NAMA executives deny deliberate loan undervaluation allegations at PAC
NAMA has denied a series of serious allegations made to Gardai by one of its former portfolio managers.
Speaking at the Dail’s Public Accounts Committee, NAMA chief executive Brendan McDonagh denied sensitive information relating to developer Paddy McKillen was leaked to third parties.
He has also rejected allegations, made to Gardai by former portfolio manager Enda Farrell, that loans were deliberately undervalued by the agency.
“In relation to allegations of which it has become aware, NAMA is satisfied that they are unfounded,” said Mr McDonagh.
“If they are submitted to us formally and in sufficient detail, I assure the committee that we will deal with them individually and robustly.”
The NAMA chief executive claimed the agency was the victim of “a carefully orchestrated operation targeted at a small number of media outlets and Oireachtas members”.
“Its intended purpose is clear – to damage NAMA and thereby undermine the financial institutions of the State,” he said.
“Presumably, if enough mud is thrown, some of it will stick,” he added.
Earlier this week the Irish Independent revealed Mr Farrell’s allegation that he had passed confidential information to a third party, specifically highly sensitive material relating to Mr McKillen’s private and business affairs.
Mr Farrell handed a dossier to Gardai containing emails and other correspondence which he claims proves leaking was rife within the secretive agency.
He also alleges he was encouraged to deliberately undervalue property loans.
The Garda Bureau of Fraud Investigation has submitted a file to the DPP recommending that Mr Farrell be charged with leaking sensitive commercial data to outside companies.
Mr McDonagh said some of the allegations “appear to to be the personal views of Mr Farrell on various organisational matters on which he would not have a complete perspective nor could he be expected to have, given the position he held.”
He said Mr Farrell’s claim he provided a “full file” relating to Mr McKillen to a third party “directly contradicts his previous sworn statements”.
NAMA had, over the past 36 hours, requested its own internal auditors review all emails between Mr Farrell and the third party.
“There is no evidence from the search to date that any information relating to Mr McKillen was transmitted electronically,” he said.
The NAMA chief executive also said the agency had held “very little information” about Mr McKillen.
“Financial information would ordinarily be expected to include sworn statements of affairs, lists of unencumbered assets, borrowings with non-NAMA institutions and so on,” said Mr McDonagh.
“NAMA has never possessed this information in relation to Mr McKillen.”
Mr McDonagh confirmed the allegations that a second former employee leaked “a single document” was referred to gardai in February.
He said there was no link between this case and that of Mr Farrell.
On the property undervaluation allegations, Mr McDonagh said that at no stage did NAMA itself determine property valuations.
These were done by the banks and independent valuers.
“The process was subject to extensive auditing, including audits by KPMG,” he said.
“The process was also audited thoroughly by Ernst & Young and PwC.”
Mr McDonagh said any suggestion that the NAMA valuation process resulted in systematic undervaluation had been “thoroughly disproved” it had a €3.6bn impairment on its loans.
He added: “NAMA is involved in a very difficult business with a lot at stake, both for the taxpayer and for others.
“In seeking to do its job professionally, it inevitably finds itself in dispute with various parties. Some of those will inevitably seek to intimidate or discredit NAMA for their own purposes.”
NAMA chairman Frank Daly told the committee claimed the agency was the victim of a campaign to undermine it.
“NAMA will not be intimidated, influenced or distracted by the efforts of whoever may be behind it,” he said.
New dual carriageway to replace 30 white crosses stretch of Sligo road
Campaigners have erected 30 white crosses – each marking the scene of a fatality
A Co Sligo stretch of the main Dublin-Sligo road which is often described as the most dangerous section of roadway in the country on account of 30 deaths on it in recent years is set to be replaced by almost 15kms of dual carriageway.
Campaigners who have erected 30 white crosses on the verges of the existing 12km stretch of road, each one marking the scene of a fatality, have welcomed the “major breakthrough”.
Sligo County Council yesterday confirmed that it had submitted the N4 Collooney to Castlebaldwin proposed road development to An Bord Pleanála for planning approval.
Local pressure group
This follows a marathon campaign by the N4 Action Group which has drawn national attention to the stretch of road, dubbed “the most dangerous in the country” by Sligo coroner Dr Desmond Moran.
Bernard Mulhern, a spokesman for the group, predicted that the new dual carriageway would become a reality within five or six years.
Anthony Skeffington, senior engineer with the council, said the development was “one of the biggest and most complex infrastructural projects ever proposed for the county”.
Earlier this month the National Roads Authority gave the local authority approval to publish the compulsory purchase order and environmental impact statement documentation and to submit the project to An Bord Pleanála for planning approval.
It has been estimated the project could cost €60 million.
Irish people add 4 more years to their life span
NOW AMONG EU’S LONGEST LIVING PEOPLE
Irish people now have added four more full years to their lives in the past 13 years, making Ireland one of the countries with the longest lifespans in Europe.
An assessment of the nation’s health shows that not only are we living longer but we see ourselves as extremely healthy up to the age of 65 and we have the highest fertility rate in the EU.
The country also has a declining suicide rate and we are smoking and drinking less.
On the downside, however, Irish people are more likely to die of cancer, suffer from a chronic illness in old age, and one-in-five of our children under the age of five are either overweight or obese.
The latest ‘Health in Ireland: Key Trends’ report published by the Department of Health shows that life expectancy here has grown “rapidly and unexpectedly” by four years and is now above the EU average.
Death rates from all major causes have also declined significantly during that period but the death rate from cancers is 2.2pc above the EU average.
The five-year survival rate for many cancers also remains lower here than the average for OECD countries with the exceptions of breast and colorectal cancers.
The number being treated for drug problems has increased by 45pc since 2004.
The report says the overall picture of the nation’s health is one of “continuing progress but at a reduced rate, set in a context of very significant financial constraints”.
Health Minister James Reilly welcomed the report, saying “the key challenge and opportunity will be to ensure that scarcer resources are carefully targeted to deliver services in the fairest, most efficient and most effective ways possible”.
He added that the ageing population, with those over 65 increasing by 20,000 each year, along with the problems presented by smoking, alcohol and obesity were “significant challenges”. The report shows that 40pc of the population is now covered by a medical card which is a rise of 60% over the decade.
Meanwhile, the number of people employed in the health service — which stands at 100,000 — is at its lowest level since 2004.
Immunisation rates are at 95%, but infant mortality, which was lower than the EU average, has been climbing.
Just over 80pc of men and women regard their health as good or very good and this is the highest figure in the EU, but by the time they reach 65 years, well over half are suffering from a chronic illness.
SUICIDE: In the 75-plus age group, 43% of men and 50% of women report severe limitation of their daily activities due to health problems.
Deaths from diseases of the circulatory system have dropped since 2003 and deaths from suicide are down 10% in the same period — down almost 9% between 2011 and 2012.
When it comes to alcohol and cigarettes, the consumption has dropped over the past 10 years but a higher number of adults in young age groups binge drink at least once a month.
Smoking and drinking among 15 and 16 year olds was lower than the average for other countries but binge drinking was slightly higher.
The number of children in care increased by 3pc and the percentage of these in foster care rose to almost 92pc between 2011 and 2012.
In terms of hospital services, there has been a 93pc increase in the number of day cases due to improved and less invasive medical procedures.
Prescribed items under the General Medical Services have increased by 7% and while there has been a drop in the numbers covered by private health insurance, the exception is the over-70′s age group where the numbers have risen.
An estimated €200m had been chopped off the public health bill this year, with expenditure dropping from €14.1bn in 2012 to an estimated €13.9bn this year.
A smart bra that detects emotional overeating & mood changes
An international team has developed a prototype ‘smart bra’ designed to detect changes in mood and prevent ‘emotionally-triggered’ overeating in women.
According to project partners at Southampton University, the prototype contains removable sensors that monitor heart and skin activity. The data collected is processed via a model to determine the emotional state and the intervention is sent to the wearer via a smartphone app.
M.c. schraefel, a professor in computer science and human performance design from Southampton University helped design the system.
Ms Schraefel said that there are two types of hunger…one is homeostatic, which means we are eating to get our bodies back into balance: basically, we’re hungry because we need fuel and nutrients. The other is referred to as hedonic, its eating that nothing to do with physiological requirements at the time.
‘There’s an area of work…that talks of emotional eating, where we tend to eat at times of stress. Some people will eat when they get into that…state as a comfort food response – and some people will not eat at all – so there’s a complexity in terms of responses to the same kinds of stimulation.’
The aim of the project, published in a study entitled ‘Food and Mood: Just-in-Time Support for Emotional Eating,’ was to develop a system that could distinguish between states and make interventions when appropriate.
Schraefel said: ‘the question is: if you’re feeling triggered and there’s an emotional response and its physiologically based…then is that signal, the physiological change, distinct enough for us to be able to say, “this is the type of emotional signal – or signature – for emotional eating versus the physiological signature for [being happy]” Are they sufficiently distinct when…a machine’s looking at them to be able to tell the difference?’
To build their model the team, including researchers from Microsoft Research and the University of Rochester, US, had users log their emotions and what they had eaten every hour via the app.
‘The accuracy of the model was about 75 per cent in terms of detecting an appropriate kind of emotional state,’ said schraefel.
The smart bra then added physical data to the emotions so they can be detected without prompting the user to log every hour.
According to the paper, the system used GRASP (Generic Remote Access Sensing Platform), a custom-build real-time device made up of a sensor board, firmware, software libraries, and an API. GRASP also incorporated an MSP-430 microprocessor and is powered by a 3.7V Lithium-Ion polymer battery. In use, GRASP can sample up to eight bio-signal channels simultaneously.
The GRASP boards in the study were configured to capture heart rate and respiration with an electrocardiogram (EKG) sensor; skin conductance with an electrodermal activity (EDA) sensor; and movement with a three-axis accelerometer and a two-axis gyroscope.
Schraefel said the batteries struggled with the amount of data that needed processing in real-time. She said similar systems might record signals for a period of time, log them, then burst send them to a device to save on the battery power.
‘In this case we weren’t doing that…a steady stream of information is being passed to the circuit board, which has to be on to process this information, and is then sending regular updates by wi-fi to phones that are on the person,’ she said. ‘We’re trying to save some energy but there are probably efficiency gains to be made.’
She added: ‘To really be able to help people…it would need to be tried with a much larger population. The challenge of doing that is…trying to build an apparatus that is robust enough and cheap enough to produce to be able to distribute it to a [number] of people.’
According to the paper, there are ‘several future research directions that are essential to building an integrated system for just-in-time support.
Schraefel stressed that work in this area includes investigating interventions for men with similar eating anomalies.
Neanderthals had ability to speak like humans
A STUDY SUGGESTS
Neanderthals may have had complex language
An analysis of a Neanderthal’s hyoid bone – a horseshoe shaped structure in the neck – suggests they had the ability to speak.
Until now the strongest support came from a 1989 Neanderthal hyoid fossil, the same shape as those of humans.
But computer modelling of how it works has shown their hyoid bone was also used in a very similar way.
The hyoid bone is crucial for speaking as it supports the root of the tongue. In non-human primates it is not placed in the right position to vocalise like humans.
An international team of researchers analysed a 1989 fossil Neanderthal throat bone using 3D x-ray imaging and mechanical modelling.
This model allowed them to see how the hyoid behaved in relation to the other surrounding bones.
Stephen Wroe from the University of New South Wales, Australia, said: “We would argue that this is a very significant step forward. It shows that the Kebara 2 hyoid doesn’t just look like those of modern humans – it was used in a very similar way.”
He told BBC News that it not only changed our understanding of Neanderthals, but also of ourselves.
“Many would argue that our capacity for speech and language is among the most fundamental of characteristics that makes us human. If Neanderthals also had language then they were truly human too.”
It was commonly believed that complex language did not evolve until about 100,000 years ago and that modern humans were the only ones capable of complex speech.
But that changed with the discovery of a Neanderthal hyoid bone in 1989. It was found in the Kebara Cave in Israel and is very similar to our own,
Much older hyoid fossils have also recently been discovered, attributed to the human and Neanderthal relative Homo heidelbergensis. They were found in Spain and are over 500,000 years old.
These have yet to be modelled but Prof Wroe said they were likely to be very similar to those of modern humans and Neanderthals, so could bring back the origins of speech still further.
He added that his work would not necessarily be accepted as proof that Neanderthals spoke.
“We were very careful not to suggest that we had proven anything beyond doubt – but I do think it will help to convince a good number of specialists and tip the weight of opinion.”
Neanderthals were stockier and shorter than humans, with no chin and backwards sloping foreheads. They are not regarded as direct human ancestors but DNA analysis has revealed that between 1% and 4% of the Eurasian human genome seems to come from Neanderthals.
Dan Dediu, from the Max Plank Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands, published a review article earlier this year suggesting that Neanderthals and modern humans shared a similar capacity for language.
He said that the current study brought more weight to the conclusions that Neanderthals had very similar hyoid bones to us, “not only in form but also in what concerns their mechanical properties”.
“The authors themselves are understandably cautious in drawing strong conclusions but I think that their work clearly supports the contention that speech and language is an old feature of our lineage going back at least to the last common ancestor that we shared with the Neanderthals.” Dr Dediu told BBC News.
But he added that this work was only a first step and that future studies of other living primates were necessary to better understand the range of variation within modern humans.
Ireland still behind their EU counterparts in access to broadband
Close to one out of every five Irish people cannot access the internet according to a new report from Eurostat. The study found that 82% of households have internet, however 40% do not use the internet each day. Ireland comes in 11th place for internet accessibility.
A Eurostat survey on internet usage and penetration finds 82% of Irish households
Ireland still lags behind its European counterparts in terms of access to broadband, a Eurostat survey on internet usage and penetration has found.
The survey indicated 67% of Irish households had a broadband connection in the second quarter of 2013, below the EU average of 76%.
The study found 82% of households here had some form of internet access compared with an EU average of 79%.
The survey also suggested that 62% of Irish people used the internet every day or almost every day, the same as the EU average.
The Netherlands had the highest number of people using the internet on a daily basis at 83% while Romania had the lowest at 32%.
Another significant finding was that 41 per cent of Irish people use the internet to interact with Government authorities, below the EU average of 45%.
Reasons for this interaction reported by e-government users across the EU were income tax declarations (44 per cent), requests for personal documents (20 per cent), claiming social security benefits (16 per cent) and enrolment in higher education or university (9 per cent).
The survey suggested internet access and use was widespread among-st the EU population.
Among the 28 member states, 79 per cent of households had access to the internet in 2013 and 76 per cent had a broadband internet connection, compared with 55 per cent and 42 per cent respectively in 2007.
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