Enda Kenny confirms talks with the Troika on delay to water charges
THE IRISH GOVERNMENT IS NEGOTIATING WITH THE TROIKA TO DELAY THE INTRODUCTION OF WATER CHARGES UNTIL JANUARY 2015, TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY HAS TOLD THE DAIL.
The bailout agreement says they must be introduced next year, but Mr Kenny says the Coalition wants to push this back.
However, as previously revealed by the Irish Independent, Mr Kenny said homeowners would receive their first bills in 2015 – but they would be backdated to include the last three months of 2014.
The Troika is in Dublin for its review of the bailout this week, and the delay will be raised by Government at the meetings.
Senior government sources previously said “substantially more than 50pc” of water meters must be installed before people are billed.
Ministers want to avoid assessed charges – based on estimated water usage – which will be paid by houses without meters when the water tax is introduced. Assessed water charges are likely to be based on house size, and they would be hugely damaging politically.
It would also be hugely damaging for Fine Gael and Labour to introduce the charges before the local elections, which take place next summer.
Ryan Tubridy sets good example as he insists they can cut my €495k pay even more
Ryan Tubridy says he’s willing to take an even bigger cut in his €495,000 RTE salary.
The 39-year-old says it’s “down to the bosses in RTE” what he gets paid.
He said he had already taken a major pay cut and was willing to take more – if requested.
“I have delivered every time a knock has come on my door for a pay cut. I have taken at least 32pc already. I will not be found wanting. I never have in the past and I won’t be in the future,” Ryan said.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny was among those shocked last month when RTE revealed the salaries of its top talent, branding them as “extraordinary”.
TV3′s head of news, Andrew Hanlon, described the payments to stars at the national broadcaster as “outrageous”.
According to the figures, Tubridy has taken a 32pc cut from the €723,500 he was paid in 2011.
When asked if his current salary was “excessive”, Ryan deflected the issue, saying that was a question not for him but for RTE management.
“I think you would have to ask the bosses, they are the ones who decide what gets paid.”
Doing a live 2fm outside broadcast from the Sailing Club in Skerries, north Co Dublin, the RTE star also raised doubts about a new BAI code banning presenters voicing their own opinions on current affairs. It comes into force this summer.
“I think they will have a tough time policing that – good luck with that I say. Irish radio is all about opinions.”
Irish Central Bank Plan could see ’one and two cent coins’ phased out
1 & 2c 
irish CENTRAL BANK REPORT SAYS SMALL COINS TOO EXPENSIVE TO MINT
Prices in shops should be rounded up or down in an effort to do away one and two cent coins, a report recommends today.
The National Payments Plan published by the Central Bank today also recommends the public sector stop using cheques. The recommendations are aimed at saving €1 billion to the Irish economy by increasing the use of electronic forms of payment such as debit cards and electronic banking.
The Central Bank found that one and two cent coins are not actively used by consumers and are expensive to mint. In many countrie, including the Netherlandsand Finland, low denomination coins have effectively been removed from circulation through the use of the rounding rule.
With this rule, goods and services are still priced in multiples of one or two cent but are rounded up at the till. For expample a bill of €56.21 is rounded down to €56.20 while a bill of €56.23 is rounded up to €56.25.
The NPP says a pilot should be run in a mid-sized Irish town to investigate consumer and merchant reaction to the use of a rounding rule in Ireland. Bray, Co Wicklow, and Drogheda and Dundalk in Co Louth are in the running to be chosen to pilot the scheme.
Ronnie O’Toole, project manager of the NPP said “Customers tend to hang on to their small change so it doesn’t circulate. A one cent coin costs two cent to mint due to the rising cost in metal. They don’t buy anything as no goods or services are priced at this level and very few machines accept them.”
The recommendations in the plan include setting of a date next year at which time the public sector will no longer write cheques to or from business users.
Ireland has the second highest usage of cheques among major European countries, just behind France. Three in ten Irish people own a cheque book with with a particularly high prevalence among the elderly and the farming community. The vast majority of cheques written were written by consumers as payments to small businessess and other consumers.
Ireland has the highest ATM withdrawal per capita and still pays out half of all social welfare payments in cash.
Speaking at the launch of the plan, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Stefan Gerlach said: “Operating an excessively paper based payment system is like imposing an unnecessary tax on the economy, pulling scarce resources into activities which can be done more effectivelywith electronic payments.” Mr Gerlach said Ireland can and should be a leader in the payments area because it has the youngest population inEurope andis a fast adopter of new technology.
Other recommendations from the NPP include increasing the dispensing of €10 notes in ATM’s, new technologies such as mobile payments and contactles cards and modernisation of social welfare payments.
The National Payments Plan steering Committee oversaw the development og the plan and has now been approved by Government. The monitoring and implementation of the plan will continue until the end of 2014 with a target of doubling the number of electronic payments before 2015.
Chairman of the National Payments Plan and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, Tony Grimes said the plan would expand options for consumers and businesses.”Our vision is for a society where modern forms of payment will be universally accepted and be the preferred payment for most. However cash will remain a widely used method of payment while cheques continue to be available for those consumers who want to use them.”
A Budget-Friendly diet: Healthy foods your wallet will love & thrive on
You don’t need to spend a fortune to eat good-for-you food. In fact, a new report reveals that buying healthy food saves money.
That’s worth celebrating (you could hear our whoops and cheers for miles when this important info made the news), because plenty of wrong-headed reports have led North Americans to believe that healthy diets are wallet-busters.
What we love most about this game-changing study is that it happened in the real world — and got real-world results.
Researchers from the Miriam Hospital and the Rhode Island Community Food Bank asked 83 people, all trying to make ends meet on very small incomes, if they’d like to learn how to cook and eat a plant-based Mediterranean diet.
Yup, it’s the same kind of low-meat, veggie-packed plan that we endorse in “YOU: On a Diet” and “YOU: The Owner’s Manual” for a healthier weight, less belly fat and a lower risk for heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer.
Volunteers took some healthy-eating classes, then shopped and cooked as they pleased. Eight months later, researchers collected their grocery receipts and asked them to step on a scale.
The results? The average weekly grocery bill was cut in half, saving families about $160 per month. Half of the participants lost weight. And food insecurity — a hunger and health worry for a growing number of people — shrank, too. With more food in the pantry, reliance on the local food bank dropped.
That’s a win-win-win situation!
What about those studies claiming that healthy food is only for the rich? It’s true that a steady diet of $30-a-pound, wild-caught fish, trendy grass-fed beef and fancy “natural” products can rack up a three-figure grocery bill, pronto.
But you don’t have to eat that way to do what’s right for your body and to thrill your taste buds.
If you look at the cost per gram or per portion — more realistic measures — for starters, fruits and veggies are an economical, smart buy. To save money, lose weight and amp up your health and taste quotient, here’s our advice.
No. 1: Plan around plant foods. You’ll save money by giving beans and vegetables starring roles at mealtime and focusing on fruit for sweet treats.
Cutting back on the amount of meat, snack foods and dessert items in your cart keeps more cash in your pocket — and can help you lose weight and improve your health.
The crouching bird, A hidden dinosaur
How birds evolved their unusual standing position from dinosaur relatives
Birds have evolved an unusual way of standing, their legs tipped back into a distinctive crouching position. A new theory has emerged about how this happened and and not surprisingly the trait arises as so often from their distant relatives the dinosaurs.
Researchers in Britain, Germany, China and the US used advanced 3-d computer scanning to model the skeletons of dinosaurs to show how evolution changed the way they stood and moved. Importantly, the models also allowed the researchers to add flesh to the bones, showing how dinosaur posture changed as forelimbs and tails gained or lost weight.
Their controversial findings suggest that it was not loss of tail weight but increased forelimb weight that caused the crouched standing position to emerge. Details of their findings are released on line this evening (wed) by the journal Nature .
Our leg bones line up when we stand, with our centre of mass positioned directly above our feet. Birds too need a centre of mass above their feet, but their heavy wings mean the only way this can happen is if they tip back, lowering their thigh bones into a horizontal position.
This decided crouch was evident in the dinosaur species from which birds evolved, the two-legged theropods. Prof John Hutchinson of the Structure and Motion Laboratory at the Royal Veterinary College in Britain and colleagues scanned in the skeletons of 17 dinosaurs and then used digital technology to put meat on the bones. This could be modified to match the skeletal changes that occurred as dinosaurs developed their bird-like posture.
Palaeontologists had long assumed that the driver for this was a shrinking counterbalancing tail, bringing the theropod thigh into a crouch. The report’s authors found however that an increase in the weight and size of the forelimbs is what actually brought on the evolutionary change. “Our results surprised even us,” Prof Hutchinson said.
These enlarged forelimbs began to emerge in feathered dinosaurs Microraptor and Velociraptor and in the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx. But instead of a long tail serving as counterbalance, these species adjusted leg bone position to control centre of mass making the tail an unnecessary nuisance.
At this point the modified forelimbs were used for purposes other than flight, but the evolutionary scene was set and the dinosaur crouch became an ideal body form for the birds that followed.
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