Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Phil Hogan suing TV3 over alleged defamation on Vincent Browne Tonight programme

 

MINISTER HOGAN CLAIMS REMARKS MADE ON TV BROADCAST DAMAGED HIS REPUTATION

Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan claims comments made on Tonight with Vincent Browne damaged his reputation and caused him extreme stress.

The Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Phil Hogan, is suing TV3 alleging defamation arising out of comments made by the broadcaster Vincent Browne, the High Court has heard.

The Minister claims he was defamed on the Tonight with Vincent Browne on May 20th 2013 in an exchange between Mr Browne and Fine Gael TD, now Minister for Children, Charlie Flanagan, who was a panelist on the show.

It is alleged Mr Browne described Minister Hogan as a “bigoted racist” arising out of representations made by Mr Hogan on behalf of a constituent relating to the suitability of housing for a Traveller family in a vacant council property in Co Kilkenny.

The Minister claims the remarks had meanings including he was prejudiced towards Travellers, had sought to prevent the housing of members of the Travelling community, had breached the Incitement to Hatred Act and was not suitable for his role as Minister or a TD.

He claims the allegedly defamatory remarks have damaged his reputation and caused him extreme stress. He is seeking damages and a correction order and an order directing TV3 remove the broadcast from its website.

TV3 denies the Minister’s claims on grounds including that Mr Browne’s statements consisted of an opinion honestly held by him. This opinion was based on grounds including the Minister made a number of public statements, including that he had contacted Kilkenny County Council about the matter, it claims.

In a pre-trial application yesterday, Mr Hogan, represented by Rossa Fanning BL, asked the High Court for an order amending his original statement of claim.

A hearing date for the action has yet to be fixed.

Number of deaths in Ireland by suicide fell by 32 last year on previous year

 

CSO figures indicate a significant increase of 45 to 54-year-olds taking own lives.

The charity Console said significant changes and investment in research were required to properly understand and respond to the tragedy of suicide in a timely fashion.

Suicide among young people dropped by more than 20% last year, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show.

And overall deaths by suicide fell by more than 6%. But among older people, suicides have increased by more than a quarter.

The CSO vital statistics show there were 475 suicides registered in 2013 compared with 507 in 2012.

The number of deaths by suicide in people aged 15-24 was 57 last year, down by more than 20% on 2012, when there were 74 such deaths.

But the suicide figures for people aged 45 to 54 years increased from 86 in 2012, to 108 last year. This age group had the highest number of registered suicides for both men and women, with male deaths making up 80% of the total.

People living in some areas of the country also seemed more vulnerable to suicide than others, according to the statistics.

While the average rate across the State was 10.3 per 100,000 people, Cavan had a 20.4 rate, the figure was 20 for Carlow and 19.4 for Kerry. The lowest rate of recorded suicide was nil in Leitrim and 2.1 in Waterford City. However, there may also be variations in how suicides are registered.

The national suicide prevention and bereavement charity Console said it was concerned at the rise in suicides in the older age group.

Director of services Ciarán Austin said it mirrored a rise in calls to the charity’s helpline from people in the 45-54 age category.

“In particular, we saw a huge increase in calls to our rural helpline in 2013 due to the fodder crisis,” he said.

He described the regional data as alarming and said the charity also examines deaths categorised as of undetermined intent when looking at suicide. These have shown a drop from 82 in 2012 to 65 in 2013.

“However, we need significant changes and investment in research as the lack of accurate up-to-date information is impeding our ability to understand and respond to the awful tragedy of suicide in a timely fashion,” he said.

The charity welcomed the drop in suicides in the 15-24 age group but said Ireland still had the fourth highest suicide rate in the EU in that category.

“Console is calling for a real-time register of suicide data so that resources can be targeted at areas to prevent clustering,” Mr Austin said.

The console 24-hour helpline is 1800 247 247.

In other data released by the CSO today, the number of births to teenagers continued to decline, down from 1,639 in 2012 to 1,381 last year. Since 2001, the rate of teenage births has almost halved.

Many low-fat foods ‘have same amount of calories as their regular equivalents

 

• Study shows one in ten low-fat foods has more or same calories as regular
• Manufacturers often use sugar to boost the taste of lower-fat foodstuffs
• Rotherham Institute for Obesity gives findings to European obesity congress
• Institute’s Dr Matthew Capehorn says dieters should read nutritional info 

Dieters choosing low-fat foods in the hope of cutting calories should beware: they can contain even more calories than regular foods, research has found.

A new study found that while most low-fat supermarket products contain a third fewer calories than their regular fat version, ten per cent actually have more or the same calories, mainly due to added sugars.

Obesity specialist Dr Matthew Capehorn said weight-conscious shoppers should realise that choosing low-fat products made by brands including Weight Watchers could hamper their efforts to cut calories.

Low-fat bread and other foods can contain more calories than their regular counterparts, research shows

The study by the Rotherham Institute for Obesity, where Dr Capehorn is clinical director, found that Weight Watchers wholemeal thick slice bread had more calories than any own label, regular fat equivalent, while Weight Watchers sliced cheese also had more calories than own label equivalents.

Weight Watchers wholemeal thick slice bread had more calories than any own label, regular fat equivalent.

Weight Watchers sliced cheese also had more calories than own label equivalents.

Asda natural low-fat yoghurt had more calories than Asda natural yoghurt.

Birdseye light and crunchy breaded chicken had more calories than Birdseye crispy chicken.

Sainsbury’s low fat custard had the same calories as Sainsbury’s custard.

Asda own brand low fat Italian dressing had more fat than the regular fat alternative.

It also found that Asda natural low-fat yoghurt had more calories than Asda natural yoghurt, Birdseye light and crunchy breaded chicken had more calories than Birdseye crispy chicken, and Sainsbury’s low fat custard had the same calories as Sainsbury’s custard.

Often, extra sugar was added to boost the taste of the lower-fat foods.

Dr Capehorn said: ‘Low-fat foods do appear on average to help reduce calorie intake…however appropriate food choices may still require reading nutritional information on the food labels, as ten per cent of low fat foods still have more calories, and 40 per cent have more sugar, than their regular fat counterparts.’

He began the study to establish whether low-fat versions of products were nutritionally healthier than their regular counterparts, mainly in terms of sugar and overall calories.

Of the ten most popular UK supermarkets, four provided enough information online for researchers to complete the study in November: Sainsbury’s, Asda, Waitrose and Tesco.

Fat, sugar and calorie content for any low fat food that had a directly comparable regular fat product made by the same brand were recorded.

Of 62 products that matched these criteria found in the four supermarkets, 56 low-fat products had fewer calories, and on average overall the low-fat products had 31 per cent less calories.

However, ten per cent of low fat foods analysed still had more or the same calories than the regular fat version, while 37 of the 62 products (60 per cent) had less sugar than the regular fat alternatives.

One low-fat product, Asda own brand low fat Italian dressing, had more fat than the regular fat alternative.

An example of where there was an obvious calorie saving with the lower fat version was Benecol light spread, which saved 216 kcals/100g compared with Benecol buttery spread.

Weight Watchers said it was redeveloping its wholemeal thick sliced bread after research found it had more calories than any ‘own label’ supermarket brand.

A spokesperson said: ‘Weight Watchers continues to strive to provide customers with high quality Weight Watchers Foods and we are constantly evolving our products to ensure this.

‘As such, we are redeveloping the Weight Watchers Thick Sliced Wholemeal Bread to ensure it is the best choice for our consumers.’

The findings by the Rotherham Institute for Obesity were presented at the European Congress on Obesity (ECO) in Sofia, Bulgaria, yesterday.

Lost in space, 3 decades-old probe brought back into action with crowd funding

  

Three decades after it drifted away, millions of kilometres from Earth, a vintage space probe has returned and is being revived, to be put back in service through a crowdfunded initiative by space science enthusiasts.

It is the latest chapter in the remarkable story of the ISEE-3 scientific spacecraft. It was launched nearly 36 years ago, was reconfigured into a comet-chasing platform, then sailed out of radio contact with Earth for a decade until it re-emerged in 2008, when its orbital path dragged it back towards our planet.

On Thursday, a group of scientists gathered at their own initiative at the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico re-established two-way communications with the spacecraft and started to command it to send data about the state of its onboard systems.

“SUCCESS! We are now in command of the ISEE-3 spacecraft!” the team tweeted at 4 p.m.before confirming by Thursday evening that ISEE-3 was transmitting telemetry again.

To resurrect ISEE-3, they had raised nearly $160,000 from 2,238 online donors, pored over old NASA documents and programmed software-defined radio devices to link up with a spacecraft whose communications hardware had long been retired from service on Earth.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration had agreed to let the private group – which calls itself the ISEE-3 Reboot Project – take control of its wayward spacecraft.

“We have a chance to engage a new generation of citizen scientists through this creative effort,” astrophysicist John Grunsfeld, a former astronaut who is now associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a communiqué announcing the agreement.

The ranks of the ISEE-3 Reboot Project include Dennis Wingo, president of the aerospace engineering company SkyCorp, and Keith Cowing, a former NASA astrobiologist.

The group has engineering students in their 20s and a space guru, 81-year-old retired NASA mission designer Bob Farquhar.

Dr. Farquhar, an expert in orbital mechanics, has been a key character in ISEE-3’s storied life.

The ISEE (International Sun-Earth Explorer) program was an international 1970′s project to study solar wind and the Earth’s magnetosphere.

The ISEE-3 spacecraft was launched on Aug. 12, 1978, in the days when disco still dominated the airwaves and the Montreal Canadiens won the Stanley Cup every spring.

It travelled to the Lagrangian 1 libration point – a stable spot where the gravitational pull of the sun is balanced by that of the Earth and its moon – about 1.5 million to 1.6 million kilometres from our planet.

By 1982, with ISEE-3 having completed its prime observation mission, Dr. Farquhar came up with a new goal for the spacecraft.

The famous Halley’s Comet, which revisits the solar system every 75 to 76 years, was expected back in 1986. The Soviet Union, the European Space Agency and Japan had readied missions to study Halley but a cash-strapped NASA had no planned flights to the comet.

Dr. Farquhar devised a way to steer ISEE-3 through a complex trajectory (on a graphic it looks like a tangle of noodles) towards another approaching comet, Giacobini-Zinner.

During an 18-minute pass in 1985, ISEE-3, which had been renamed ICE (International Cometary Explorer), crossed the Giacobini-Zinner comet’s tail, collecting data that could be used as a benchmark for the Halley missions of the following year.

After being directed upstream of Halley to gather more observations, ISEE-3 moved increasingly far away and eventually drifted out of reach for reliable radio reception. The last contact was in 1999.

Nearly a decade later, in the fall of 2008, one of the antennas of NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, in California’s Mojave Desert, picked up a signal from ISEE-3.

The spacecraft’s orbit was taking it closer to Earth again and now Dr. Farquhar suggested that, in the summer of 2014, when the probe would be close to the moon, it could be redirected back to its original mission, observing the sun from the Lagrangian 1 libration point.

However, in a case of history repeating itself, NASA is again going through budgetary hard times. In April, senior NASA officials decided they could not fund a revival of the ISEE-3 project. Four days later, a private initiative began.

It wasn’t the first time outsiders came to rescue a NASA deep-space project. In 1980-81, a grassroots campaign called the Viking Fund collected $100,000 to make sure NASA would have enough money to keep analyzing the data from its Viking 1 Mars lander.

This time, it was even more challenging because the project only had a month to start raising money and try to find a way to recontact ISEE-3.

Earlier this month, they reached their initial $125,000 fundraising target. Ten days ago, they started getting beacon signals from the approaching spacecraft.

Now, they will test its systems so that later this summer they will refire its thrusters, swing it by the moon and send it on to a new mission.

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Thursday

David Drumm’s massive mistakes never added up in the accountancy world,

SAYS A TRUSTEE of Anglo

  

It was ‘very unusual’ for someone of Drumm’s banking and accounting background to have made such errors in his filings

It was only hours before David Drumm filed his so-called schedules and statement of financial affairs, or Sofa, to a US court giving the court-appointed trustee overseeing his bankruptcy what was supposed to be a full picture of his finances.

He had been working on a draft statement with his bankruptcy advisers at the Massachusetts law firm of Looney & Grossman but was unhappy with the draft’s description of two vehicles that he had owned and surrendered on October 21st, 2010, a week after he filed for bankruptcy,

“Automobiles – I’m still not happy!” he said in an email to Heather Zelevinsky sent at 10.42pm on Thursday, October 28th, the night before the documents were filed. “Can you remove the ‘MB’ reference as they have been surrendered and just leave it as ‘Sedan’ and ‘SUV’: if the trustee doesn’t care, she won’t ask and the media can go fish.”

Mr Drumm’s concern about “MB” was a reference to Mercedes Benz and the impression that the reference might leave with anyone looking at the form.

The stripped-down description of the vehicles as a “2010 Sedan” and “2011 SUV” in the eventual Sofa form he filed on October 29th, 2010 contained no mention of the prestigious motor marque. The values assigned to the vehicles – $47,000 (€34,300) and $64,000 (€46,700) respectively – were the only giveaway as to the brand of car.

Media interest: The court was told that this was an example of David Drumm actively deciding what was to be included or excluded from his bankruptcy statements.

It wasn’t the only time that the former Anglo Irish Bankchief executive’s concern about the media’s interest in his financial affairs surfaced during his five-day bankruptcy trial in Boston which ran this week and last. Three days before he filed for bankruptcy, Mr Drumm told Ms Zelevinsky in an email that it would be good to file his financial statements early.

“Let the media get it out of their system this week while things are relatively calm and the fizz has gone out of the bankruptcy a bit,” he wrote.

The cat-and-mouse relations between the media and the Drumms featured several times during testimony at the trial. David Drumm told the court that the couple used his wife’s maiden name, Lorraine Farrell, to buy a new family home in Wellesley outside Boston in January 2010 “because she was afraid of media attention”.

The couple had “visitations” from the “tabloids” at their house on Cape Cod, he told the court, while Ms Drumm, in response to questions from her husband’s lawyer, David Mack, said she had been “ambushed” when she went out of the court building to get a sandwich on Wednesday.

 Financial arrangement.

“If my name appeared on it,” said Ms Drumm in testimony on Wednesday, referring to the Drumm name appearing on the title deeds of the Wellesley house, “the first thing that would happen is that the media would be on my doorstep yet again”.

The former Anglo Irish Bank, now Irish Bank Resolution Corporation, and Mr Drumm’s bankruptcy trustee claim that the financial arrangement agreed between the couple on the purchase of the Wellesley property was another example of a series of cash and property transfers that he failed to disclose in his original sworn bankruptcy statements in October 2010.

They argue he should not be entitled to have all of his debts prior to that date wiped clean with a discharge from bankruptcy because, they claim, he defrauded his creditors by making these transfers and because he made false oaths in his bankruptcy statements by omitting those transfers.

He has denied that he deliberated excluded cash transfers from his Sofa form, believing at the time that he had only had to list property transfers. (This is despite him listing the transfer of a half-share in a $2 million investment property in Cape Cod, south of Boston, in an amended Sofa form filed in May 2011 that he had not included in his October 2010 disclosures.)

During M/s Drumm’s testimony on Wednesday, the bank’s attorney Ken Leonetti put it to her that her husband transferred a total of about €2 million in cash and property to her. These transfers took place since the deepening crisis at Anglo in 2008 forced her to seek money of her own in the event that her husband was to “drop dead of a heart attack”, as she told the court.

She said she thought that the total was close to €1 million and admitted that she had no idea that he had transferred almost all of his cash to her.

M/s Drumm told the court that a separate property agreement signed by the Drumms stating that a $831,000 cash deposit used to buy the Wellesley house in January 2010 was drafted to show that this was her money and that it would be returned to her in the event that the house was sold.

 Worthless shares. 

The agreement said that Mr Drumm had no “past, present or future right or interest” in the money, though Ms Drumm acknowledged that her money had come from her husband’s earnings at Anglo, where he had made $18 million between 2004 to 2009 as the bank’s chief executive. (He owes the bank €8.5 million mostly from loans drawn to buy now worthless Anglo shares.)

Lorraine Drumm appears to have been as concerned about protecting her own money as she was about protecting her own privacy from the media.

Peter Covo, a conveyancing lawyer who was retained by the Drumms to buy the Wellesley property, told the court that at the meeting in his office after the closing of the Wellesley purchase, Ms Drumm kept saying “over and over and over” that the money was hers. “She kept saying: ‘It is my money, it is my money, it is my money,” he said.

The alleged Wellesley transfer still didn’t appear in the amended bankruptcy statement Drumm filed in May 2011, seven months after his original statement, which he admitted in court contained “a lot of errors”.

He claimed he was “in a state of panic” when he learned at a creditors’ meeting on April 1st, 2011, that cash transfers should have been included in the original statements.

His bankruptcy lawyer Stewart Grossman testified last Friday that he had warned Mr Drumm – before he filed for bankruptcy – that he could get in criminal and civil trouble if he didn’t disclose everything in a process that he described to Mr Drumm as “like getting naked in public”.

Mr Drumm’s trustee believed these mistakes didn’t add up. It was “very unusual” for someone of his background – a banker, an accountant and a businessman – to have made such mistakes in his filings, said Boston lawyer Kathleen Dwyer. Drumm’s errors took months to a fix and she felt like he was trying to “wear you out” by “dragging” her back into successive creditors’ meetings in order to seek further disclosures, she said.

‘Honest debtor’

“If you are an honest debtor and make an honest mistake, you fix it – there is no working on it or ‘we will have it done by next month’. That is what was going on this case,” said Ms Dwyer, who has administered 15,000 bankruptcies in a career spanning back to the mid-1980s.

Judge Frank Bailey will hear closing arguments from both sides in the case next Wednesday. His ruling is expected some time over the coming months. If he grants Mr Drumm a discharge, the 47-year-old former banker will walk away debt free from bankruptcy to start again financially.

If he doesn’t, Mr Drumm could face what Grossman warned him before he voluntarily chose to “get naked in public” in Massachusetts: a potential clawback of about €2 million in cash and property transfers to his wife.

Bullying of nurses and midwives in the HSE is linked to under-staffing

  

An INMO study is looking at reasons for soaring levels of bullying in the health service executive.  

A steep rise in bullying of nurses and midwives is being linked to the pressures caused by understaffing in the health service.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says it is dealing with 25-30 incidents of bullying at any one time. The issue is taking up half of the time of its officials, who have represented both those making allegations and colleagues who are the subject of bullying complaints.

The union has commissioned the National University of Ireland, Galway and the National College of Ireland to carry out a nationwide study of the profession with the aim of establishing the extent to which bullying is affecting the working lives of nurses.

INMO director of industrial relations Phil Ni Sheaghdha said the union wanted to find out what was driving the upsurge of investigations in which it was currently involved. “We believe it is not unconnected to staffing level and the general busyness of a high-stress working environment.”

While the Health Service Executiveoperates a policy on bullying and harassment in the workplace, the INMO says nurses and midwives continue to experience workplace bullying with negative consequences for their personal health and relationships.

Prof Maura Sheehan of NUI Galway, who is leading the study, said focus groups held with nurses revealed “shocking and very disturbing” levels of bullying.

“As researchers, it became clear that we need to conduct a survey of nurses and midwives to establish the extent of this problem and most importantly, to formulate recommendations on how bullying at work can be reduced and the type of support that victims and witnesses need.”

Irish Government suspends the mass review of medical cards

 

A PERSON’S MEDICAL CONDITION IS TO BECOME A CRITERION FOR FUTURE ELIGIBILITY. 

Minister of State Alex White (Above right picture) made a brief statement on the issue during the debate in the Dáil on the Bill providing for extension of free GP care to children aged under six.

The Government has ordered the suspension of the ongoing mass review of medical cards.

The review has been suspended while a new framework for awarding medical cards is drawn up, which will for the first time take account of a person’s medical condition.

Up to now, medical cards are awarded on the basis of financial means, although the HSE may exercise discretion where an applicant has major medical needs.

Minister of State at the Department of Health Alex White announced the U-turn in the Dáil today during a debate on the Bill to extend free GP care to children aged under six. The Cabinet sub-committee on health, which met this morning, ordered the change of policy following weeks of sustained criticism over the removal of discretionary cards from patients.

Mr White said the Government was very aware of public concern on the issue. As a result, the Cabinet sub-committee had decided that a policy framework should be drawn up in a manner in which medical conditions were taken account of in the assessment of eligibility for a medical card.

An expert panel will be convened to decide on the range of conditions which would be relevant in this regard, he said. It is likely the move will require legislation before it can come into force.

Mr White said that in the light of this, it had been decided that the current review of medical cards be suspended. The Department of Health is to draw up a policy paper setting out the path toward full rollout of free GP care for all and the Minister for Health would bring a memo to Government on the issue, he said.

Mr White pointed out that there are significant regional variations in the award of discretionary medical cards, from 24 per 1,000 cards in Co Cork to 4 per 1,000 in Co Meath.

Backbench Fine Gael TDs, who raised the issue at a parliamentary party meeting a month ago, welcomed the change in policy even before Mr White stood up in the Dáil to announce it.

The ongoing mass review of medical cards provoked huge controversy after a series of hardship cases emerged in which extremely sick children and adults were refused a medical card or had a card removed.

The issue is believed to have played a significant role in the Government parties’ disastrous performance in last week’s European and local elections, with 57 per cent of the electorate telling one exit poll it was the main issue which determined their vote.

Responding to criticism of his stance on the issue, Taoiseach Enda Kenny had pledged to “fix” the problem in relation to discretionary medical cards.

Any decision to restrict the HSE’s programme of reviewing medical cards will limit its ability to make the savings required of the health service in last month’s Budget. By the end of March, the HSE was already running €80 million over budget.

Brown University geology Researchers zone in on habitable environment on the red planet Mars

 

The slopes of a giant Martian volcano that was shroud in ice 210 million years ago may be one of the most habitable environments found on the red planet to date according Brown University geologists.

Arsia Mons is the third tallest volcano on Mars and, at nearly twice the size of Mount Everest, it’s one of the largest mountains in our solar system.

A new study out of Brown University speculates that microbial life may have existed at the foot of this mountain — and it could have been there for thousands of years.

Researchers believe that heat from volcanic lava and the presence of ice may have combined to create the hospitable conditions.

According to lead author Kat Scanlon, a doctoral student at Brown University, the icy lakes at Arsia Mons would have held hundreds of cubic kilometres of meltwater — a precursor to life — and that environment may have been sustained for centuries.

While 210 million years ago sounds ancient, it’s not as old as the more than 2.5 billion year-old potential habitable zones that Mars rovers have turned up.

“It’s all a really nice suite of land forms that together all point to the exact same process. So, that was really cool.”

The theory that glacial ice once existed on Arsia Mons has been around since the 1970s and it has been re-visited time and again over the years. In fact, Scanlon’s collaborator Jim Head believes that some of the glaciers may even still exist.

“Remnant craters and ridges strongly suggest that some of the glacial ice remains buried below rock and soil debris,” he said in a statement.

“That’s interesting from a scientific point of view because it likely preserves in tiny bubbles a record of the atmosphere of Mars hundreds of millions of years ago. But an existing ice deposit might also be an exploitable water source for future human exploration.”  

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

The number of female TDs hits a new record high for Dáil Éireann

 

The election of Dublin West Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger, as well as Gabrielle McFadden, brings to 27 the total number of women in Dáil Éireann 2014.

There are now more female TDs than ever before, with Fine Gael’s Longford-Westmeath by-election winner Gabrielle McFadden having taken up her Dáil seat today.

195 women were elected to local government last Friday, while six seats remain to be allocated.

There has also been a slight increase in the proportion of Ireland’s female elected members of the European Parliament, with five women and five men having been elected across the three Irish constituencies and one seat still to be filled.

The National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) has welcomed the increase in the number of elected female representatives. They’re  calling on political parties to continue showing their commitment to getting more women involved in politics.

Women in Politics and Decision Making Officer at NWCI, Louise Glennon said: “This is a clear sign that the impending gender quotas legislation is having a positive impact. Women deserve and need to be at the table where decisions that affect all our lives are made.

“The most recent elections have proven a proud moment for all the women who put themselves forward, whether they were elected or not… the increased visibility of women throughout this campaign will encourage more women to stand in the General Elections”, she added.

The election of  Dublin West Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger, as well as Gabrielle McFadden, brings to 27 the total number of women in Dáil Éireann.

At present, Fine Gael have ten sitting female Dáil members, namely Catherine Byrne (Dublin South-Central), Áine Collins (Cork North-West), Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy (Laois/Offaly), Regina Doherty (Meath East), Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid-West), Heather Humphreys (Cavan/Monaghan), Helen McEntee (Meath East), Olivia Mitchell (Dublin South), Mary Mitchell O’Connor (Dún Laoghaire) and Michelle Mulherin (Mayo).

The Labour Party have seven female deputies, namely Joan Burton (Dublin West), Ciara Conway (Waterford), Anne Ferris  (Wicklow), Kathleen Lynch (Cork North-Central), Jan O’Sullivan (Limerick City), Ann Phelan (Carlow/Kilkenny) and Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid-West).

There are six female independent members of Dáil Éireann, namely Joan Collins (Dublin South-Central), Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South-East), Clare Daly (Dublin North), Catherine Murphy (Kildare North), Maureen O’Sullivan (Dublin Central), Róisín Shortall (Dublin North-West) 

Sinn Féin is represented by Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central) and Sandra McLellan (Cork East).

Ruth Coppinger has become The Socialist Party’s Dáil Deputy, while there are currently no sitting female Fianna Fáil members in Dáil Éireann.

Women currently hold 20.5% of the 949 total local election seats across the country, a 3.5% minimum increase on the number of outgoing female local authority representatives.

An urban / rural divide continues, however. Dublin City Council has just exceeded the 30% quota, with 44 men and 19 women, while in Clare just three women were elected to sit alongside 29 men.

According to NWCI Director Orla O’Connor: “We need to see more women and men working towards women’s equality and this can only happen if there are more women at the decision making table.

“We are being told that Ireland is on the road to recovery, yet this is not true for many women. Men leave the Live Register four times faster than women. Employment for women under 35 is falling, even as overall employment improves.

“NWCI looks forward to working with all those newly-elected politicians to advance the issues that will make a real difference to women’s lives and make society better for both women and men”, she said.

Constance Markievicz was the first woman elected to Dáil Eireann in 1919 and was the only female Cabinet minister in Irish history until 1979.

Garda oversight body ‘A defining moment for our force’ 

say’s Noirin O’Sullivan

 

Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan tells Oireachtas the independent authority brings a chance to rebuild trust.

Speaking before the Oireachtas Justice Committee, interim Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan said the introduction of the authority could represent a ’defining moment for the force’.

The establishment of an independent Garda oversight authority provides the force with a unique opportunity to reform and renew itself and build public trust and confidence, interim Garda commissioner Noirín O’Sullivan has said.

Speaking before the Oireachtas Justice Committee, which was discussing the new oversight body, Ms O’Sullivan said the introduction of the authority could represent a “defining moment for the force” that could allow it to demonstrate accountability and professionalism are at its core.

The authority was mooted by the Government after a string of recent scandals related to the force emerged.

An Garda Síochána, Ms O’Sullivan said, was already subject to significant oversight from institutions such as the Oireachtas Justice Committee, judiciary and Garda Inspectorate.

She said this was welcome as An Garda Síochána needed to be accountable and the new authority could further enhance confidence in the force. She said the new authority should be guided by what is good for the community and policing.

Ms O’Sullivan said An Garda Síochána was committed to engaging constructively with the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) to reach the objectives of the force, adding that she believed gardaí should not investigate other gardaí as independent objectivity was important.

She said the force must be open to internal and external criticism and that “dissent was not disloyalty”.

The expectations society has for An Garda Síochána have changed since the 2005 act was introduced, she said.

Gardaí hold a privileged position and serve with energy, dedication and pride, she added.

Former Northern Ireland police ombudsman Baroness Nuala O’Loan said GSOC had done some very good work since its introduction but there was now an opportunity to enhance it and make it more effective and independent.

Independence and impartiality are key factors for a successful police watchdog, she said, but the act underpinning GSOC does not mention these matters.

She said GSOC should be responding to every individual complaint and should have the power to investigate policy and practice matters.

Baroness O’Loan said it was not sustainable that GSOC could not investigate complaints against the Garda commissioner as it gave the impression accountability was OK for junior members of the force but not their seniors.

She said there needed to be a separation between GSOC and the State and that she could not think of any experience serving officers could bring to the table that retired officers could not.

A provision in the Garda Síochána Act act stating that people who made false or misleading complaints face penalties should be removed as it could deter people from coming forward as they might.

Ronan Brady, journalism lecturer at Griffith College, said the Freedom of Information Act should be extended to An Garda Síochána and that Ireland was unique in the fact it did not cover the police force, which had brought a greater openness in other jurisdictions.

He said it was convenient to believe FOI could inhibit intelligence gathering but this was not the case.

The recently elected ‘Anti-austerity candidates’ could damage the Irish economy’

 

The parties and independent candidates that campaigned on anti-austerity agendas and made gains in the local and European elections could do enormous damage to the economy if they repeated this success at the general election in two years, according to economist Jim Power.

“The thought of its scares the living daylights out of me,” said Mr Power speaking at the Friends First economic outlook presentation in Dublin.

He argued that Ireland is a small open economy that is heavily reliant on attracting foreign investment and skilled labour to work in this country. Mr Power declined to name any parties or individuals in particular.

Rather he cited policies such as defaulting on debt and proposed tax hikes as having the potential to wreak havoc with the economy.

He hoped that last weekend “was a massive protest vote” and that in two years time, before the general election, most Irish people will realise that what these parties and individuals stand for is “totally alien to what we stand for”.

Mr Power, who helped campaign for a local election candidate, found on the doorsteps that the overwhelming source of disaffection among voters were issues relating to the health service and in particular medical cards.

The Government is scheduled to introduce €2bn in budget cuts October 14 agreed with the troika in order to reduce the deficit below 3% in 2015.

Mr Power urged the Government to implement a neutral budget apart from the €500m planned in water charges.

“I would argue that at this stage €2bn could do more harm than good and could cause the Government to miss the budget deficit next year.”

Mr Power has forecast GDP to grow by 2.1% this year and 3.8% next year, with GNP expected to grow by 1.5% in 2014 and 3.2% next year.

He forecasts unemployed to drop to 11.4% by the end of this year and 10% by the end of next year.

Named Irish Hospitals blamed for 75% of HSE overspend

  

Irish hospitals are being blamed for almost three-quarters of the HSE’s budget over-spend in the health authority’s performance report.

The HSE said hospitals had racked up €63m of the €80m deficit at the end of March.

The overall deficit is significantly higher than the €26.7m reported over the same period last year.

Almost 40% of the overspend by hospitals was caused by income shortfalls (€10m) and increased costs of agency staff (€14m).

  The hospitals with the biggest budget overspend are:

1. University Hospital Limerick €5.9m.

2. Waterford Regional Hospital €4m.

3. Mater Hospital, Dublin €3.8m.

4. Galway University Hospital €3.3m

5. St Vincent’s University Hospital, Dublin. €2.8m.

The health authority said the National Service Plan clearly showed it was facing the most “severe” financial challenge this year.

The report shows spending over the first three months of 2014 at €2.97bn which is lower than the €3.08bn reported over the same period last year.

However, it only had a budget of €2.88bn for the period which was less than what was spent.

The report points out that the HSE’s budget has been cut by 27% — €4bn over the past seven years.

It said the number of new attendances at emergency units had increased by 8,225 over the first three months, a 3% increases and the number admitted as in-patients from emergency departments had risen by 1,583 — a 2% increase.

Admissions through medical assessment units had risen by 1,250 – 16% higher than last year.

However, the number of people on emergency department trolleys while waiting on a ward bed had decreased by 3% compared with the same period last year.

The number of people admitted for planned procedures is 3% (753 people) lower for the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year.

A total of 24,285 people have been admitted for scheduled hospital care up to the end of March. However, the number of people in hospital on a day care basis is 1% (3,077 people) lower than the same period last year. A total of 202,815 people had been treated in hospital on a day care basis up to the end of March.

At the end of March, 46,000 people were waiting for an in-patient or day care hospital procedure, with one in 10 waiting over eight months.

According to the report, 4,532 children are waiting for an in-patient or day care procedure and almost one in five are waiting more than five months.

There were 16,295 people waiting over a year for an out-patient appointment at the end of March — about 5% of all those waiting. Last year, 17% were waiting more than a year for an appointment.

Zebra finch Songbirds can understand non-language aspects of the Human Speech

  

A study has revealed that songbirds can be trained to understand non-language aspects of human speech. The study proved that zebra finches have the capability to show even more sensitiveness to prosodic variations, like changes in the pitch, volume and duration of spoken syllables, than humans.

It is now believed that the evolution of structured language might have been predated by prosodic features of vocal sounds. The study involved birds that were trained to respond to patterns of human speech syllables. Researchers placed a loudspeaker above their cage so that the birds can listen to sounds.

The birds were tasked to peck a specific key or take no action depending upon the sound. The birds were offered a food reward for a correct response, while 15 seconds of darkness was all they got for an incorrect response.

Both a male and a female speaker uttered two different sequences of four naturally spoken syllables. Also, researchers altered pitch, volume or duration to stress the first or last syllable in each group so as to add prosodic patterns typical of human speech.

The finches performed brilliantly as they not only recognized the changing patterns, but they were able to apply their learning to sequences consisting of new syllables as well.

The findings of the study provided strong evidence that zebra finches are sensitive to the same prosodic cues known to affect human speech perception, said the scientists.

Michelle Spierings, from Leiden University in the Netherlands, led the team of scientists and he reported the findings in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

“Our results show that sensitivity to prosodic cues is not linked to the possession of language and might have preceded language evolution, possibly originating from a pre-existing sensitivity to meaningful variation in pre-linguistic communicative sounds”, he added.