Emily Logan says ombudsmen should be given a lot more independence
Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan says the Government should give direct budgetary responsibility for Ireland’s ombudsmen in order to enhance their independence.
Government should end direct budgetary control of offices, children’s advocate says
Government should cede direct budgetary responsibility for Ireland’s ombudsmen in order to enhance their independence, according to the Ombudsman for Children,Emily Logan.
Ms Logan made the call this morning at a conference to mark the tenth anniversary of her office. She also spoke about the “resistance” her office has experienced over the past decade in advancing children’s rights.
She said the legislature should reconsider the relationship between the executive and ombudsmen institutions to ensure their independence. “At the moment, the executive controls the funding of ombudsmen through Oireachtasvotes, even though the ombudsmen are charged with overseeing the very public bodies that determine our budgets.”
The potential for this situation to weaken the independence of ombudsmen could be diminished by a more direct relationship with the Oireachtas, she suggested. Control of determining their budgets could be given to an Oireachtas committee, for example.
Ms Logan said her office has been confronted with significant pockets of resistance, both active and passive, to the advancement of children’s rights. “This resistance can be subtle. This comes in the form of civil or public administrative tensions with my office in the course of an investigation.”
Sometimes, this resistance could be overt, as when her office decided to include the rights of children in State care among its priorities. This provoked an unexpected negative response in some quarters in the form of a legal challenge, she recalled.
“While this challenge was unsuccessful, my card was marked by those who to this day continue to resist the notion that children are individual rights holders and indeed active participants in the exercise of their rights,” she said.
Over the past decade, her office has dealt with almost 10,000 cases, in areas such as health, education, housing and children in care, she said. These included the detention of children in St Patrick’s prison, now ended, the refusal of a school to admit a pregnant 16-year-old and the issue of separated children living in hostels.
In the future, Ireland must orient its laws and policy towards fuller respect for the rights enumerated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Policy development should be proactive rather than reactive, as it has been.
Ms Logan, whose second term as ombudsman ends next year, said her work now would focus on the position of children affected by assisted human reproduction, adoption, surrogacy and those raised by same-sex couples.
Mother and her three young children forced to live in car in Dublin
A 36-year old woman who says she has been living and sleeping in a car with her three young children in Tallaght Co Dublin.
Sabrina McMahon (36), who has spent a week in a car in Tallaght, feels ‘like a hopeless parent’
A 36-year old woman says she has been living and sleeping in a car with her three young children in Tallaght, Dublin, for the past week after a series of temporary housing arrangements broke down.
In the boot of Sabrina McMahon’s 2005 car are three suitcases, a buggy, nappies and baby wipes. On the passenger seat is a carrier bag of clothes, a bag of bread rolls and milk.
A friend lets her wash and do laundry in her house. “I’ve been putting the kids in their pyjamas in her house, but they had to sleep in their clothes last night.”
Michaela (3) and Chelsea (18 months) sleep in their car seats on the back seat, with Karl (5) sleeping beside them.
“I’m in the driver’s seat. I don’t put the seat back because they have so little space as it is,” she says. “When Michaela wakes for a bottle I knock on the engine to warm up the car.”
“We’re all wrecked. I’m exhausted. They ask where we’re going and I tell them I have nowhere to bring them. I feel like a hopeless parent, just hopeless.”
A spokesperson for South Dublin County Council said it was “aware” of the case. “South Dublin Council does not wish to make any further comment at this stage,” it added.
A waiting list for houses.
Ms McMahon has been on the council’s housing waiting list for more than a year while she has been staying with family and friends. Originally from Tallaght, she brought her children back there from Athy, Co Kildare, after her relationship with their father broke down more than a year ago.
“Since then we’ve stayed with my mother, father, sister and friends. But it’s a lot to ask, to ask someone to have a whole family staying in their house.”
In addition, some of their lease arrangements did not allow them to have a family staying. “So last week I had to stop asking.”
She says she has tried to find private rented accommodation but has not been able to find a landlord who will accept rent allowance.
As the head of a family at immediate risk of homelessness, she went to the Dublin Central Placement Service last week but was told she must present at Kildare County Council for emergency housing. She says she does not want to go back to Kildare. “I’d end up isolated again. I need to be near my family and Karl goes to school in Tallaght.”
‘Homelessness now a tsunami’
A former dental nurse and carer, Ms McMahon says she would like to go back to work. “If I had a roof, we could get settled and I’d love to go back caring for the elderly.”
Local Sinn Féin councillor Máire Devine has been making representations on behalf of the family for the past year. “This is one of the worst cases but homelessness and housing is now the biggest issue in my clinics. It’s a tsunami and no one in Government seems to have any policy on it, any plan, any direction on this disaster that is affecting thousands of ordinary people.”
Japanese women’s healthy diet is the key to a long life, some 86.4 years of it
A NEW STUDY SUGGESTS
The figures released by the Office for National Statistics showed that Japanese women have an average life expectancy of 86.4 years
Forget fad diets and Hollywood celebrity endorsements: Japanese women could hold the dietary key to a long and healthy life.
A new study has indicated the benefits of a diet rich in raw fish, vegetables and green tea, with Japanese females having the highest life expectancy of women in selected countries, living for an average of 86.4 years.
The data released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that Japanese women outstrip their English counterparts, who can expect to live to 82.8 years. Women in Northern Ireland and Wales have a life expectancy of 82.1 years, while in Scotland the same figure is 80.7 years.
But the ONS said there is nothing stopping British women achieving a similar longevity if they adopt a Japanese lifestyle, with the figures indicating the “potential for further increases” in life expectancy for women in the UK, The Times reported.
The traditional Japanese diet incorporates lower-calorie foods served in controlled portions.
According to Naomi Moriyama, the co-author of Japanese Women Don’t Get Old or Fat:
Secrets of My Mother’s Tokyo Kitchen, the average Japanese person eats around 25% fewer calories than the average western person.
Crag Wilcox, a leading gerontologist, told The Times that the Japanese diet is full of disease-fighting foods.
He said: “They eat threes servings of fish a week, on average. Plenty of whole grains, vegetables and soy products too, more tofu and more konbu seaweed than anyone else in the world, as well as squid and octopus, which are rich in taurine – that could lower cholesterol and blood pressure.”
But Japanese men do not reinforce the trend. They can expect to live to 79.9 years on average, which is little more than the average male life expectancy of 79 in England. Men in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland can expect to live to 78.1, 77.7 and 76.5 years respectively.
Men in Iceland have the longest life expectancy at 80.8 years, followed by Swiss men who can expect to live to 80.5 years of age.
The findings were published as part of an international compendium of data published by the ONS. It compared figures on population, employment and the economy.
Cow manure has diverse new antibiotic resistance property Gene
A new study funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the U.S. National Institutes of Health found that cow manure harbors diverse new antibiotic resistance genes. This material is commonly used as a farm fertilizer.
It’s worth noting that produce is one of the main sources of food poisoning in the United States; fertilizer, along with runoff from farms are two of the ways leafy greens and other fruits and vegetables can become contaminated.
The study, published in American Society for Microbiology journal, tried to find which antibiotic resistant genes are in cow manure. The scientists used a “screening-plus sequencing” approach and found 80 unique and functional antibiotic resistant genes. Those genes made E. coli bacteria resistant to antibiotics.
Researchers found an entirely new family of antibiotic resistant genes that are resistant to chloramphenicol antibiotics that are used to treat respiratory infections in livestock. The resistance genes were found in clusters and were in a diverse set of species.
This study is the first in a sequence of studies. The scientists are going to see if they can find these genes in the soil, in food, and then in people. These genes can get into the human ecosystem either through bacteria or a horizontal gene transfer into bacteria that affect people.
Previous studies have found antibiotic resistance genes in pigs and chickens, which are given lots of sub therapeutic doses of antibiotics. Cows are not fed as many antibiotics, so the resistant genes found in their manure was important.
Khumbathe Zonkey that’s a (Half Donkey & Half Zebra) born to a Zebra and its really adorable
This donkey-zebra hybrid was not bred in some laboratory run by an evil scientist who manically laughs while lighting strikes behind him. The way this animal came about is actually quite sweet.
The Reynosa Zoo in Northern Mexico has a zebra named Rayas, and she used to visit her friend Ignacio, a dwarf, blue-eyed albino donkey that lived on an adjacent farm. Well, obviously these two went from friends to more than friends because soon enough, Khumba the calf was born!
Zoo officials say that the half donkey, half zebra is extremely rare as zebra chromosomes and donkey chromosomes are not compatible. But if we learned one thing from Jurassic Park, it’s that the person who is a specialist on Velociraptors will undoubtedly get eaten by them. But if we learned two things, it’s that we didn’t say the magic word.
But if we learned three things, it’s that life finds a way. And we’re sure glad it did because look at this adorable animal that has a sweet donkey face and zebra-striped legs! We love it.
This is not the first zonkey to ever be created, but it’s definitely one of very few.
Our only hope about this story is that there wasn’t a male zebra who was around for the birth, hoping to see a full-blown zebra calf come out of his partner. Because that would’ve been awkward.
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