Michael D Higgins urges public intellectual debate on issues at the heart of Irish society
President Michael D Higgins launching the book Up the Republic: Towards a New Ireland, edited by Fintan O’Toole, at the Royal Irish Academy last night
President Michael D Higgins last night said Ireland had paid “a high price” for its “recent relationship with anti-intellectualism” and called on public figures to engage in debate about issues at the heart of society.
Mr Higgins was speaking in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin at the launch of the book Up the Republic: Towards a New Ireland, edited by Fintan O’Toole. He said he hoped the collection of essays on rebuilding the Republic would “propel its readers into action”. He commended the “courageousness” of its contributors in engaging with the “urgent” matters facing the country.
“I passionately believe in the importance of public intellectuals engaging in debate and discussions about issues that must be at the heart of our society and democracy,” he said.
“In my inaugural address a year ago, I said I wanted my tenure as Uachtarán na hÉireann to be a presidency of ideas. The crisis that Ireland currently faces is not just an economic crisis.
“It is also a crisis caused by the failure of ideas and by the failure of policymakers and influence formers to adequately challenge prevailing assumptions and models that were regarded as holy writ.”
Celtic Tiger
“There is general consensus that never again should we replicate the hubristic mistakes of the Celtic Tiger,” Mr Higgins added. “By its speculative nature, the Celtic Tiger economy was bound to end in tears . . . [and] the materialistic values which it gave rise to be not a particularly becoming version of Irishness.”
He had opened his speech by pointing out that, while his presence at the book’s launch was not an “endorsement of its content”, being president did “not require [him] to recount long-held convictions or resile from previously expressed views”.
While the office required him to respect the constitutional boundaries between the various branches of the State, he had “sufficient scope for the necessary critical and positive contributions I wish to make”.
O’Toole commended Mr Higgins’s “great war against cynicism” in his speech. “We’ve never needed to fight that war quite so urgently as we do now,” he said.
The book’s other essayists are legal journalist Dearbhail McDonald, poet Theo Dorgan, and academics Iseult Honohan, Elaine Byrne, Tom Hickey, Fred Powell and Philip Pettit.
New bank (Danske) to replace 27 National Irish Bank branches closed today
National Irish Branch closed its 27 branches around the country and rebranded them as Danske Bank today.
NIB customers will now have to use post offices, phone or internet banking, or use one of the bank’s new small advisory centres to conduct their banking business.
About 100 staff are leaving under a voluntary redundancy scheme because of the branch closures.
Danske Bank Advisory Centres will be open in nine locations next week where customers can meet advisors face-to-face.
These will be located in Waterford, Athlone, Cork, Limerick, Letterkenny and across Dublin in the IFSC, Tallaght, Swords and Stillorgan.
The head of the Credit Review Office, John Trethowan, said that the physical presence of banks has a lot to do with lending to business.
Branch closures can make whole business communities feel remote and isolated, he said.
He said that loan applications are not now dealt with locally, but at a central office in Dublin, and he said people do not like that.
“With physical locations contracting as banks reduce their cost base, there’s more to be done by banks when thinking about how they interface with customers.”
As well as NIB’s 27 branch closures today, last month AIB closed 44 branches out of a total of 67 marked for closure this year.
Bank of Ireland recently closed a landmark branch in Limerick city, and is slashing services at 40 branches, instead of closing them.
Permanent TSB will close up to 19 branches out of a total of 92. Ulster Bank is expected to close up to 40 of its branches next year. EBS, which is now part of AIB, is also expected to close a number of branches.
Woman ‘denied a termination’ dies in Galway hospital
Savita Halappanavar, who was found to be miscarrying when admitted, died of septicaemia at University Hospital Galway pictured above.
Two investigations are under way into the death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant, at University Hospital Galway last month.
Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.
Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.
This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.
She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.
Intensive care
The dead foetus was removed and Savita was taken to the high dependency unit and then the intensive care unit, where she died of septicaemia on the 28th.
An autopsy carried out by Dr Grace Callagy two days later found she died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL.
A hospital spokesman confirmed the Health Service Executive had begun an investigation while the hospital had also instigated an internal investigation. He said the hospital extended its sympathy to the family and friends of Ms Halappanavar but could not discuss the details of any individual case.
Speaking from Belgaum in the Karnataka region of southwest India, Mr Halappanavar said an internal examination was performed when she first presented.
“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day.
“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything’.
“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.
“That evening she developed shakes and shivering and she was vomiting. She went to use the toilet and she collapsed. There were big alarms and a doctor took bloods and started her on antibiotics.
“The next morning I said she was so sick and asked again that they just end it,“but they said they could not.”
Critically ill
At lunchtime the foetal heart had stopped and Ms Halappanavar was brought to theatre to have the womb contents removed. “When she came out she was talking okay but she was very sick. That’s the last time I spoke to her.”
At 11 pm he got a call from the hospital. “They said they were shifting her to intensive care. Her heart and pulse were low, her temperature was high. She was sedated and critical but stable. She stayed stable on Friday but by 7pm on Saturday they said her heart, kidneys and liver weren’t functioning. She was critically ill. That night, we lost her.”
Mr Halappanavar took his wife’s body home on Thursday, November 1st, where she was cremated and laid to rest on November 3rd.
The hospital spokesman said that in general sudden hospital deaths were reported to the coroner. In the case of maternal deaths, a risk review of the case was carried out.
External experts were involved in this review and the family consulted on the terms of reference. They were also interviewed by the review team and given a copy of the report.
Irish hospital’s doctors need to clean up their act on hand hygiene
Irish hospital’s doctors are not unique in having a poor record when it comes to washing their hands between hospital patients.
Several hygiene audits in other countries have found that they are the worst offenders among hospital staff. The latest figures from the Health Service Executive (HSE) show that more than three in 10 doctors were not taking precautions, despite knowing they are putting patients at risk of a potentially life-threatening infection like MRSA.
The HSE does not ask why doctors are breaching this cardinal infection control rule. But doctors have traditionally insisted they are busy people with many patients to examine and treat.
Their mind is so focused on their healing role they forget to use the wash-hand basin or alcohol hand rub.
The basins and hand rub may also not be conveniently available in several hospitals.
What is even more worrying is that this audit involved an observational study. One presumes the doctors were aware the researcher was nearby with their clipboard.
It begs the question: what happens when they are not being monitored?
Nurses are the most diligent for handwashing. But the overall compliance rate for all staff is still just 81.6pc.
Clearly there is still a cultural problem in our hospitals with following this basic precaution.
Allowing for the pressures on health staff, the findings signal that a stricter approach must be taken by hospitals, up to and including disciplinary action for putting patients’ lives at risk.
‘Rogue planet’ found wandering around space
A rogue planet wandering through the cosmos apparently without a star to orbit has been identified by an international team using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea and the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile.
It’s the first time astronomers have been able to look closely at planets of its kind without getting interference from intense nearby light.
“These objects are important, as they can either help us understand more about how planets may be ejected from planetary systems, or how very light objects can arise from the star formation process,” Philippe Delorme, a University of Grenoble, France, astronomer who was lead writer on the project
“If this little object is a planet that has been ejected from its native system, it conjures up the striking image of orphaned worlds, drifting in the emptiness of space.”
Possible examples of free-floating planets have been found and identified, but it hasn’t been possible to determine much about them.
In this case, however, the object — dubbed CFBDSIR2149 — seems to be part of a nearby stream of young stars known as the AB Doradus Moving Group.
“Looking for planets around their stars is akin to studying a firefly sitting one centimetre away from a distant, powerful car headlight,” said Delorme.
“This nearby free-floating object offered the opportunity to study the firefly in detail without the dazzling lights of the car messing everything up.”
ABLE TO MAKE INFERENCES
Researchers found it in observations from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope and harnessed the power of European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope to examine it more closely.
Because it’s in motion with other planets, astronomers have been able to make inferences about its age and properties.
“We find that [the object] is probably a 4-7 Jupiter masses, free-floating planet with an effective temperature of ~700K and a log g of ~4.0, typical of the late T-type exoplanets that are targeted by direct imaging,” Delorme wrote.
The Canadians on the project included study co-authors Etienne Artigau and Jonathan Gagné of the University of Montreal.
“We observed hundreds of millions of stars and planets, but we only found one homeless planet in our neighbourhood,” Artigau told the BBC.
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope is operated by the National Research Council of Canada, the Institut National des Science de l’Univers of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) of France, and the University of Hawaii.
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