Ireland’s technical sector salaries are on the rise again
Salaries in Ireland’s techinal sector are rising again and at a much faster rate than previously during the great recession, according to new data published by the Central Statistics Office.
The figures show the average weekly salary in Ireland in the third quarter was €694.96 – 1.1pc more than the same period last year.
The data also shows the average worker puts in just 31.6 hours a week which mean the average hourly wage is now at €22.
The hourly wage has gone up 1.9pc in the past year, rising faster than total salary because people are working less.
Earnings rose in eight of the 13 sectors measured by the CSO. It’s the third quarter in a row to see average increases,
Those employed in the professional, scientific and technical sectors, which include companies such as Google and Facebook, enjoyed the biggest rise of 8.4pc in weekly earnings, compared to the same period a year earlier. Worst off were those working in hotels and restaurants who saw salaries fall 5pc.
As always, there are considerable differences between the various sectors of the employment market with salaries highest among technology companies, although those working in education earn the most money considering their relatively meagre working hours.
Awards
Salaries in the public sector continue to outstrip the private sector by almost 50pc but the gap is narrowing slightly as the private sector awards itself bigger pay increases than the public sector.
The latest CSO figures show weekly earnings in the private sector rose by 1.6pc annually, compared with an increase of 0.9pc in the public sector (including semi-state organisations) over the year, bringing average weekly earnings to €617.94 and €925.51 respectively.
In last the three years, public sector earnings have fallen by 4pc compared with an increase of 1.4pc in the private sector.
Those working in the arts, entertainment and recreation have endured the largest pay cuts over the last four years with salaries falling 12.2pc.
Ironically, those most responsible for the economy’s collapse have also seen the largest pay increases with salaries in the financial services and real estate sectors rising 5.1pc over the past four years.
Apart from hotel and restaurant workers, other areas that have been hit by salary cuts are in public administration and defence, which has seen a 7.9pc cut.
Industry has done relatively well with salaries rising 4.7pc.
The figures show the number employed in the public sector declined 4.1pc over the year to 377,900. The reduction in numbers over the four years from the third quarter of 2008 stands at 39,000, or 9.4pc, with the Army bearing the biggest losses.
Back in the private sector, there was good news for people working for small companies. Workers employed by companies with fewer than 50 staff enjoyed pay increases of 4pc in the past year, while companies with more than 250 employees only got 0.6pc. However, those who work for companies with 50 to 250 employees got a miserly 0.1pc.
All in all, the figures seem to suggest that anybody motivated by money should be looking for a job in the technology sector, working perhaps for a semi-state company with more than 250 people.
Garda in Mayo can handle the county’s spate of crimes says Alan Shatter
Justice Minister Alan Shatter has expressed confidence in the gardaí’s ability to respond successfully to a spate of burglaries throughout Mayo over the past number of weeks.
In response to concerns raised by Mayo Fianna Fáil Deputy Dara Calleary, he said he was aware of reports of a number of breaking and entries in the county and suggestions that the incidents appear to be linked.
There were further attacks in the Ballintubber area last weekend, further compounding the level of anxiety felt in rural communities across the county.
The minister stated: “This is precisely the type of scenario which Operation Fiacla is designed to tackle and I have every confidence that garda management is responding effectively.
“While the incidence of crime is generally lower in rural than in urban areas, I am conscious of the deep distress which burglary and similar crimes can cause to householders in rural areas and the broader impact it can have in terms of fear of crime in our communities.
“I am confident that garda efforts, coordinated under Operation Fiacla, are making the desired impact and this should be reflected in forthcoming crime statistics. I hope it will also be reflected in the Mayo area in dealing with the difficulties being experienced.
“Ultimately, I rely on the operational decisions made by the Garda Commissioner. I believe we will discover in 12 months, when looking back on Operation Fiacla, that it has proved to be successful.
“Many of those who are currently charged are awaiting their appearance in court.
I must be careful in what I say about that but I hope those appearances will result in convictions being obtained where appropriate and appropriate sentencing decisions being made.”
The minister stated the government’s commitment to supporting the gardaí is underlined by his recent announcement of €3 million funding for new garda vehicles.
“This will provide an additional 170 new vehicles which will greatly enhance garda capacity to provide an effective policing service throughout the country. All of these vehicles should be in service by the end of January and a considerable portion of them should be in service by December.
“It is the government’s intention to ensure that front-line services are maintained at the highest level possible through the most efficient use of resources.
“The commissioner has my full support in this regard and I have every confidence that he and every member of the Garda Síochána will continue to deliver an effective police service in both rural and urban areas.”
Deputy Dara Calleary said there have also been a number of robberies of businesses in the county.
“In one case, the robbery was the tipping point, although not the main reason, which forced the owner to give up. He could no longer carry on and, as a result, a viable business went bust.
“There has been an increase in robberies in recent weeks in all towns throughout County Mayo. A number of empty houses along the N5, the main Mayo-Dublin road, where families were at work or were on holidays during mid-term, were broken into.
“It suggests a very prepared and organised group of people who were observing people’s movements and people’s
houses. This is a matter of serious concern,” he explained.
Savita Halappanavar’s father appeals for public inquiry
Savita Halappanavar and her husband Praveen on their wedding day.
The father of the late Savita Halappanavar has made a public appeal to the Irish Government to hold a public inquiry into his daughter’s death.
Andappa Yalagi, speaking to a freelance video journalist at the family home on the Srinigar neighbourhood of Belgaum, Karnataka in south west India, he said he was not happy with progress so far in finding out why his daughter died in Galway University Hospital on October 28th.
“We would like to appeal to Irish Government to please consider funding public inquiry. We are not happy with the progress made so far. We all don’t understand the HSE investigation. So once again I ask the Irish Government to consider funding a public inquiry.”
Savita Halappanavar’s husband Praveen is considering lodging a complaint to the Ombudsman to assert his ownership of his wife’s medical notes, his solicitor said at the weekend.
Gerard O’Donnell said he had taken instructions from Praveen Halappanavar to seek direction from the Ombudsman on whether he or Galway University Hospital owns her medical records.
Mr Halappanavar has objected to the use of his wife’s notes in a HSE inquiry into her death. He has said he has no faith in a HSE-run inquiry and does not want her notes used in it.
Mr O’Donnell had asked that the hospital, where Ms Halappanavar died last month, hand over the original medical notes. However, the HSE has said it owns them.
The Ombudsman has said it is unlikely her office would have a role in this dispute.
Mr Halappanavar met Minister for Health James Reilly for 25 minutes in Galway last Friday.
Ms Halappanavar died on October 28th, having presented a week earlier at the hospital with back pain. She had been 17 weeks pregnant and had been found to be miscarrying. Mr Halappanavar says she asked repeatedly for a termination and this was refused as the foetal heartbeat was present.
The Health Information and Quality Authority will publish the terms of reference of its inquiry into her death this week.
The investigation, for which no time span is indicated, will make use of outside expertise, a spokesman indicated.
The authority said it would investigate the safety, quality and standards of services provided by the HSE at Galway University Hospital to “critically ill patients, including critically ill pregnant women, as reflected in the care and treatment provided to Savita Halappanavar”.
Mr Halappanavar said after Friday’s meeting with Mr Reilly that he was pleased to finally meet a Government representative four weeks after his wife’s death. He said he stressed to the Minister that he did not believe the HSE or Hiqa investigations would be far-reaching enough. “I’m just glad that we met and he just passed on his condolences to the family,” said Mr Halappanavar.
Mr O’Donnell said his client was prepared to go to the European Court of Human Rights if an independent public inquiry was not set up. Galway University Hospital last night confirmed it would co-operate fully with the Hiqa inquiry.
Another tragedy for Ireland’s youth and the Lara Burns-Gibbs family, & her school and community’
SCHOOLGIRL LARA BURNS-GIBBS MAY HAVE TAKEN HER OWN LIFE AFTER BEING TAUNTED BY OTHER GIRLS ABOUT HER APPEARANCE, COPS BELIEVE.
Popular Lara, 12, was found lifeless by her mum Helene in the stables beside the family home on Saturday evening.
Officers are probing the theory she may have suffered Mmonths of verbal and online torment.
It was also revealed the pretty girl had raised concerns with a suicide awareness group recently.
Gardai were last night trawling the internet to find evidence of any cyber-torment.
A source said: “There are allegations of bullying and these will be thoroughly investigated.
“Lara was a beautiful girl and there are some girls who may have been jealous about this.
“Gardai will have to speak to many people to establish any evidence of bullying.”
Yesterday, Helene and Lara’s brother Brendan were being comforted by relatives and friends at their home at Grange, Co Kildare. Lara will be laid to rest tomorrow following a funeral Mass in Maynooth.
Heartbroken Helene urged friends of the schoolgirl to make a contribution to Pieta House, an organisation which works to prevent suicide. The family has also asked mourners to donate to a suicide charity instead of bringing flowers to her funeral.
Yesterday, flags at Maynooth Post-Primary School flew at half-mast as Lara’s devastated pals gathered to remember Lara. She had been a pupil at the school for less than three months, having enrolled in first year last September.
The family had previously lived at College Green in Maynooth, but moved to the rural Grange area less than two years ago. Their new home had stables and was ideal for horse-mad Lara.
The 1,000-large student body had been abuzz with anticipation about auditions for the annual school musical. However, preparations stopped as news of Lara’s death emerged. Counsellors spoke with shocked kids as they struggled to cope with the sudden loss of their classmate.
Several upset teens were collected by anxious parents, who were also invited to seek advice and help from school counsellors.
Principal Johnny Nevin said the school’s Critical Incident Management Plan had been implemented, and psychologists from the National Educational Psychological Service were also on site.
Mr Nevin said: “This is a terrible tragedy for Lara’s family, our school and our community. We are deeply saddened by these events. Our sympathy and thoughts are with Lara’s family and friends.”
Supt Collete Quinn from the Garda office of Children and Youth Affairs is also examining the case.Hundreds of tributes were last night flooding onto Facebook. But many visitors to the site claimed the schoolgirl was bullied.
Last month, Donegal girl Erin Gallagher, 13, committed suicide. The youngster had suffered constant harassment from cyber-bullies and had been targeted on website ask.fm.
Ciara Pugsley, 15, of Leitrim, took her own life in similar circumstances in September. Their deaths sparked public outrage at the lack of an action plan on cyber-bullying.
Lack of knowledge warnings about Grapefruit and pills mix
Doctors have warned of a “lack of knowledge” about the dangers of mixing some medications with grapefruit.
The fruit can cause overdoses of some drugs by stopping the medicines being broken down in the intestines and the liver.
The researchers who first identified the link said the number of drugs that became dangerous with grapefruit was increasing rapidly.
The team at the Lawson Health Research Institute in Canada said the number of drugs which had serious side effects with grapefruit had gone from 17 in 2008 to 43 in 2012.
They include some drugs for a range of conditions including blood pressure, cancer and cholesterol-lowering statins and those taken to suppress the immune system after an organ transplant.
One tablet with a glass of grapefruit juice can be like taking five or 10 tablets with a glass of water”
Chemicals in grapefruit, furanocoumarins, wipe out an enzyme which breaks the drugs down. It means much more of the drug escapes the digestive system than the body can handle.
Toxic
Three times the levels of one blood pressure drug, felodipine, was reported after patients had a glass of grapefruit juice compared with a glass of water.
The side effects are varied depending on the drug, but include stomach bleeds, altered heart beat, kidney damage and sudden death.
Dr David Bailey, one of the researchers, told the BBC: “One tablet with a glass of grapefruit juice can be like taking five or 10 tablets with a glass of water and people say I don’t believe it, but I can show you that scientifically it is sound.
“So you can unintentionally go from a therapeutic level to a toxic level just by consuming grapefruit juice.”
The report said: “We contend that there remains a lack of knowledge about this interaction in the general health care community.”
They added: “Unless health care professionals are aware of the possibility that the adverse event they are seeing might have an origin in the recent addition of grapefruit to the patient’s diet, it is very unlikely that they will investigate it.”
Other citrus fruits such as Seville oranges, often used in marmalade, and limes have the same effect.
Neal Patel, from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society said: “Grapefruit isn’t the only food that can cause issues, for example milk can stop the absorption of some antibiotics if taken at the same time.
“Although some of these interactions may not be clinically significant, some may lead to more serious outcomes.
“Pharmacists are the best port of call for anyone concerned about how their diet may affect their medication. Information about any interactions would always be included in the patient information leaflet that comes with the medicine.”
A spokesman from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency said: “We encourage patients and healthcare professionals to report any suspected adverse drug reactions to our Yellow Card Scheme.
Ice Age warmth wiped out lemmings, study finds
Lemmings became “regionally extinct” five times due to rapid climate change during the last Ice Age, scientists have found.
Each extinction was followed by a re-colonisation of genetically different lemmings, according to the study.
It investigated how Europe’s small mammals fared during the era when large numbers of megafauna became extinct.
Previously, experts believed that small mammals were largely unaffected during the Late Pleistocene.
But when the international research team analysed ancient DNA sequences from fossilised remains of collared lemmings (Dicrostonyx torquarus) from cave sites in Belgium, they were surprised by the results.
“What we’d expected is that there’d be pretty much just a single population that was there all the way through,” said research team member Dr Ian Barnes from the school of biological sciences at Royal Holloway University in Surrey.
Instead the tests revealed that genetically distinct populations of lemmings were “present at different points in time” during the Late Pleistocene, 11,700 to around 126,000 years ago, meaning that the lemming population had been wiped out multiple times and then re-colonised some time after, possibly from populations in eastern Europe or Russia.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences, found that these “regional extinctions” occurred during periods of rapid warming within the last Ice Age.
Scientists suggest such climate fluctuations may have left lemmings unable to adapt to the changes in the vegetation they relied on as a food source.
Although Belgium’s lemmings were able to re-colonise after each regional extinction, the population lost much of its genetic diversity during this pattern of events.
“There’s an amazing genetic diversity just at this one site in Belgium, compared to the tiny amount of diversity that we see in the modern-day lemmings,” said Dr Barnes.
By the end of the Late Pleistocene, western Europe’s lemmings had retreated to the Arctic Ocean coast across Siberia where modern collared lemmings are still found.
Big Megafauna mystery
The team’s findings could also shed light on why many of Europe’s megafauna, such as woolly mammoths, cave hyenas and cave bears, became extinct during the same period.
For years experts have debated whether the demise of these huge land mammals was mainly due to human predation or environmental changes.
Previous studies have suggested that in Australia, human activity was largely responsible for the extinction of megafauna. But the debate about what caused many of Europe’s large mammals to disappear during the Late Pleistocene remains “a reasonably open question”, according to Dr Barnes.
The team focused on lemmings as indicators of what may have happened to other land mammal populations during the last Ice Age.
Since such small mammals would not have been hunted by humans, the discovery of this decrease in population size shows that there was a “general pattern of instability” in both large and small mammals during the Late Pleistocene.
According to the study, this pattern supports the theory that environmental changes, rather than human predation, were the main cause of the demise of megafauna in Europe at the end of the last Ice Age.
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