Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Friday

IMF chief Christine Lagarde praises Ireland and wants to continue the help

  

TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY WELCOMES INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND MANAGING DIRECTOR CHRISTINE LAGARDE TO HIS OFFICE IN DUBLIN THIS MORNING AT THE START OF HER VISIT TO IRELAND.

International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde has said there is “clearly good news on the horizon” for Ireland.

Speaking at a press conference in Government Buildings with Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Eamon Gilmore and Minister for Finance Michael Noonan, Ms Lagarde said Ireland was one of the few countries in the euro zone showing positive growth numbers.

“There are results around the corner. While it has been very hard there is clearly good news on the horizon,” she said.

Ms Lagarde said the IMF had been on the side of Ireland “through the toughest times” and would “stay available and on call”.

She said the imperative was helping Ireland exit its bailout programme successfully.

“We have an open mind about many issues, many of the terms and conditions, if you will, of the exit strategy,” Ms Lagarde said. “We will look at all the options available.”

She said those options would have to be within the IMF’s mandate and that its rules prevented it from extending the terms of Ireland’s bailout loans, a concession that is currently being discussed at European level.

However, she reiterated that Europe should do all it can to assist the return of Ireland and fellow bailed out country Portugal to financial markets, not limiting its help to just extending loans under their EU-IMF bailouts.

Later, Ms Lagarde said Ireland needs to focus on include fixing the country’s banks, the former French finance minister said, adding that while a huge amount of work had been done, more was required to ensure the sector is put on a solid footing.

She also warned that Ireland’s still-high unemployment rate of 14.2 per cent risked fraying the social fabric in a country where social upheaval has been limited.

“In too many places across Ireland, people are becoming increasingly demoralized, disengaged and disenchanted,” Mr Lagarde said in a speech at Dublin Castle. “There is a real risk of a fraying of social fabric, a breakdown of communities, of people losing faith in the system so we need renewed efforts to help these people find jobs.”

She also said the European Central Bank has room to cut interest rates as the euro-area economy remains mired in recession. “Monetary policy should remain accommodative,” she said in a speech. “We believe that there is still some limited room for the ECB to cut rates further.”

Ms Lagarde said she expects the region’s economy to remain in recession this year. The ECB forecast yesterday that the 17-nation economy will contract 0.5 per cent in 2013 instead of the 0.3 per cent projected three months ago.

On International Women’s Day, Ms Lagarde said Irish women were doing better than some of their colleague in the euro zone but she still had concerns about lower salaries and low participation. She said she would encourage Mr Gilmore and Mr Noonan to make sure women were included and respected. Turning to Mr Noonan, she said: “I know that this gentleman respects the views of women.”

Mr Noonan had earlier thanked Ms Lagarde for her assistance at meetings when he was an “inexperienced” Minister for Finance.

Ms Lagarde also said she supported gender quotas on a time-limited basis. She said she had seen them work and said they were necessary to “kick-start” the process of increased female involvement in politics.

Ms Lagarde’s visit comes after the European Central Bank called yesterday on the Government to step up its banking reforms, with bank governor Mario Draghi urging “further action”. Mr Draghi was speaking as Central Bank figures showed that while the pace of growth in mortgage arrears is slowing, about 23,500 mortgages have not been paid for two years or more.

John Moran, secretary general of the Department of Finance, told the Public Accounts Committee that the level of repossessions in the Republic was “uncharacteristically low” but that banks should soon be able to “move forward” on tackling problem home loans. The Republic has a repossession rate of about 0.25 per cent of mortgages, compared with 3 per cent in the UK and up to 5 per cent in the US.

“It’s surprising to us that there are so few repossessions in the system at the moment, given the extent of the crisis,” Mr Moran said. “Ultimately, it is the other people in the country who are paying for these people to stay in their houses.”

Speaking in Frankfurt after the ECB’s governing council meeting, Mr Draghi praised Ireland for its economic progress but said the banking sector was a key concern. “The Irish Government has undertaken very, very significant progress, very significant results on several fronts… but further action is needed, especially on the banking side, in the financial sector,” Mr Draghi said.

Ahead of her visit, Ms Lagarde told The Irish Times she was concerned about a “relapse” in the global economy. She also said she wanted to see where Ireland is as it nears the end of its bailout programme.

“I want to understand where the country is – which from the reports I read is a good position – with a programme that is more than on track, with growth that has turned positive for the first time and exceptionally so in comparison to other European and euro area countries,” she said. “I want to see how we, with the authorities, can best plan for finishing successfully the programme and to make sure that there will not be a relapse.”

Despite the recession Ireland is in the middle of a baby boom

   

Despite the crippling recession, job losses, and growing household debts, Ireland is in the midst of a surging baby boom.

Figures revealed by amajor government report into children’s lives have found this country has the highest percentage of children in the EU.

According to the latest installment of the two-yearly State of the Nation children’s report, published by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, there 1.1m children or teenagers in the country.

The figure means 25% of Irish people are aged under 18 — above the 19% EU average and a rate that appears to contradict the expected impact of the recession on families.

Since 2001, Ireland’s child and teenage population has increased from 11.6% of the national population to 25%.

While the situation is good news for families, Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said it comes with potentially troublesome consequences for state services.

In particular, she said that despite the “unprecedented potential” that comes with an increased youth population, it also means as many as 3,000 new teachers will be needed to cope with school demand over the coming years.

Cheaper crèche prices may also have to be considered as part of attempts to help families cope with the burden of young families, she said.

With the pre-school population also rising 18% during the same period, the minister said a second universal free pre-school year is another issue currently being discussed.

The detailed 260-page government report addressed a series of other issues.

The snapshot findings include: 

*One quarter of 15-17-year-olds said they have had sex. However, since 2007, there has been a 36% drop in the number of children born to teen couples — with 399 of these births recorded during the period;

*Just under one-in-five children are living in homes at risk of poverty;

*The number of kids and teens who experiment with drugs and alcohol is falling dramatically, although children from minority ethnic groups are at greater risk;

n18% of children live in single-parent families, with the highest rate in Dublin and the lowest in Leitrim;

*The number of children in the care of the HSE has increased by 16% since 2007;

*Tragically, 16 people aged between 10 and 17 died by suicide in 2011 alone, indicating the real risk of mental health issues among the vulnerable age group. However, despite this, parents are not always available to speak with their children.

Ms Fitzgerald said the findings offer an important insight into the lives of Ireland’s next generation.

“These changes clearly present challenges both to policy makers and service providers,” she said.

PARENTS AND FAMILY 

The number of children born to teen girls has fallen dramatically since the last major study into the lives of Irish children.

The latest State of the Nation research shows that since 2007, there has been a 36% slump in births to teenage mothers.

The study also confirms that one-in-three children are now living in households where their mother has a third-level qualification.

However, despite the likely benefit of continuing education on a family’s income, just under one in five children are living in homes at risk of poverty.

While nine out of 10 children complete the Leaving Certificate — up from 82% in 1997 — the research shows maths and literacy standards are below international norms in our next generation.

This is despite the fact that one in three children under the age of 15 consider reading to be one of their favourite pastimes.

In addition, the report warns there has been a “significant decrease” in the number of children under the age of 15 whose parents take the time to speak with them about school.

The number of lone-parent households has also increased by 10.2% since 2007, the report states.

CHILDREN AND DRUGS 

The number of children and teens who experiment with smoking, drugs, or alcohol from a young age is continuing to fall.

Figures in the detailed report show that, between 1998 and 2010, the percentage of 10 to 17-year-olds who said they never smoked a cigarette rose from 50.8% to 73.5%.

Similarly, over the same period the percentage of 10 to 17-year-olds who said they never drank alcohol also increased, from 40% to 54%.

While the development is welcome, the report has still warned that children of minority ethnic groups are at greater risk of developing the unhealthy habits.

According to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs study, children from the Travelling community are more likely than others to have consumed alcohol in the past 30 days.

The same situation was reported for both this group and immigrant children when it came to smoking and cannabis use.

The report also notes that one-in-four 15 to 17-year-olds have had sex, despite the falloff in teen pregnancies in recent years.

Ireland’s diaspora return home for one big party

   

The country’s vast diaspora has been invited home as part of a year-long ‘gathering’. But what will they find there?

On a January night in 1963, a US naval ship docked near Dublin. A gang of sailors sloped into town in pursuit of women and souvenirs. Tollie Lee, six weeks in service and three months shy of 21 years old, remained on deck. It was so cold that he swore he could hear his bones rattle. The ship was set to leave for Portsmouth in the morning. There would be other visits soon, he told himself. Ireland could wait. Lee descended to his cabin for warmth and prayer.

“Boy did I regret that,” he tells me, 50 years later. Last week Lee travelled from his hometown of Hoboken, Georgia, to Cork for the Third Ireland Sacred Harp Convention. Mostly, he is here for the music. Beneath the beams of St Fin Barre’s Cathedral Hall, a hundred singers take it in turns to lead the choral laments of the Sacred Harp hymn book, from which the event takes its name.

But Lee is, finally, enjoying his first steps on Irish soil. His jowl wobbles as he struts out the time of his threnody “How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds”. “You people are awesome!” he proclaims after the reverberations wane. He believes he is one of them. It is a sense of belonging that he has nurtured through song – one that he longs to explore. “They say all the rich Lees came from England but all the poor ones came from Ireland. That sounds about right,” he says self­deprecatingly. He will soon find out. After the convention is over, Lee plans to spend the day at Cork’s Central Library to look up his Irish ancestry.

Ireland’s government, meanwhile, is on the lookout for more people like Lee. At Dublin airport, posters of beaming Irish folk greet visitors. “Excited to get you home,” reads one slogan. This is Gathering Ireland, a year-long tourism campaign targeted at the Irish diaspora. There are 70m people of Irish heritage living abroad, according to Niall Gibbons, chief executive of Tourism Ireland – and Ireland wants them “home”.

Last year, 7.3m tourists came to the Emerald Isle. In 2013, Gathering aims to attract an additional 350,000. The tourist board is not organising events. Instead, anyone can host a “gathering”. Over 3,000 shindigs are planned, from St Patrick’s Day parties, to family reunions, to celebrations of redheads and left-handed people, and a party where everyone named Clare is invited to County Clare.

Ireland has a recent history of looking to its diaspora. Mary Robinson, who was president between 1990 and 1997, placed a light by a window at her official residence, Áras an Uachtaráin, to beckon emigrants home. Few, therefore, would have expected the Gathering to lead to much controversy.

Enter Gabriel Byrne. Last November, the 62-year-old actor, who has lived in the US since 1987, criticised the Gathering. Byrne told Today FM radio that the diaspora is only brought up when politicians ask, “How can we get these people here to boost our tourism and how can we get people back here so that we can shake them down for a few quid?” The subsequent fuss proved a PR boost for Tourism Ireland. But it also suggested that Byrne had touched a nerve, as well as the Blarney Stone.

Exile is a core theme in Ireland’s history. Perhaps only Israel has a more intense relationship with its diaspora. Over the centuries, many Irish left out of choice. But many did not. During the economically buoyant early years of the 21st century, however, it seemed like this part of the national story was over. Emigrants were returning. Young Irish still left to make the world a better place, as they always have done, but they no longer had to. Indeed, Ireland became a prime destination for immigrants.

But in 2008 the “Celtic Tiger” era ended with an almighty crash. Now, emigration is increasing again. The economy is still struggling.  Austerity is biting. Inadvertently, Gathering Ireland has raised questions. What, and who, will the diaspora find at “home”? And what does “home” mean anyway?

“It’s not just the economy they’re getting away from. It’s all the ne-ga-tiv-i-ty.” I’ve been in Dublin for five hours and four pints and the humour in Mulligan’s is Guinness-black. At the patron side of the bar, Fran Keane draws out the syllables of “negativity”. The 53-year-old bus driver saw his son leave for Melbourne last year to find work and to escape his friends’ fatalism. Keane misses him.

Des O’Brien, another patron, agrees. “It’s not getting better,” he says. “For some,” he continues, slurping a stout, “it is a case of drinking three nights a week instead of five”. Yet he believes Ireland “hasn’t hit rock bottom … If the Gathering can help to start the climb, then all for the best. But I haven’t asked anyone back for it.”

One should not confuse lugubrious pub chat for economic analysis. After all, Irish living standards have returned to 2002, not 1902, levels. However, travelling around the country, it is hard to escape the feeling that I have gatecrashed a national wake. In one corner, there is sadness, anger and fear. In another, there is talk that the worst is not yet over. There is also a sense of the comic absurdity of the past few years; a pervasive you-have-to-laugh-or-you’d-cry attitude.

“We are a humbled country,” Olivia O’Leary tells me in Dublin. The 63-year-old doyenne of Irish journalism and former BBC Newsnight presenter, adds that in the boom years, “we thought we were too posh for tourism”. O’Leary supports the Gathering, although its marketing has so far had only limited penetration. “Has it started yet?” she asks.

The campaign has had to compete with lots of bad news. Although Ireland returned to the capital markets last summer and in February exchanged the so-called promissory notes it issued at the height of the crisis for long-term debt, its ratio of debt to gross domestic product is about 120 per cent. Output remains 7-11 per cent smaller than it was in 2007, depending on how it is measured. Unemployment is dropping slowly but remains high, at 14 per cent.

As I leave Dublin and drive west, radio bulletins are replete with tales of austerity. Giddy auctioneers boast of record volumes at a distressed property sale. Civil servants protest against pay cuts. The health minister is trapped in a lift. The only other prominent story is the Beckettian tale of a man in Florida who died after a sinkhole 20 feet wide opened up beneath him. Somehow it seems eerily apt.

It is the opening night of the Book Club Festival in Ennis, a gem of a town in County Clare. The main event is a meeting of 10 book clubs to discuss Star of the Sea, Joseph O’Connor’s 2003 novel set during the Irish famine. The author is present. Eighty women and six beleaguered husbands consider the first discussion question about the role of emigration in the book. One woman shares her story: “When I read Star of the Sea, I read it as a historical novel. But it’s not. Now, I have a daughter and she’s moved to Boston. And she’s not coming back.”

Like many Gathering events, the Ennis festival seems as much about bringing a community together as bringing the diaspora home. Ireland’s economic collapse continues to have profound social effects. Gathering organisers speak openly of the need to lift spirits. The legacy of the event may end up greatest at a local level, through rebuilt social capital – rather than through shaken-down foreigners.

The six ladies who founded the book club that gave rise to the festival are all in favour of the Gathering. Amid the itinerant interruptions for gossip and greetings for Bridget Ginnity, who is home from Helsinki, I ask why.

“It will help people realise that we have beautiful things,” says Ciana Campbell, a 54-year-old communications consultant, who was initially sceptical about the Gathering. “Like in France, with those little village festivals with the cherries out and the bottles of wine.” Cathy McDermott, a 51-year-old accountant, agrees: “I think people do need it. I mean, we were always good for a party anyway. But I think people need it. I really do.” Mary Donnelly, 52, is hosting another Gathering event in May where the public health nurse will welcome all those who share her surname.

The joy of getting together – of gathering – may have been overlooked in Ireland’s recent past, suggests O’Leary. Gathering Ireland has certainly tapped in to the country’s tradition of meeting and storytelling. Few would deny Ireland’s affinity (and faculty) for talk. Perhaps its legendary craic has therapeutic qualities.

Booker prize-winning Irish novelist John Banville tells me at the book festival how a humbleness was lost in the boom. His wife and he played a dinner party game where they would describe the features of the archetypal Celtic Tiger. “The person we came up with was a 50-year-old woman, with a 15-year-old in the back of her black SUV, driving at 60mph in a bus lane, smoking and giving you the finger.” It’s a game they no longer play.

The next day, in Cork, Tollie Lee and fellow Americans are enjoying the hospitality and the music at the Sacred Harp Convention. David Ivey, 57, from Madison, Alabama, inherited his love of the singing from his father and grandfather. Also passed down was an amorphous sense of Irish identity, unproven but deeply felt. He says his family tell a story, perhaps apocryphal, about Irish ancestors who lived on a hill. Ivey’s grandfather went to live on a raised plateau in later life, a decision that he ascribes to the power of belonging. “I can’t get him off of that mountain if I tried,” Ivey says. I ask about the Gathering. Ivey is an enthusiastic supporter but adds: “What’s sad is that all the younger Irish people are leaving. I know they don’t want to leave their home, but they have to.”

Later I head west from Ireland’s second-biggest city to Killarney in county Kerry. Here, emigration is hurting where it matters most – sport. I arrive at the Gathering event in Lahard to find an ad hoc greyhound track in the middle of a damp field. “Please make your surplus bitches known to registration,” says an endearingly incomprehensible accent over the public address system. Pairs of dogs whizz past under columns of sunlight perforating the mist.

The race, attended by about 200 people, is in aid of a local cancer charity and the community’s sports teams. Gary Moloney, an Eircom engineer who has enough work for only five months of the year, tells me how departing players have left Gaelic football and soccer teams bereft. His youngest son is only 15 but plays in the local under-18 soccer team, which his middle son left to go and find work in Australia. Three Gaelic football teams in a nearby village have merged. “It’s not getting better,” Moloney says of the local economy. “Not a week goes by without two suicides in this county, including a number in this village.”

On average, 127 Irish people emigrated each day in the year to April 2012 – “levels not experienced since the famine”, according to the Irish Independent newspaper. A total of 46,500 Irish citizens left, an increase of 16 per cent on the previous 12 months. In addition, 40,600 foreign nationals also left, the third annual increase in a row. More than one-third of emigrants were aged 15-24 years.

The return of emigration as an issue also gets to the heart of Ireland’s perception of itself – at least as marketed by the Gathering. As Roy Foster, a celebrated Irish historian based at the University of Oxford, says, “[The Gathering] does tie into the whole emigration thing, which is so much part of the Irish experience and about which the Irish people feel so ambivalent.

“You know, on the one hand the Irish emigrate very well. But on the other hand, there’s always been a nationalist analysis that sees emigrants as somehow letting down the country.” This was tied up in Irish resistance to British rule, he says. “In the extreme nationalist period of the early 20th century, they used to be called ‘traitors’.”

The nature of home also set the stage for the debate between WB Yeats and James Joyce. The poet believed that liberty for Ireland would come from an embrace of its national culture. The novelist rejected this route.

At the end of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus announces that he is “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race”. Joyce’s work was a lifelong effort to find a new language for Irish-ness, through symbols, syntax and modernism.

A decade ago, these debates were old hat. The country had moved far and fast. Annual gross income growth was in double digits for much of the 1990s. Immigration made the country diverse – Dublin especially so. For Poles, Ireland was a perfect mix of labour-hungry, Catholic and relatively liberal. At the music festival in Cork, 35-year-old Magdalena Gryszko from Warsaw, sings to me the schoolyard ditty her friends used to tease boys – “I love you like I love Ireland.”

But the velocity and distance of the economic crash may have left a cultural impact. Two of the biggest openings of Dublin’s theatre season are the musical version of the film Once, a tale of Irish-Czech romance, and a revival of Declan Hughes’ 1991 play Digging for Fire. The latter marked the coming of the Celtic Tiger period, Foster says. Its return marks a rethinking of the legacy of the boom.

Gabriel Byrne’s comments suggest more than just the concerns of an Irishman in America being asked to dip into his capacious pockets. In recent comments reported by the Irish press, he seems to recognise that the government needs to be sensitive about how it presents Ireland. Shamrocks and scenery don’t do justice to the levels of national soul-searching. “If you’re going to have a relationship with the diaspora, you have to nurture it,” Byrne says. “You have to take care of it, you have to tend it, you have to pay attention to it.”

Ultimately, the numbers through the arrival terminals will determine the success of the Gathering. If it can persuade people with feelings of belonging to Ireland to come visit and spend money, it will have done its job as a tourist drive. But the reaction to it, amid a new wave of emigration and introspection, suggests that Byrne (and Joyce) was right. It is not the diaspora that is the solution to Ireland’s problems. Revival once again must come from within.

Cancer risk for women rises with gaps between smear tests

  

Young women who go years between smear tests are putting themselves at increased risk, according to a new study.

Certain types of abnormalities that can lead to cervical cancer may be missed when there is a large gap between smears.

Guidelines in the US recommend that women under 21 don’t need to be screened for cervical cancer and smears can be done once every three years after that.

Lisa Barroilhet, of the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison and the study’s lead author, said she agrees with those recommendations and her findings are not a reason to change them.

But Pap smears have picked up abnormalities that helped find problems further up the cervix that could lead to cancer, she said.

Ms Barroilhet and her team reviewed the records of 242 women with adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) – cervical abnormalities that can lead to adenocarcinoma, one form of cervical cancer.

Those cancers occur further up the cervix than the squamous cell carcinomas typically caught by smears, so they’re not a focus of smear-related guidelines, she added.

Lesions

However, she and colleagues found most young women in the study were diagnosed with AIS because of other abnormal lesions picked up on smears that led to morebiopsies.

That was the case for 16 of the 17 women diagnosed with AIS before age 21, they wrote in Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Even though smears weren’t designed to catch adenocarcinoma precursors, the findings mean less-frequent smears could lead to more of those full-on cancers developing, Barroilhet said. That’s especially a concern because they can be a faster-growing type of cancer.

But Rebecca Horvat, a pathologist from the University of Kansas Medical Centre representing the American Society for Clinical Pathology, said most abnormal lesions still take years to develop into adenocarcinomas. “It doesn’t do (that), as soon as you get it, you get a cancer,” said Horvat, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “It can be easily picked up every three years.”

Bright comet ‘lighting sky’ as it flies by Earth

    

THIS IMAGE OF THE COMET WAS MADE WHEN IT WAS VISIBLE IN THE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE, BUT NOW THOSE IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE SHOULD GET A CHANCE TO SEE THE ICY MASS

Stargazers could enjoy a rare spectacle as a bright comet swings into the Northern Hemisphere.

The icy mass, called C/2011 L4 Pan-Starrs, should be visible with binoculars or a telescope from 8 March.

But in the following days, it will become even brighter and could be seen with the naked eye.

Astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere have already been treated to a fly past, with reports that the body was as bright as stars in the Plough.

Mark Bailey, director of the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland, said: “We have great hopes for this comet. Of course we are always very cautious – even now we don’t know how bright it is going to get – but we are keeping out fingers crossed.”

Once in a lifetime

The comet was first discovered in June 2011, spotted by the Pan-Starrs telescope (hence its name) in Hawaii as a faint object more than a billion

IF YOU HAVE FOUND IT WITH BINOCULARS, HAVE A GOOD HUNT AROUND AND SEE IF YOU CAN SEE IT WITH THE NAKED EYE”

Astronomers believe it originated in the Oort Cloud, a region of space packed full of comets, and has been hurtling towards the Sun for millions of years.

It is thought to be a non-periodic comet, which means this could be the first time it has ever passed through the inner Solar System, and it might not return for another 100,000 years.

On 10 March, it will make its closest approach to the Sun, passing at a distance of about 45 million kilometres.

As it heats up, the ice and dust in the Pan-Starrs’ outer crust turn to gas, making it bright in the night sky. Solar wind and pressure from sunlight gives the body its characteristic double tail.

Prof Bailey said: “The closer you get to the Sun, the more of this material is ejected, and therefore the brighter the comet can be.”

He said that the nucleus of the comet was estimated to be about 20-30km in diameter, but the gas and dust surrounding meant it could span more than a million kilometres.

The 12 and 13 March could provide the best viewing opportunity. At this time, it will move further from the Sun, but should be easier to spot in the night sky, providing it is a clear night.

“After sunset, scan the horizon roughly in the western direction. On the 12 and 13 March, there is a nice association with the thin crescent Moon,” advised Prof Bailey.

“You can use the Moon as a guide, and search just down or to the left of the Moon. Through binoculars you should be able to see the head of the comet and certainly the two types of the tail.”

He added: “I would always advise people to hunt for comets with binoculars, but if you have found it with binoculars, have a good hunt around and see if you can see it with the naked eye. That’s quite a challenge – but it is a wonderful thing to have seen.”

After this, the comet will begin to appear later and higher up in the night sky. And then, as April draws near, it will vanish back into the depths of space where it can only be seen with large telescopes.

If the weather proves poor during this period, astronomers could be offered another chance for a celestial delight at the end of the year when comet Ison should grace our skies.

Flying four times closer to the Sun than Pan-starrs, it could prove even brighter. But there is also a chance that it could break up.