Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Banker’s McAteer and Whelan to enjoy 240 hours of community service “Ha Ha”

 

Judge concludes hearing saying: ‘Thank you gentlemen. Enjoy your community service’

William McAteer (left) of Rathgar, Dublin, and Pat Whelan of Malahide, Dublin, at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court this morning.

Two former directors of Anglo Irish Bank have each been sentenced to 240 hours community service for giving illegal loans to developers to buy shares in the bank.

North-Dublin-based Patrick Whelan (53) Anglo’s former director of lending in Ireland, and 63-year-old William McAteer, the bank’s former finance director, have been sentenced to 240 hours of community service to be completed over the course of the next year.

Judge Martin Nolan handed down the sentence and said: “Thank you gentlemen. Enjoy your community service”.

The two men were convicted in April of giving the loans to ten customers of the bank six years ago, but they were found not guilty of illegal lending to members of the Quinn family.

Judge Martin Nolan said in April that he felt it would be unfair to imprison either man as he believed the Financial Regulator “led them into error and illegality”.

He said he believed that the Regulator had effectively given the “green light” to allow the illegal purchase of Anglo shares.

Judge Martin Nolan had adjourned sentencing to assess the men’s suitability for community service. The type of community service the two former bankers could be asked to carry out includes ground clearance, graffiti removal, maintenance, the improvement of parks and other services.

Mr Whelan and Mr McAteer had been convicted of giving illegal loans to a group of developers known as the ‘Maple Ten’ to buy shares in Anglo in July 2008. Anglo their trial had heard feared the entire bank would have collapsed otherwise.

The developers loaned to include well-known names like Paddy McKillen, Gerry Gannon and Joe O’Reilly. Judge Martin Nolan said of the ten men: “They were certainly good men and acting with good motives.”

Mr McAteer and Mr Whelan were the first prosecution of offences under section 60 of the 1963 Companies Act. The loans were part of a larger scheme to try and place a huge interest in the bank built up by businessman Sean Quinn in its shares.

Mr McAteer grew up in Co Donegal and qualified as a chartered accountant in 1975. After becoming a partner in PricewaterhouseCoopers, McAteer became managing director of Paul Coulson’s Yeoman International Leasing, a venture capital lending firm. In 1992 he joined Anglo in a senior role. He was finance director of the bank for 15-years when it expanded rapidly.

Mr. Whelan grew up in inner-city Dublin, on Marlborough Street. He worked with AIB before joining Anglo in the late 1980s. By 1997 Mr. Whelan was an associate director in the bank and was mainly involved in lending before moving in 2002 into group risk. In 2006 he joined the board of Anglo, and the following year was made head of Irish lending.

According to the Prison Service a judge can impose a community service order of between 40 and 240 hours’ work.

While the judge specifies the duration the type of work is determined by the probation service.

There are eight categories of community service listed on the Prison Service website. These include:

1. Ground clearance work and general gardening projects;
2. Graffiti removal; environmental work;
3. Recycling projects;
4. Basic building maintenance and landscaping;
5. Improvements to park and community facilities;
6. Painting and decorating in community centres etc;
7. Assisting voluntary and community clubs, facilities and bodies;
8. Working with individuals or groups in need;
9. Supporting local initiatives.

Stop huffing and puffing & blaming companies for using Irish tax system

 

Apple’s profits might bypass tax coffers of the US and UK, but it does not mean that the money is gone

Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland made international headlines.

In May 2013, Apple was one of several US multinationals in the hot seat before a bipartisan US senate subcommittee investigating the use of corporate tax avoidance schemes.

Apple’s tax arrangements in Ireland made international headlines, as Apple chief executive Tim Cook revealed that the company paid a sixth of Ireland’s multinational tax rate of 12.5%.

The Irish Government was quick to deny assertions that it was providing a “tax haven” to such companies.

Two of the senators leading the investigation retorted with a joint statement, insisting: “Most reasonable people would agree that negotiating special tax arrangements that allow companies to pay little or no income tax meets a common-sense definition of a tax haven.”

In the same year, a similar scenario played out before a parliamentary subcommittee in the UK. Companies highlighted this time included Google and Amazon. Over there, it was noted, Amazon paid just £2.4 million in corporate taxes in 2012 on sales of £4.3 billion.

Ireland came up in those discussions too, as a base through which many of these companies with UK subsidiaries funnelled their tax (lets set aside that if, as UK tax campaigners have argued, Amazon and its compatriots were taxed in each country on the basis of what each country contributes to overall revenue – about 10 per cent in the case of Amazon UK – Amazon in the UK would be entitled to a large tax credit now due to recent global losses).

The fact is, all this huffing and puffing of government investigatory committees remains just so much grandstanding.

Last week, an American president finally had the courage to argue, in a hard-hitting speech in Los Angeles, that the time has come to – yes – change the American tax system to prevent American corporate profits from heading off on productive international tours. Ireland, of course, got yet another mention.

GAMING THE SYSTEM

“What we are trying to do is to say that if you simply acquire a small company in Ireland or some other country to take advantage of the low tax rate [and] you start saying, ‘we are now magically an Irish company’, despite the fact that you might have only 100 employees there and you have got 10,000 employees in the United States, you are just gaming the system. You are an American company,” President Obama said.

He also identified one of the other hallmarks of the US corporate system whereby many benefit from subsidies and market supports,even now and then, full-on bailouts, at the expense of the US taxpayer.

25% of babies born here are now to non-Irish parents

   

ONE-IN-FOUR (25%) OF CHILDREN BORN HERE IN 2012 WERE TO NON-NATIONAL MOTHERS.

The mothers hailed mostly from EU accession states, Asia and Africa, a new study on Ireland’s children of immigrants reveals.

Interestingly, the team found that while English was the most commonly spoken language in their homes – even when neither parent was Irish – more than half of the children who had at least one parent from the EU accession states didn’t speak English.

The most commonly spoken languages in those homes were Polish (66%), Lithuanian (17%), Russian (9%) and Romanian (5%).

The findings are included in the first-ever study of the children of migrant parents here entitled ‘New Irish Families: A profile of Second Generation Children and their Families’ by researchers at Trinity College.

The study also found that mothers born outside of Ireland tended to be much more educated than their Irish counterparts.

Sixty percent of non-Irish mothers born elsewhere in the EU – excluding the UK – had attained a third-level degree or higher, while close to half (46%) of Asian mothers had a third-level degree compared to just 28% of Irish mothers.

Yet despite their education, families with at least one parent from the EU accession states, Asia or Africa, were found to be at greater risk of poverty and with lower household incomes and jobs predominantly in semi-skilled or unskilled sectors.

Conversely, families with at least one parent from established EU member states were found to be the most socio-economically advanced group.

The study, led by Trinity College sociologist Antje Roder, was conducted in order to gauge the impact of the mass influx of migrants over the past decade on Irish society in years to come.

“Very little is known about (migrant) children born and raised in Ireland whose families will face different challenges to those that moved here with their foreign-born children,” the report states.

Children with diabetes to suffer ill-care after good improvements made recently

  

Children’s health will suffer with the loss of a quality paediatric diabetes service at University Hospital Limerick, a national campaign group has warned.

Over the last year, children’s diabetes services at the hospital had improved dramatically with the appointment of a full time locum endocrinologist replacing one on ‘half-time’.

The full-time consultant was solely concerned with medical care for more than 250 children with type 1 diabetes and, as a result, there was a fivefold increase in care and support.

Diabetes Ireland said families had been delighted and patients had received quarterly medical appointments.

HOWEVER, THE FULL-TIME POST IS REVERTING BACK TO A HALF-TIME POSITION.

Dr Anna Clarke of Diabetes Ireland said that, at a minimum, Limerick and Galway required a part-time post in each hospital to support their care plan.

“Cutting the Limerick service medical support by a fifth will put children’s health at risk on a daily basis and we will end up spending more on inpatient treatment and long-term complications. Our children deserve better,” she said.

Children with type 1 diabetes, an auto-immune condition, need three-monthly reviews to ensure their growth and development.

Diabetes Ireland said the part-time consultant could not physically review the 250 children attending Limerick four times a year.

Parents of the children now fear appointments will slip from next month when the service reverts back to a ‘half-time’ post.

John Saunders, whose 10-year-old son attends Limerick, had been very impressed with the management response to addressing personnel shortages in the past year.

“The improvements have been tangible for our son as well as for all children attending,” said Mr Saunders.

“It is vital to build on rather than reverse recent gains. To reduce resources now as patient numbers continue to grow would be a severe blow to the health and morale of all who use and work in this service.”

The part-time consultant is to be shared with Galway University hospitals as part of the plan to implement the type 1 diabetes model of care for under fives.

The care plan will see all children in the age category having access to insulin pump therapy, the optimal treatment for most young people with diabetes.

Dr Clarke said she was worried that what happened at Limerick would set a precedent for the rest of the country. “The whole of the west should be up in arms about this, not just people in the Limerick area.”

A Care plan

1. Four children a week are being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, a lifelong condition requiring intensive medical and personal management to reduce the risks of complications in later life.
2. Type 1 diabetes is an auto immune condition that affects a child’s ability to control the glucose level in the blood.
3. Insulin is required regularly, either as injections or continuous infusion (pump) which must be balanced to food intake and physical activity level.
4. Managing a child with diabetes requires education, motivation and ongoing support of the family from the specialist paediatric diabetes team.

- Diabetes Ireland’s helpline number — 1850 909909;www.diabetes.ie

The benefits of a short daily run “too good to miss out on”

  

Running for just seven minutes a day could cut your risk of heart disease by almost 50%.

Running first thing in the morning or straight after work can seem like a slog. But what if doing it for just seven minutes could already have a huge impact on your health? A new study suggests a short run, even at a slow pace, could dramatically decrease your chance of heart disease.

Iowa University conducted a study with 55,137 adults aged between 18 and 100 and the result was that exercise did not have to leave you shattered in order to benefit your health.

The long-term research followed the lives of the people involved over 15 years. During this time, over 3,000 died, with 1,217 deaths linked to heart disease.

Runners made up just under a quarter of the study population and results showed their general health and lifespan to be much better and higher. Runners’ risk of heart disease and stroke was 45 per cent lower than non-runners and there was a decrease in risk of death from all causes by 30%. Runners also lived, on average, three years longer.

All that was needed was around 51 minutes a week. This works out at just seven per day. Running slower than six miles an hour for fewer than six miles a week also reduced the risk of death.

Unfortunately there’s some bad news for those putting in more effort – those who ran for less than an hour per week benefited just as much as those who ran for more than three hours a week (don’t let that put you off though!)

But the great news is that this study could finally motivate those who don’t think they have enough time to squeeze in a workout.

“Since time is one of the strongest barriers to participate in physical activity, the study may motivate more people to start running and continue to run as an attainable health goal for mortality benefits,” lead scientist Dr Duck-Chul Lee said.

“Running may be a better exercise option than more moderate intensity exercises for healthy but sedentary people.

“[This is because] it produces similar, if not greater, mortality benefits in five to ten minutes, compared to the 15 to 20 minutes per day of moderate intensity activity that many find too time consuming.”

If you walk to and from work or the station every morning, consider using this time to squeeze in a quick run. Pack some trainers to change into after work and build just ten minutes of jogging in a day.

Massive dinosaurs evolved and eventually shrank into agile flying birds

 

Birds evolved from heropod dinosaurs, the only dinosaurs that kept getting inexorably smaller, scientists find

Massive meat-eating ground-dwelling dinosaurs shrunk over 50 million years and evolved into agile flying birds, according to new research.

Scientists from the University of Southampton have presented in the journal Science a detailed family tree of dinosaurs and their bird descendants, which maps out the evolutionary transformation.

They showed that the branch of theropod dinosaurs, which gave rise to modern birds, were the only dinosaurs that kept getting inexorably smaller.

Darren Naish, vertebrate palaeontologist, said: ”These bird ancestors also evolved new adaptations, such as feathers, wishbones and wings, four times faster than other dinosaurs.”

Associate professor Michael Lee, from the University of Adelaide, added: ”Birds evolved through a unique phase of sustained miniaturisation in dinosaurs.

”Being smaller and lighter in the land of giants, with rapidly evolving anatomical adaptations, provided these bird ancestors with new ecological opportunities, such as the ability to climb trees, glide and fly. Ultimately, this evolutionary flexibility helped birds survive the deadly meteorite impact which killed off all their dinosaurian cousins.”

Co-author Gareth Dyke, senior lecturer in vertebrate palaeontology at the University of Southampton, said: ”The dinosaurs most closely related to birds are all small, and many of them – such as the aptly named Microraptor – had some ability to climb and glide.”

The study examined more than 1,500 anatomical traits of dinosaurs to reconstruct their family tree. The researchers used sophisticated mathematical modelling to trace evolving adaptions and changing body size over time and across dinosaur branches.

The international team also included Andrea Cau, from the University of Bologna and Museo Geologico Giovanni Capellini.

The study concluded that the branch of dinosaurs leading to birds was more evolutionary innovative than other dinosaur lineages.

Associate Prof Lee added: ”Birds out-shrank and out-evolved their dinosaurian ancestors, surviving where their larger, less evolvable relatives could not.”

Bumblebees can spot which flowers have the best pollen before they land

  

Not all flowers are created equal and now, it turns out that bumblebees can tell the difference.

Not all flowers are created equal and now, it turns out that bumblebees can tell the difference. Scientists have found that these insects can connect differences in pollen quality with floral features, like petal color, so that they only land on flowers that offer the best rewards.

Bees don’t ingest pollen while foraging on flower. That’s why researchers have long wondered how these insects could form associative relationships between what a flower looks like and the quality of its pollen. In order to find out, the scientists examined bumblebee forages under controlled conditions.

“There is still very little known about how bees decide which flowers to visit for pollen collection,” said Natalie Hempel de Ibarra, one of the researchers, in a news release. “Easily learning floral features based on pollen rewards, without needing any nectar rewards, is a fast and effective way to recognize those flower species which bees have previously experienced to be the best ones.”

The researchers manipulated the quality of pollen offered to the bees under controlled conditions by diluting the samples. Then, the scientists examined which pollen the bees preferred to collect, and if they could differentiate quality before landing by smell and sight of the pollen alone. In all, the researchers presented the bees with four different colored discs containing stronger and less diluted pollen.

“Bees need to be able to select flowers providing the most nutritious food for rearing their young,” said Elizabeth Nicholls, one of the researchers. “Since bumblebees don’t eat pollen when foraging, it was unclear if or how they might be able to assess differences in quality. Here we’ve shown that they are able to detect differences in pollen, even before landing, which means they may be able to tell, just from the color of the petals, which flowers are worth visiting.”