Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Irish banks told to cuts costs by up to 10%

    

Ireland wants its main banks to cut their wage bills by as much as 10 percent after a new report on Tuesday showed that pay rates at Irish banks increased between 2008 and 2012, as the country waded through the depths of its economic crisis. The government said its state-supported banks AIB,Bank of Ireland (BOI) and Permanent TSB must cut salary and pensions costs and also wants them to implement new working arrangements to deliver savings.

Ireland has slowly begun to cut its exposure to the banking sector after a property crash that ravaged the Iris economy forced it to pump 64 billion euros ($83 billion) – or around 40 percent of annual economic output – into its stricken lenders.

Since 2008, total remuneration at the three banks fell by 6 to 11 percent but rose by 1 percent at the now liquidated Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC) – formerly Anglo Irish Bank which was at the centre of Ireland’s downward spiral that led to a 67.5 billion euros EU-IMF bailout.

The report by Mercer Consultants shows, however, that salary levels at Irish banks are behind European averages for most grades.

The saving at the banks are to be achieved through reductions in payroll and pension benefits, new working arrangements and greater efficiency, according to Ireland’s department of finance.

The report found that in the four-year period, the average salaries for bank workers increased but pay for bank bosses still lags behind that of their counterparts in large companies.

In response to the report’s finding AIB reiterated its support for the government’s policy to reduce its cost base, adding that a programme of staff cuts is expected to achieve over 200 million in savings when completed by 2014.

While a spokesman for Permanent TSB said: “We accept the challenge laid down by the shareholder to reduce total remuneration costs…we will set up a process to achieve this target in as fair and equitable a manner as possible.”

A simple screening test can reduce heart failure risk a new research claims

  

A simple screening and management programme can be effective in preventing heart failure (HF), according to new Irish research.

Irish researchers have found that screening using a special blood test, followed by targeted care of people at risk can dramatically reduce the incidence of HF and in particular, hospital admissions for this condition and other cardiovascular conditions.

The results of the Stop HF study claims carried out on more than 1,300 people, were presented at the American College of Cardiology conference in San Francisco.

The study en rolled patients without symptoms over 40 years of age with risk factors for heart failure and divided them into an intervention and control group.

Patients in the intervention group were screened for blood levels of B-type nartriuretic peptide (BNP), a hormone that indicates how well the heart is functioning. These patients received specialised care if it was necessary.

Control group patients received standard care from their doctors.

The researchers found that a significantly lower number of patients in the intervention group than in the control group required hospitalisation for heat failure or left ventricular dysfunction (problems with blood pumping in the heart) and they had lower rates of emergency hospitalisation for major cardiovascular events.

Two in five patients in the intervention group showed elevated BNP levels at some point during the study.

These patients received an echocardiogram and continued care under both their physicians and a specialist cardiology service.

The researchers have pointed out that other studies on heart failure have focused on treatment of patients with established heart failure. They hope that this new study will encourage healthcare providers to look at prevention as well, by implementing what they say is a simple, low cost screening system for at-risk patients.

“Our study shows that simple blood text screening, followed by targeted care of people at heightened risk of heart failure, can result in a dramatic reduction in cardiovascular events,” said Prof. Ken McDonald, one of the authors of the study.

“This is good news, since heart failure has become a major public health problem, and middle aged adults today have a 20% to 30% lifetime risk of developing heart failure.”

The Irish study was sponsored by St Vincent’s Screening to Prevent Heart Failure

Limerick students suspended over online Teacher ‘slur’

             

Twenty eight students were suspended from a large secondary school after an inappropriate message about a teacher was put online.

A number of the students from Colaiste Chiarain secondary school in Croom, Co Limerick, were suspended last week for two days while others, who were on work experience, began their suspension yesterday.

t’s understood the controversial message on Facebook featured an image and text concerning the personal life of a teacher. The item was eventually removed from the social media site, according to the principal Noel Malone.

Mr Malone defended what he described as an “unprecedented” decision to suspend the students insisting they had breached the school’s anti-bullying policy.

He said it was a “gross invasion of a member of the school community’s personal life”.

Facebook allows users who view a message to click a button showing their appreciation by “liking” it. It is understood all 28 suspended students had done so. Mr Malone insisted he thought hard before suspending the students and said the parents of those concerned were for the most part “very supportive” of his decision.

“Basically, the school would take a very strong view on this, we need to constantly be vigilant to protect all our school community.”

Sensitive

Cholaiste Chiarain is one of the largest secondary schools in Limerick with about 70 teachers and 900 students.

“Obviously, it’s a very sensitive matter for the people concerned but what I can say is that certain inappropriate postings on a newly created Facebook page – not part of the official school website or an individual student’s website – was brought to my attention.”

He said students and staff needed to realise the consequences of what can be done “quite inadvertently” but where “the consequences can be very grave”.

Irish language awareness programme being developed for Gardaí

  

A total of 756 complaints were made last year to the office of An Coimisinéir Teanga

An Irish language awareness programme is being developed for Gardaí following concerns about the competence of some members of the force to conduct business through Irish.It follows an investigation by An Coimisinéir Teanga, who is launching his annual report in Galway.

The office monitors how public bodies comply with the provisions of the Official Languages Act.

A total of 756 complaints were made last year – the largest number since the office of An Coimisinéir Teanga was established.

Most were resolved informally, but 13 formal investigations were instigated.

In one instance an Irish speaker who had been stopped for a minor road traffic matter in Dublin was arrested and detained until a garda was found to deal with him through Irish.

Coimisinéir Seán Ó Cuirreáin said he was struck by the fact that Gardaí who had been educated to Leaving Cert level and completed training in Templemore were unable to ask a driver “Cad is ainm duit?” or seek his address through Irish.

On foot of the investigation, Gardaí are to receive a laminated card with useful Irish phrases to ensure they can conduct some business through Irish.Other issues identified in the report include problems with bilingual signage, a lack of Irish classifications on DVD labels and a shortage of civil servants with competence in the language.Ordinance Survey Ireland was also found to be in breach of its obligations by not showing place names in Irish – or in Irish and English – on some maps.

In general, Mr Ó Cuirreáin said last year was not a good one for the promotion of the Irish language.

He said for every step forward there appeared to have been two steps back.

The report states that there is serious apprehension among Irish speakers about how the State is protecting and promoting the language.

Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Mr Ó Curreáin said he was happy that Garda management had taken onboard his suggestion that there is a requirement for a language awareness programme.

“Speaking Irish isn’t a crime. When I investigated this matter I detected an attitude among certain members of the Gardaí involved in the case that Irish speakers should be treated as if they were speakers of a foreign language in this country which professes to have two official languages.

He said that “Irish speakers don’t require any level of service above that which is provided to English speakers”.

The Banks are still not lending to Irish SME’s

  

It is as hard as it has ever been for a small business to get access to finance from the banks, a new report claims.

The latest quarterly bank survey from lobby group ISME show 65% of small and medium sized enterprises believe it is getting harder to access credit.

More than half of companies who applied for funding in the last three months were refused credit by their banks, little changed on previous quarters, while an overwhelming 95pc of those surveyed believed the government was having little or no effect on easing credit conditions for SMEs.

ISME chief executive Mark Fielding said the survey “demonstrates that the banking system for SMEs is not working”.

“While it may suit the government to believe the bankers’ fiction [that they are lending], the truth of the matter is that banks are deleveraging through curtailing SME lending, thereby sabotaging the economic recovery through pure self-interest,” he added.

Nasa drilling shows Mars once had all the ingredients needed ‘for life’

 

Curiosity rover returns signs of sulphur, oxygen and carbon, Dust drilled from a Martian rock confirms that conditions on the Red Planet once included all the ingredients for life. The chemical menu included everything a hungry microbe might have needed when water flowed across the planet’s surface.

The findings announced earlier today by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration arose after a detailed analysis of dust recovered from an ancient rock drilled into by the Curiosity rover, currently making the rounds on the Martian surface.

The rover drilled into the rock and dropped the resultant dust grains into its Sample Analysis at Mars and Chemistry and Mineralogy instruments. It returned signs of sulphur, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and carbon, all key chemical ingredients for life.

Whether Mars could have supported an environment suited to life is a “fundamental” question for the Curiosity mission, said Nasa ’s Michael Meyer. “From what we know now, the answer is yes.”

Curiosity rover was touring an ancient stream bed below Gale Crater last month and used its drill to bore into a rock. The Yellowknife Bay region was either the end of a river system or a shallow lake bed and the rock was mudstone containing clay minerals and other chemicals, Nasa said.

They form in the presence of water with minerals in the river or lake sediments. The chemical analysis conducted by Curiosity showed this water course was neither acidic nor harshly salty.

The mix on earth provides a varied diet for microbes that can use these elements for energy production. If microbes were present when the water and chemicals were then life could have been supported.

The scientists also revealed a new “grey” Mars, one less oxidised than the red dust that typifies the Martian surface. It was “a very ancient, but strangely new grey Mars where conditions once were favourable for life”, said John Grotzinger, Mars science Laboratory project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Curiosity will remain in the Yellowknife Bay area for many more weeks before striking off to explore the central mound of Gale Crater.