank service in 32 locations across Ulster, Munster and Connacht.
Earlier this year, the bank announced plans to lay off 2,500 workers by the end of 2013 in a bid to save €170 million a year.
Irish Economy: Retail sales volume increased by 0.9% for September 2012
Irish Economy: The Central Statistics Office reported today that the volume of Irish retail sales (i.e. excluding price effects) increased by 0.9% in September 2012 when compared with August 2012 while there was an annual increase of 1.4%. If Motor Trades are excluded, the volume of retail sales increased by 0.6% in September 2012 when compared with August 2012 and there was an annual increase of 1.4%.
The sectors with the largest month on month volume increases are Bars (4.5%) and Electrical Goods (2.8%) and Department Stores (2.6%). The largest monthly decreases were seen in Books, Newspapers & Stationery (-10.7%), Fuel (-1.8%) and Food, Beverages & Tobacco – specialised stores (-1.5%).
The value of retail sales increased by 0.9% in September 2012 when compared with August 2012 and there was an annual increase of 2.2%. If Motor Trades are excluded, there was a monthly increase of 0.5% in the value of retail sales and an annual increase of 2.2%.
David McNamara of Davy commented:
In Q3 overall, sales volumes have risen by 1.3% on Q2 and are flat on Q2 2012. Excluding motor trades, volumes are up 0.8% quarter-on-quarter and 0.5% yoy. This represents the first quarterly rise since Q4 2011.
Stabilisation in sales in Q3 an encouraging sign
- Retail sales plummeted in H1 following the temporary bounce in Q4 2011 as consumers brought forward spending in response to the VAT rise;
- But the recovery in sales in Q3 brings the index back to mid-2011 levels;
- The big gains in Q3 have come in bar sales (+2.9%), electrical goods (+1.1%) and department stores (+3.6%), which collectively account for 17.4% of total sales;
- Yoy, bar sales are still down 3.4% in Q3, but electrical goods are up a massive 12.7% due to the digital switchover, and department stores are up 2.4%
New study identifies pancreatic cancer genes
Scientists have identified a set of mutated genes responsible for pancreatic cancer, a finding that could lead to early detection and better treatment of the disease.
Pancreatic cancer is highly aggressive and has the highest death rate of the major cancerous diseases, with patients normally dying within months of diagnosis.
Professor Andrew Biankin of the Kinghorn Cancer Centre at the Garvin Institute in Sydney, co- author of a study appearing in the journal Nature, says treating pancreatic cancer is a race against time.
“Normally what happens when you start chemotherapy for a particular cancer … is you have a standard [treatment] … that might work in about 20 per cent,” says Biankin.
“If that doesn’t work, three months later you’d try something else.”
“But unfortunately with pancreatic cancer you pretty much only get one bite of the cherry.”
“If you get it wrong the first time then basically most patients don’t live long enough to get the next chance of chemotherapy.”
Biankin, along with Professor Sean Grimmond of the Institute for Molecular Bioscience at the University of Queensland, led an Australian team of researchers that sequenced the genomes of 100 pancreatic tumours and compared them to normal tissue to determine the genetic changes that lead to this cancer.
“We found over 2000 mutated genes in total … which was mutated in about 90 per cent of samples, and hundreds of gene mutations that were only present in 1 or 2 per cent of tumours,” says Grimmond.
“This demonstrates that so-called ‘pancreatic cancer’ is not one disease, but many, and suggests that people who seemingly have the same cancer might need to be treated quite differently.”
‘PERSONALISED MEDICINE’ : BIANKIN SAYS THE FINDINGS HIGHLIGHT THE BENEFIT OF PERSONALISED MEDICINE IN TREATING PANCREATIC CANCER, IN WHICH THE MOLECULAR PROFILE OF A PATIENT IS MATCHED TO THE BEST TREATMENT.
“The idea is that you don’t want to give drugs to patients that aren’t going to respond because it’s probably toxic and it’s expensive,” he says.
“[Instead] you try and match the right drug to the right patient.”
Biankin says genetic sequencing of the DNA of tumours and patients will go into global database known as the International Cancer Genome Consortium.
This will assist researchers in comparing the success and failure of drug treatments and other therapies.
Irish Families fear not being able to feed their children
The harsh realities for thousands of families struggling with austerity have been revealed by charity St Vincent de Paul.
There is a family in rural Ireland where the mother moves tinned food from the cupboard to the fridge in a vain effort to make it look full for her three children.
When her husband lost his low-paying job last year, the family also lost the Family Income Supplement.
Each day, her main worry is whether her family will have enough to eat. The woman has “aged 10 years” from the constant financial stress but she is even more fearful for her husband’s state of mind and is genuinely afraid he will “end up in the river”.
This is a genuine “live” case study — one of 13 anonymous families in Ireland who represent the “Human Face of Austerity” highlighted by St Vincent de Paul.
Money
But there are thousands more just like them, the society warned at the launch of its pre-Budget submission to the Government.
Among the cases brought to light by SVP volunteers was “Sharon” — a lone mother of three children, whose family home boasts a solid fuel stove, but they have no money to pay for briquettes or coal.
She was receiving maintenance of €50 a week from her ex-partner until his work hours were reduced and these payments stopped. She has a loan of more than €7,000 with the credit union, which was taken to meet the costs of a family funeral and Christmas expenses.
Sharon cannot afford to pay this and the Credit Union is bringing a court action. She owes €700 in electricity bills, €90 for the school book rental scheme and pays €75 to a moneylender each week.
Recently, their electricity supplier issued them with a disconnection notice.
SVP President Geoff Meagher said the reality was that a lot of people were struggling with the basics like food and heating, “things that are normal for every family on a day-to-day basis”.
He urged the Government to take “every opportunity” in the Budget to ensure that those who could afford it must shoulder a greater share of the burden.
Early humans ‘climbed trees 3m years ago’
Early human ancestors were still climbing trees three million years ago, according to a new study which contradicts previous assumptions that they spent most of their lives on the ground.
Fossilised shoulder bones from a forerunner of humans known asAustralopithecus afarensis, the species of the famous “Lucy” skeleton, suggest that their bodies were shaped by a life spent clinging on to branches with their hands.
From the shape of the species’ feet it has long been clear that they could walk on two legs, but experts have been unable to prove whether, like their contemporary apelike species, they also spent part of their lives in trees.
A study published last year claimed that A. afarensis’s foot structure was ill-suited to grasping branches and showed that by this stage in human evolution, our ancestors had already abandoned climbing behaviour.
But the new research, by experts from the California Academy of Sciences and Midwestern University, suggests that the transition from trees to a permanent life on solid ground occurred later than previously thought.
A. afarensis, best known for the partial skeleton “Lucy” which was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, is seen as the best candidate for a forerunner of humans living between three and four million years ago.
Lucy and her relatives had permanent arches in their feet, which enabled them to stand and walk upright but would have prevented them from using their big toes to grip onto branches.
But the new study, published in the Science journal, reveals that the species also had shoulder blades which grew in a shape closer to modern apes than humans, suggesting that they still used their upper limbs for balancing and climbing.
Analysis of a 3.3 million-year-old juvenile A. afarensis skeleton known as Selam, discovered in Ethiopia in 2000, showed that it had the same distinctive upward-pointing shoulder joints as adult Australopithecus and modern apes, which are not shared by humans.
The young specimen’s shoulder blade also had the same upward angle as adult fossils, whereas in humans the angle decreases during growth because we rarely use our arms to apply force or balance above head height.
The findings suggest that A. afarensis was still regularly using its arms to climb and balance in trees and that the bone structure previously seen in adults was not simply a redundant feature inherited from earlier ancestors, researchers said.
Prof David Green, who led the study, said: “This study moves us a step closer toward answering the question ‘When did our ancestors abandon climbing behaviour?’ It appears that this happened much later than many researchers had previously suggested.”
In a linked comment article Dr Susan Larson of Stony Brook University in New York wrote that the A. afarensis shoulder blades “do not closely resemble those of any specific living ape, reflecting the fact that they were habitual bipeds on the ground”, but suggest that climbing in trees “remained part of their overall survival strategy”.
By 1.8 million years ago, the shape of our ancestors’ shoulders had undergone a “dramatic transformation” and was more similar to ours, possibly due to the emergence of our Homo genus and the increased use of tools for survival, she added.
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