Donie's Ireland news BLOG Saturday

Irish Coalition’s €6 billon pension fund gamble to kick-start economy

  

The Irish Government is smashing open the State’s savings in a €6.4bn all-or-nothing gamble aimed at kick-starting the economy.

The stimulus package is the clearest sign yet of a shift from a policy of “austerity” to one aimed at direct investment to foster economic growth.

The pension fund is being wound up and the money will be put into a new Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF).

The money will be ploughed into projects such as road building, water infrastructure and school-building programmes, where there is a known need for investment and where the Government thinks it will be able to make a return on the money spent.

As part of the radical plan, new laws are being introduced that will force the National Pensions Reserve Fund to sell off its billions of investments.

This money will then be used to fund two new state investment agencies charged with overseeing the high-risk strategy. The money is currently invested in profitable stocks and bonds abroad and had been earmarked to cover the cost of civil servant pensions into the future.

“The move is a very important shift in government policy,” Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte said.

Legislation to wind up the National Pensions Reserve Fund (NPRF) and put new state investment agencies New Era and the ISIF investment bodies on a statutory basis was announced by ministers Michael Noonan, Brendan Howlinand Pat Rabbitte and the minister of state responsible for New Era, Fergus O’Dowd.

The plan is aimed in particular at getting some of the 150,000 construction workers who lost their jobs since 2007 back to work, and, crucially, spending in the economy again.

Fianna Fail’s Sean Fleming warned that without clear targets for measuring progress under the plan, it was hard to see it as “anything more than another PR-driven announcement”.

It is understood the Government did not need permission from the EU/IMFfor the move, because the cash has never been covered by the so-called memorandum of understanding setting out the bailout terms.

But the move is part of a wider European move towards policies aimed explicitly at job creation.

“Disruptive action is needed because around 45pc of people on the live register have been there long-term,” according to Philip O’Sullivan, an economist at Investec.

The challenge for the Government will be finding the right projects to back, he said.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan said using the cash to drive economic growth rather than “squirrelling it away in savings” makes sense.

“The best way to meet the cost of pensions is to grow the economy,” he said.

The plan is to invest on a commercial basis and to re-invest back into the economy as cash goes back into the fund, but details of just where the money will go and how many jobs are likely to be created remain vague.

Public Expenditure Minister Brendan Howlin said much of the funds will be used in Public Private Partnership deals to match investment from the private sector and from Europe.

It is already happening with projects like the upgrade of the N7 at Newlands Cross, and of the N11 Dublin to Wexford road.

It is likely to come into force in the second half of this year, but the NPRF has already been shifting money into projects at home in anticipation of the changes.

Over the past two years it has invested around €1.5bn of the €6.4bn in Irish projects, including joint venture deals that have set up funds to lend to small business.

The latest plans include a major shake-up of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA), which will get a simplified management structure and will see its New Era unit given a major say in the running of the ESB, Bord Gais, Coillte and Eirgrid.

Those semi-states, which have a turnover of €6bn a year and control more than €13bn of the State’s capital assets, will be grouped together for the first time under the plan.

Irish Health insurance charges to rise by 30% because of HSE’s hike in hospital charges

 

GOVERNMENT TO CHARGE PRIVATE PATIENTS FULL COST OF USING PUBLIC HOSPITAL BEDS

Private patients occupying public beds will be charged up to €1,122 a night in place of the existing charge of €75, under legislation published by the Department of Health yesterday.
Health insurance premiums are set to rise by over 30 per cent by the end of the year on foot of Government plans to charge private patients the full cost of using public hospital beds, insurers said last night.

Private patients occupying public beds will be charged up to €1,122 a night in place of the existing charge of €75, under legislation published by the Department of Health yesterday.

The decision to press ahead with charging private patients the full economic cost of using public beds will force over 300,000 people to give up insurance, leaving just a third of the population with cover by 2015, the four health insurers warned.

Minister for Health James Reilly last night rejected the insurers’ claims, accusing them of “scaremongering”. Dr Reilly said it was “neither fair, reasonable nor acceptable” for private patients to be subsidised in the public health system and claimed insurers weren’t doing “near enough” to reduce costs.

Industry lobbied
The measure was announced in last December’s budget but the industry lobbied hard to have it delayed, or introduced on a phased basis. However, the Government was under pressure from the troika to introduce the change.

The Health (Amendment) Act applies charges to all private inpatient services in public hospitals, increases the €75 charge for all inpatient services in public hospitals to €80 and increases the asset contribution payable by new residents of long-stay residential homes under the Fair Deal scheme from 5 per cent to 7.5 per cent.

The Government hopes to raise €120 million from the combined measures next year. While it had aimed to raise €60 million this year, this is in doubt because of the delay in introducing the legislation.

At present, 20 per cent of beds in public hospitals are designated for private use, and insurers pay the full cost of using these beds. However, large numbers of patients are accommodated in public beds outside of this allocation, for which the current charge of €75 applies.

After the legislation passes, private patients will be levied a charge of €1,122 a night for a single-bed room in any of 25 hospitals. In smaller hospitals, a charge of €911 will apply. In most cases, where patients have private cover, insurers pick up the bill. Charges of up to €860 a night will be levied for “multi-occupancy rooms”. This definition appears to have replaced semi-private cover, which guaranteed rooms contained no more than four beds. For inpatient services where no overnight stay is involved, the daily charge will be €730.
Health insurers
The Insurance Ireland, health insurance council, which includes the State’s four main health insurers, warned the proposed new bed charges would increase reliance on the public health sector, thereby adding to the exchequer burden.

32% of Irish seven year old children overweight or obese and the problem is getting worse

  

ONE IN THREE IRISH SEVEN-YEAR-OLDS ARE EITHER OVERWEIGHT OR OBESE, ACCORDING TO EXPERTS.

The Oireachtas Health Committee was told yesterday that around 32% of seven year olds in Ireland are overweight or obese.

Ireland now ranks fifth in the EU when it comes to childhood obesity. The lifetime health consequences of obesity are severe, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, impotence and infertility, depression, amputation and blindness. According to figures from the Department of Health, every year in Ireland, some 2,000 premature deaths are directly attributable to the consequences, a trend the Department says is “rising relentlessly”.

The cost to the Irish state of illness, absences from work and premature deaths related to obesity is estimated to be around four billion euros annually.

Paediatrician Dr Sinead Murphy told the Committee that the situation is worsening and if the problem was not tackled, nearly half of adults in Ireland will be obese by 2030.

There are around 100,000 obese children in Ireland at present.

How marine mammals hold their breath

   

Scientists say they have solved the mystery of one of the most extreme adaptations in the animal kingdom: how marine mammals store enough oxygen to hold their breath for up to an hour.

The team studied myoglobin, an oxygen-storing protein in mammals’ muscles and found that, in whales and seals, it has special “non-stick” properties.

This allowed the animals to pack huge amounts of oxygen into their muscles without “clogging them up”.

Dr Michael Berenbrink from the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool took part in the study.

He said that scientists had long wondered how marine mammals managed to pack so much of this vital protein into their bodies.

“At high enough concentrations, [proteins] tend to stick together, so we tried to understand how seals and whales evolved higher and higher concentrations of this protein in their muscles without a loss of function,” he told BBC News.

 The sperm whale can dive for up to an hour and to depths of a kilometre

The team extracted pure myoglobin from the muscles of mammals – from the land-based cow, to the semi-aquatic otter, all the way up elite divers like the sperm whale.

Led by researcher Scott Mirceta, this painstaking examination traced the changes in myoglobin in deep-diving mammals through 200 million years of evolutionary history.

And it revealed that the best mammalian breath-holding divers had evolved a non-stick variety of myoglobin.

The secret, Dr Berenbrink explained, was a subtle but crucial piece of chemical trickery; marine mammal myoglobin is positively charged.

It also allows us to estimate the dive times of the ancient ancestors of whales”

This has important physical consequences. Dr Berenbrink explained: “Like the similar poles of a magnet; the proteins repel one another.”

“In this way we think the animals are able to pack really high concentrations of these proteins into their muscles and avoid them sticking together and clogging up the muscles.”

Dr Berenbrink said he was excited by the discovery because it helped make sense of the incredible changes that took place in mammals’ bodies as they evolved from land-based animals to the aquatic, air-breathing creatures that inhabit the oceans today.

It showed, he said, the physiological change that accompanied the land to water transition of mammals.

“It also allows us to estimate the dive times of the ancient ancestors of whales,” Dr Berenbrink explained.

“We can look the fossils and predict the dive times they had.”

Understanding exactly how mammals’ bodies store oxygen so efficiently could also aid medical research.

Copying this bit of natural chemistry could aid the development of oxygen-carrying liquids that would deliver emergency supplies of oxygen to a person’s tissues when a blood transfusion is not possible.

But its biggest impact will be in the realm of evolutionary biology.

Harbour seals routinely hold their breath for 30 minutes and even sleep underwater

Nicholas Pyenson, curator of fossil marine mammals at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC, said that the study was an exciting advancement for understanding the evolution of deep-diving.

“The idea that we can estimate maximal dive times for early diverging relatives of today’s marine mammals will have a profound impact on how we think about their ancient ecology and biology,” he told BBC News.

Professor Michael Fedak from the University of St Andrews’ Sea Mammal Research Unit pointed out that myoglobin was only “part of the story” of how marine mammals were able to dive.

“But it’s an important part,” he said.

The scientist, who was not involved in this study, explained that a great deal of research at the moment was looking into how marine mammals manage to survive repeatedly cutting off and re-establishing the blood supply to their body tissues, something he likened to repeatedly suffering a crush injury.

“But being able to pick up a few [fossilised] bones of an extinct marine mammal and estimate its dive time from that – that’s miraculous.”

The first few Minutes after Death

  

After countless accounts of near-death experiences, dating as far back as ancient Greece, science is now taking serious steps forward to explore the nature of the phenomenon. A new project aims to determine whether the experience is a physiological event or evidence that the human consciousness is far more complicated than we ever believed.

The Human Consciousness Project sets out to explore the nature of human consciousness and the brain. The first step of the project is the “Awareness During Resuscitation” study, a collaboration among more than 25 medical centers throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe.

With the expectation of recruiting 1,500 patients during a 36-month time frame, the study will examine everything that happens to the human brain during cardiac arrest, from oxygen levels to the ability to recall images. The participating hospitals will be outfitted with equipment to monitor any patient who goes into cardiac arrest.

While the person is in arrest, resulting in a flat line, doctors will monitor oxygen levels and blood flow into the brain. If patients consent to additional testing after recovery, they will be asked to recall any memories they can from the time while they were in cardiac arrest. Regardless of the recollection, each experience is useful to the study.

“If they have no memories, they’re useful because we’ll use them as a control group,” says Dr. Sam Parnia, director of the Human Consciousness Project and leader of the study.

But the most intriguing aspect of the study is its attempt to study consciousness during clinical death. According to Parnia, the science of these “consciousness events” may be somewhat similar to the relation between Newtonian physics and quantum physics. Scientists once believed that Newtonian physics could answer all the questions in the universe.

When they ventured into the sub-atomic realm, though, Newtonian physics no longer applied. But quantum physics did. Similarly, the near-death experience could be another state of consciousness with a different set of rules than what we currently understand, and beyond the limits of what current scientific methods can explain.

“When you study mind and brain, you see that, although in many circumstances this practical model we have developed — mind and brain are the same thing — is fine, when you go to an extreme environment like during a cardiac arrest…they don’t seem to apply anymore,” says Parnia. “It may suggest that there’s something that hasn’t been discovered scientifically.”

Studies by Parnia and other researchers show that between 10 and 20 percent of who are resuscitated from cardiac arrest had a near-death experience (NDE). Various other studies show the frequency of near-death experience to be between 4 and 18 percent.

The experience is typically described as a progression of stages. First, the person has a sense of peace, then a sense of separation from the body. The person then enters into darkness, and sees a bright light like the end of a tunnel. Finally, the person enters the light and interacts with an entity, described as God, Allah, or simply a universal cosmic force.

During the time that people report the feeling of detachment from their physical body, or an out-of-body-experience, they report a perception of floating above their body, or floating near the ceiling in the room where the experience occurs. This aspect of the experience plays an important role in the study.

The initial phase of the study will outfit participating rooms with shelves placed high up on the wall. On the top of each shelf will be a picture, visible only from the ceiling. Doctors will test whether patients who report a near-death experience are able to recall the image. If patients — as few as four or five — can positively recall these static images, then the study will move on: randomly generated images will be projected onto the shelves, which will further test the ability of the test subject to recall images. If no patients can recall the static images, the study can conclude that the floating effect is a trick of the mind.

According to Parnia, the study is important for two reasons. First, published studies have shown that people who undergo cardiac arrest can recall specific memories and demonstrate consciousness. Second, during cardiac arrest, there is no measurable brain activity. “If you combine these two sets of data together, it indicates a need to do a large study to determine: is this real or not? Can this really be going on?”

Still, the explanation behind these events can be attributed to the complexity of the human mind, not, as some believe, a universal spiritual experience, or even a new realm of science.

Last year, a study by Dr. Kevin Nelson, professor of neurology at the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine, found that people who have reported prior visual or auditory hallucinations in the transition between sleep and wakefulness — a phenomenon known as REM intrusion — may be more likely to report a near-death experience.

“There’s a very tiny switch deep in the brain stem, near our centers that control our heart and our breathing. That switch brings us either into wakefulness or REM sleep,” explains Nelson. “It’s either in one direction or another, either in REM or in wakefulness. Sometimes that switch goes haywire and blends the two.”

When these states of consciousness blend together, people can have the feeling of an out-of-body experience. The fact that people who have experienced REM intrusion are more likely to have a near-death experience points to a brain glitch as the cause. However, it is unknown whether a near-death experience is what makes the brain’s “switch” go haywire, or if the near-death experience simply reveals a pre-existing abnormality.

While many questions still remain about the nature of human consciousness, the first step is to determine whether, during a near-death experience, the subject is in a state of consciousness despite being clinically dead.

“We sometimes think that, obviously, when your heart stops beating, your consciousness is also gone,” says Parnia. “We have no evidence, we have no studies that tell us at what point the human consciousness does and mind cease functioning during clinical death. Is it at the moment the heart stops beating? Is it the first few seconds?

The first few minutes? Is it the first few hours? We have no idea.”

Despite the best efforts of science, the organ inside our skulls still resists giving up its mysteries. “We will never fully comprehend the brain.” says Nelson.