Alan Shatter taking Ireland’s policing policy down the wrong direction
The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is taking our policing policy down a wrong direction? According to Fianna Fail, who will tonight table a private members motion opposing the cuts to Garda resources.
The Minister for Justice Alan Shatter is taking policing in a “wrong direction” according to Fianna Fáil, which will tonight table a private members’ motion opposing cuts to Garda resources.
Speaking outside Leinster House this morning, the party’s Justice Spokesman Niall Collins commented on the closure of 100 Garda stations by Thursday.
“If we are to have a true community policing model it is not the way to go. Minister Shatter is taking policing in the wrong direction.”
His motion would call on Government to review the closures, to halt the reduction in Garda numbers and to reopen the Garda training college at Templemore.
“He also hasn’t given a proper budget to Garda management to pay the full complement of members in the force. They are estimating they only have a budget now to pay up to 12,000 members. Now if the complement of the serving force drops below 13,000 members the rostering system which the Minister is heralding at every opportunity as such a success, will collapse.
“We know there is (sic) just under 13,500 in the force and with retirements it will drop below 13,000 and without a proper budget to pay the payroll for the next 12 months. I think people are right to be very worried. We have seen the upsurge in burglaries across the country. We’ve seen the upsurge in gangland activity. We’ve seen the upsurge in crimes against the person, muggings, and the Minister seems to be oblivious to it. He’s completely out of touch with how communities are feeling particularly about the Garda station issue,” he said.
“The Garda stations are a hub within our communities. Some of them are part-time. We recognise that but they offer a service to the communities they operate out of. People are hurting out there when they see the Minister for Justice who has overall responsibility for protecting them, their property and their lives, is taking this form of direction.”
Irish banks warn lenders on mortgage arrears crisis
Ireland’s central bank has told the country’s lenders it could force them to raise more capital if they fail to tackle a growing mortgage crisis that threatens the country’s exit from its international bail out programme.
The blunt warning comes amid frustration in Dublin at the failure of its bailed out banks to live up to repeated commitments to engage with the one in five mortgage holders currently in arrears.
“There is huge uncertainty about this, which may be a problem for Ireland when exiting the programme because the capital needs are uncertain,” said Lars Frisell, chief economist at the Central Bank of Ireland.
Stubbornly high unemployment and a 50 per cent fall in Irish house prices since 2007 has left hundreds of thousands of Irish borrowers trapped in negative equity. By the end of September 2012 some 86,146 residential mortgage holders and 26,770 buy to let mortgage holders were in arrears of more than 90 days.
Mr Frisell made the comments at the publication of the bank’s quarterly bulletin, which cut Ireland’s growth forecast to 1.3 per cent from 1.7 per cent for 2013 due to slowing export growth.
He said Irish banks should have enough capital to absorb mortgage losses but that the central bank was considering options for putting pressure on lenders to act, including raising capital.
“There is a wide range of tools that the regulator can use. Capital leverage is the ultimate stick that the regulator controls,” said Mr Frisell.
The central bank says the main banks have been slow to appoint dedicated personnel to manage the arrears process and to make provisions for unsustainable mortgages.
Banks say they are introducing a wide range of complex loan modification and resolution options. They also claim delays in passing new insolvency legislation have hampered their efforts.
Forcing Ireland’s mainly state controlled banks to raise extra capital would pose a headache for a financial sector that is struggling to wean itself off government support. It would also prove politically toxic if taxpayers, who have already spent €64bn shoring up Ireland’s banks, were forced to inject yet more capital.
At the end of 2011 Ireland’s three main lenders – Allied Irish Banks, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB – had made €5.1bn in provisions to cover mortgage book loses. Davy Stockbrokers forecasts mortgage losses could peak at €10.5bn-€11.5bn. This is higher than the €9bn losses forecast in a 2011 stress test on Ireland’s banks. But the banks should have enough capital to absorb these additional losses, according to Davy.
“With private sector employment flat since 2011, stabilising labour market conditions point to a natural reduction in arrears formation,” said Conall MacCoille, Davy chief economist.
Felix O’Regan, director of public affairs at the Irish Banking Federation, said banks had committed significant resources to working with customers in arrears. New legislation would also enable lenders to “enforce their security in situations where all re-mediation measures have failed and the mortgage is deemed unsustainable,” he said.
But the continued increase in arrears is causing significant uncertainty and risks undermining improved investor sentiment towards Ireland. In a note published on Tuesday, Moody’s, the credit rating agency, cited poor mortgage loan performance as one of the key reasons for maintaining a negative outlook on Ireland’s banking system.
Moody’s has expressed concern that new insolvency legislation that shortens the bankruptcy term to three years from 12 years could lead to some strategic default by mortgage holders.
It forecasts Irish banks will remain under pressure for 12-18 months.
The merits and pitfalls of self-medication need to be understood fully
Dr Colin Bradley, professor of general practice at University College Cork
Are you the person that gets fed up having to go to your doctor for a prescription for something relatively minor? Let’s say you have been diagnosed with migraine and there is a drug that has been prescribed for you in the past that works and doesn’t cause you side effects. And yet the medication is available on prescription only and at the very least you have to call the surgery to get the prescription left out for you.
The issue of self-care in Ireland has seen a working group beavering away in an effort to find ways to change the culture of self-care here.
Today they will be presenting their findings to a Dublin meeting of European Medicines Agencies and representatives of the self-medication industry in Europe.
One of their conclusions is that there is a need for a culture change in how we assess medication safety and involve patients to a greater degree in the decision-making process.
Paradigm shift: Dr Colin Bradley, professor of general practice at University College Cork, is a member of the working group. He believes there is a need for a paradigm shift for the management of minor illness. As primary care focuses more on chronic illness management, minor illness would ideally move out of general practice and into the realm of self-care.
A big part of such change will be the provision of appropriate and accessible information to the public, Bradley says. “It’s about equipping patients with access to both information and medicines. For some illnesses we need to move away from a doctor-centred model to a system of self-care.
“ While I am broadly in favour of allowing over-the-counter access for appropriate medicines, I feel their safe use can only be assured by adequate and accessible information and that regulation alone does not protect patients from the risks associated with medicines – regardless of whether they are OTC or restricted to prescription only,” he says.
European study: Meanwhile, a study of attitudes to minor ailments in Europe found that Irish people, more than other nationalities, were guided by their confidence in the safety of an OTC product in deciding whether to self-treat.
In the view of the working group this makes consumers here ideal candidates for a different kind of engagement with health services.
I would like to add some constructive scepticism to the mix. Looking to the list of medicines that moved from prescription-only to OTC in the UK in 2007, I would have personal doubts about some of the choices.
For example, the acid suppressant drug omeprazole is available “for the relief of reflux-like symptoms such as heartburn in adults age 18 years and over for a maximum period of four weeks”.
Regulator warnings: On the face of it, the drug sounds safe, and limiting the period of treatment probably covers the concern that someone with these symptoms could continue to harbour a gastrointestinal malignancy.
But the drug and others in its class have attracted a number of warnings from drug regulators in recent years concerning some interactions with other medications.
My understanding, however, is that the UK authorities have not detected any safety issues as a result of their policy change.
A major consideration also must be the quality of the information given to patients who make self-management choices.
Their interaction with pharmacists will clearly be to a high professional standard. But if the person given written information has literacy issues and cannot absorb some of the safety warnings attached to taking a particular medication, how does that impact patient safety?
Paternalistic approach: I am certainly not in favour of a paternalistic approach to healthcare. And I agree that a black-and-white approach which says medicines are either safe or unsafe is overly rigid.
But I do care passionately about patient safety and I remain to be convinced that moving medicines from prescription to OTC availability is an entirely safe thing to do.
Irish Teachers to log cases of bullying in schools
Minister Ruairi Quinn said schools need to take action and that policy alone is no longer enough.
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said recent suicides among young victims of bullying highlighted a need for a comprehensive action plan
All teachers will have to keep log books recording individual cases of bullying under new Government plans to tackle the “scourge” of Ireland’s schools.
Education Minister Ruairi Quinn said recent suicides among young victims of bullying highlighted a need for a comprehensive action plan.
He said schools need to take action and that policy alone is no longer enough.
“For some children, bullying is a scourge that can violate these nurturing environments and in the process obliterate their happiness,” Mr Quinn said.
All teachers by this September will be required to follow a template outlined by the Government for recording incidents of bullying at primary and secondary levels.
Teachers will receive training under the new 12-point Action Plan on Bullying to help them identify cases in the classroom.
“You could actually measure what the incidents were and taking professional advice, decide whether the problem was above normal, or required a particular kind of response. But if it’s not recorded, it’s not there,” Mr Quinn said.
The action plan also includes a pledge to tackle homophobic bullying and to ensure teachers recognise when a child might be targeted based on his or her sexuality.
Ireland’s national LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) youth service BeLonG To hailed the commitment as a breakthrough.
Executive director Michael Barron said: “This action plan is a critical breakthrough and marks a historic recognition by government that homophobic and transphobic bullying are urgent issues that have serious impacts on young people’s mental health.”
GALWAY CITY MARCH AGAINST IRISH DEBT on Saturday 9th Feb.
A major protest will take place in the city on Saturday week, February 9th to demand a resolution to Ireland’s bank debt problem.
It’s one of 6 protests that will take place in other cities across the country on the same day.
The protest is organised by Irish trade unions and the theme is ‘Lift the Burden – Jobs not Debt’.
The Galway march will depart from Galway Cathedral carpark at 1.30p.m on February 9th.
It’ll make its way through the city culminating in a rally in the city centre.
Scientists build the one million Dollar man
Scientists have built a man from artificial limbs, and while he might not be a bionic superhero, he cost a lot less to create than The Six Million Dollar Man.
One million dollar Rex – short for robotic exoskeletons – was built using the most advanced artificial limbs and organs from across the world.
And he shows that from bionic arms and legs to artificial organs, science is beginning to catch up with science fiction in the race to replace body parts with man-made alternatives.
In the 70s TV series The Six Million Dollar Man astronaut Steve Austin, played by Lee Majors, was left horribly injured after his craft crashed and was given a bionic arm and legs and an artificial zoom-lens eye.
6ft Rex also raises ethical dilemmas, as research on advanced prosthetic arms and legs, as well as artificial eyes, hearts, lungs – and even hybrids between computer chips and living brains – means that scientists can not only replace body parts but may even be able to improve on human abilities.
This has led scientists to warn against creating a modern Frankenstein.
Rex was created for C4 show How to Build a Bionic Man which follows social psychologist Bertolt Meyer, who lost his left hand as a child, as he meets scientists working at the cutting edge.
Leading UK roboticists Richard Walker and Matthew Godden build Rex using $1 million-worth of state of the art limbs and organs – the products of billions of dollars of research – borrowed from some of these world leading laboratories and manufacturers.
Dr Meyer, whose £30,000 bionic hand is the most advanced on the market, said he had a “personal interest” in the “explosion of innovation” which has occurred in the last six years.
“I think we are now at a point where we can build a body that is great and beautiful in its own special way.”
“When I was growing up I hated wearing artificial hands. The plastic hands always looked fake and the metal hooks were useful in some circumstances, but they just looked scary and frightened people. Now that I have this one I feel that the hand is a part of me. If I don’t wear it I feel that there is something missing.”
Technology is advancing so fast his bionic hand will soon be obsolete.
Rex’s components include an arm with 26 degrees of movement, one less than a human arm, which teaches itself to work, glasses which send images to a microchip in the retina which then sends electrical impulses to the brain, and a battery powered heart which is currently being used for temporary donors.
Rex also has bionic ankles, which use a motor and spring system to mimic the actions of the human calf muscle and Achilles tendon, invented by Professor Hugh Herr who lost both legs to frostbite.
“I was climbing better with artificial limbs than I achieved before my accident with biological limbs,” he said.”Technology has this extraordinary capacity to heal, to rehabilitate and even to extend human capability beyond what nature intended.
“I think having normal bodies is boring…I have legs, you have shoes. If a fairy came and tapped on my shoulder and granted me a wish, would I wish my legs back? Absolutely not.”
One organ that science cannot yet match is the human brain. Made up of a hundred billion neurons, it is the most complex structure in the known universe.
But scientists at the University of Southern California are studying the electrical signals in rats’ brains to develop microchips that may one day be able to restore memory and even cure Alzheimer’s by working with living brains.
While Dr Meyer’s search shows just how far science has come, it also asks questions about what it means to be human and where this technology could lead in the future.
“The things I have seen have left me with kind of a weird mix of feelings,” he said.
“There’s optimism that I might live to get an arm that is far more advanced than this one, but then you get developments that augment the healthy human body which I still find it a little bit scary.
“We might be at a point in science and technology where we see first glimpses of the possibilities to go beyond the limits of evolution. I think that really is a double-edged sword.”
George Annas, Professor of Bioethics and Human Rights at Boston University agrees: “I think when it comes to our bodies, the danger is we might change what it is to be human.
“Create a new species that may turn around to bite us, similar to the Frankenstein myth, where your creature let loose in the world becomes destructive and uncontrollable. That’s when you go too far.”
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