Enda Kenny puts pressure on Draghi to appear at Inquiry
Mario Draghi, president of the ECB & Enda Kenny who looks to persuade Mario to appear at Banking inquiry.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny last night put pressure on European Central Bank (ECB) over its extraordinary refusal to take part in the Banking Inquiry.
Mr Kenny held frank discussions with ECB chief Mario Draghi just days after being lambasted in the Dail over taking a soft stance with the powerful EU institution.
While Mr Kenny stopped short of demanding Mr Draghi’s attendance at the hearings, the Fine Gael leader said he made it clear that the Irish public want answers in relation to the devastating collapse of the banks.
“I met Mario Draghi and I pointed out to him that the people in Ireland were very concerned to understand and to find out what actually had happened during all of this period,” Mr Kenny said.
“And that our economy had a catastrophic collapse, that 250,000 jobs were lost that this had a situation where very many people in our country yet are paying for the consequences of that,” he added.
Mr Kenny accepted that Mr Draghi will now reflect on their “preliminary discussion” adding that he will contact the ECB chief about the issue in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile, the Inquiry was told today that staff in the Department of Finance were ‘out of the loop’ on the night of a Budget and had to go home to see what measures had been announced by Government on TV.
The comments from Canadian finance official Rob Wright come as it has emerged that the inquiry is to again write to the ECB to demand documents relating to the Irish crash. This is after the ECB formally refused to appear before the inquiry.
The ECB is one of a number of institutions that the inquiry is writing to, seeking documents for the “nexus stage” of the inquiry, which will now not begin until after Easter.
This means it will be at least April before many of the key witnesses, including former taoisigh Brian Cowen and Bertie Ahern, former ministers, officials and senior bankers, will be heard from.
At the public hearing, Mr Wright said he found it “incredible” that staff in the Department of Finance were completely out of the loop as to what was in the Budget during the last decade.
He told the 11 members of the inquiry team he was in Dublin working on the report when the Budget was announced.
“People in the Department of Finance went home on Budget night to find out what was in the Budget,” said Mr Wright, who was also known as Canada’s deputy finance minister.
Mr Wright was being pressed on his 2010 report into the failings of the Department of Finance in the run-up to the crash, which stopped short of saying it was not “fit for purpose”.
Ulster Bank cleared of trying to profit by putting viable SMEs out of business
Report says bank tried to manage indebted commercial customers through recession.
A report into Ulster Bank’s treatment of SME debtors during the recession has cleared it of allegations that it was involved in “systematic and institutional behaviour” to put otherwise viable businesses on a “journey towards administration, receivership and liquidation”.
The 75-page report by Irish law firm Mason Hayes & Curran, which was commissioned by Ulster Bank, found that “on the contrary”, the evidence suggests that its “driving policy” was to manage its indebted commercial customers through the recession.
Ulster Bank “sought to keep faith with the customer, provided that it viewed the customer’s business as viable and was receiving co-operation”.
Last resort
“Invoking insolvency remedies against trading businesses was done only as last resort,” it said, adding that its file review “did not disclose evidence of any viable businesses being forced into insolvency” by a restructuring unit within the bank.
The report into Ulster Bank’s treatment of SME customers between 2008 and 2013 stemmed from the publication of the Tomlinson Report in the UK in November last year.
Tomlinson had investigated the lending practices of UK banks to SMEs, including Royal Bank of Scotland, Ulster Bank’s parent. The report accused RBS, and in some cases Ulster Bank, of deliberately putting customers out of business for profit.
RBS hired law firm Clifford Chance to carry out a review which cleared the bank of these allegations.
The focus of the Mason Hayes & Curran report was on the work of Global Restructuring Group Ireland (GRGI), a division set up to deal with SMEs who had borrowed between €1 million and €25 million and were in distress. About 76 per cent of loans moved to GRGI related to commercial property.
Ulster Bank provided Mason Hayes & Curran with a list of 1,965 customer “connections”, of which the law firm reviewed 32 files. This included customers who had made a complaint on a Tomlinson-related issue.
The lawyers contacted Mr Tomlinson to seek his assistance but he declined because of an ongoing review by the UK’sFinancial Conduct Authority.
Mason Hayes & Curran met with five customers who had made allegations within the scope of the Tomlinson Report. The law firm concluded that while they “genuinely believed” they had been unfairly treated by Ulster Bank, their allegations were “not substantiated” following reviews of the files.
Restructuring
GRGI was established in 2003, under the name of Specialised Lending Services. It engaged in restructuring problem SME and corporate debt. It was rebranded as GRGI in 2009 and its motto was, “Restore, Refresh and Rejuvenate”.
By the end of 2013, GRGI had 248 employees managing more than 2,140 cases with a portfolio value of more than €14 billion.
HSE moves to install cameras in Irish care homes
The HSE has taken the first steps towards the possible installation of surveillance systems in its facilities to protect vulnerable patients in the wake of the Áras Attracta controversy.
A tender published this week calls for the installation of surveillance and security systems to protect vulnerable clients, patients, service users and staff members.
The request came a week after an RTÉ Prime Time investigation produced, via hidden cameras, shocking images of alleged abuses at the Áras Attracta care home in Swinford, Co Mayo. A number of staff are still on leave while investigations are being carried out by the gardaí and the HSE.
The prior information notice published this week indicates the HSE will seek surveillance and security systems and devices, security equipment and closed circuit television services.
Earlier this week HSE director general Tony O’Brien said that the body would investigate the possibility of covertly filming residential care services.
“We’ve placed the necessary notices this week to obtain the appropriate advice from specialists as to how we take this forward in terms of both undercover, open filming which is more straightforward, where it can be done in the open and with everybody knowing about it,” he told RTÉ.
“But where we have specific reasons we need to know whether and in what circumstances we can engage in covert filming in order to protect the interests of people who are in fact the most vulnerable clients we have, and it’s no coincidence that what we’ve seen here is the most vulnerable being abused,” he said.
Junior health minister Kathleen Lynch indicated her support for the installation of CCTV in homes earlier this week.
“I am convinced at this stage, as I have always been, that when it comes to protecting vulnerable people, nothing should be above us. RTÉ did it and it wasn’t illegal, why should it be illegal for the HSE?” she told Morning Ireland.
Meanwhile, the HSE has signalled “a more detailed investigation will be required” into complaints at a care unit for people with intellectual disabilities in Co Tipperary. A total of 11 workers have been placed on leave from St Anne’s Centre near Roscrea. The centre is operated by the Daughters of Charity, which said it received complaints from a former worker last Monday about care practices at two units.
“A professional source, that is a person in the profession, who had a complaint, made the complaint known through an intermediary on Monday last, December 15, and that complaint was made known by the intermediary through two different channels. Firstly, to the provider of the service in Roscrea, the Daughters of Charity and secondly, to the regulator, the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa),” a HSE spokesperson said.
Hiqa has carried out an inspection of the centre after receiving complaints about the care of patients. Gardaí have also been notified.
The complaints refer to activity in two units in St Anne’s which operates four houses for long-term residents aged 20 to 60 for people with significant intellectual disabilities.
How cuddles & hugs can help you fight the flu
Cuddle for a cure, now hugging is said to help boost your immune system.
WE know that hugs make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. And this feeling, it turns out, could actually ward off stress and protect the immune system, according to new research from Carnegie Mellon University.
It’s a well-known fact that stress can weaken the immune system. In this study, the researchers sought to determine whether hugs — like social support more broadly — could protect individuals from the increased susceptibility to illness brought on by the particular stress that comes with interpersonal conflict.
“We know that people experiencing ongoing conflicts with others are less able to fight off cold viruses. We also know that people who report having social support are partly protected from the effects of stress on psychological states, such as depression and anxiety,” the study’s lead author, psychologist Dr Sheldon Cohen, said in a statement.
“We tested whether perceptions of social support are equally effective in protecting us from stress-induced susceptibility to infection and also whether receiving hugs might partially account for those feelings of support and themselves protect a person against infection.”
In the experiment, over 400 healthy adults who filled out a questionnaire about their perceived social support and also participated in a nightly phone interview for two weeks.
They were asked about the frequency that they engaged in interpersonal conflict and received hugs that day.
Then, the researchers exposed the participants to a common cold virus, and monitored them to assess signs of infection.
They found that both perceived social support and more frequent hugs reduced the risk of infection associated with experiencing interpersonal conflict.
Regardless of whether or not they experienced social conflicts, infected participants with greater perceived social support and more frequent hugs had less severe illness symptoms.
“This suggests that being hugged by a trusted person may act as an effective means of conveying support and that increasing the frequency of hugs might be an effective means of reducing the deleterious effects of stress,” Cohen said.
“The apparent protective effect of hugs may be attributable to the physical contact itself or to hugging being a behavioural indicator of support and intimacy … Either way, those who receive more hugs are somewhat more protected from infection.”
If you needed any more reason to go wrap your arms around someone special, consider this: Hugs also lower blood pressure, alleviate fears around death and dying, improve heart health and decrease feelings of loneliness.
Ireland may need radical thinking on climate change
Mallow Street, Limerick above pic. was closed when a tree fell from the Peoples Park during storm Darwin.
Ireland’s moist and equable climate is a function of its location amid the mid latitude westerly wind belt and as an island bathed by the North Atlantic Drift.
Yet while the Atlantic dominates Irish climate, it acts on a rather unusual island topography of coastal uplands and an interior plain.
Many aspects of Irish climate therefore show a contrast between an exposed maritime fringe and a sheltered interior.
The main drivers, though, of the dramatic day-to-day weather changes Irish people are accustomed to result from often rapid changes in airflows between tropical, polar, oceanic and continental origins.
Overall, however, oceanic influences prevail. The moderating influence of the North Atlantic Drift provides Ireland with one of the most equable climates.
It takes around a year to deliver water from Florida to the Kerry coastline at around 10C in February and 16C in August. Mean January temperatures are a mild 7C along the south-west coast, falling to less than 4C in inland parts of Ulster.
The sea is cooler than the land in summer, however, and with a mean July temperature of 16.4C, Shannon Airport is almost 2C warmer than the northern tip of the island at Malin Head.
Oceanic influences discourage extremes in both seasons. The warmest summer of the last century was 1995 when 30.8C was recorded in Kilkenny, while 1962/3 was the coldest winter.
More recently, many readers will remember vividly the cold snap of 2010/11 when temperatures in the border counties dipped below -17C. Such extremes of heat and cold are, however, unexceptional in a wider European context.
The interaction between the topography and Atlantic airflows produces a classic west to east decline in rainfall with some parts of the western mountains receiving over 3,000mm annually while sheltered areas of the east coast only get around 750mm.
Despite our perception, it only rains 6.5pc of the time in eastern parts of Ireland, though rain may fall on 150 days of the year, and up to 225 days in the west.
Snow seldom lingers on the ground. Based on the past 50 years the chance of snow on the ground on a Christmas morning is about one in five.
Ireland has warmed by about 0.8C since the early 1900s. Climate modellers at Maynooth University and Met Eireann expect a further warming of about 1.5C to occur over the next 40 years.
Future rainfall changes are more uncertain, though winter increases and summer decreases are projected by most models, most likely with heavier, more intense downfalls. This has serious implications for flood occurrences in winter and also for water supply in some parts in summer.
The changing climate also has significant implications for agriculture, biodiversity, tourism, forestry and energy demand, and vulnerability in these sectors are being examined in a number of research projects.
A concern is the possibility of more storms, especially in conjunction with a rising sea level.
Last winter was the stormiest on record for this part of the eastern Atlantic. The events are still etched in many people’s memory, particularly the January/February period with its hurricane-force winds and 25-metre waves.
Whether the warmer Atlantic will make destructive winter storms a more recurrent feature, or whether the storm tracks will migrate north is one of the great unanswered research questions of Irish climate at the moment.
A recent sequence of extreme seasons: cold winters, warm summers, cold springs, wet autumns, stormy winters though have heightened concerns that Ireland’s climate is increasingly responding to global greenhouse gas loading of the atmosphere, particularly related to a less reliable westerly airflow in the high atmosphere.
If this turns out to be the case, radical new thinking on how to adapt to Ireland’s changing climate will be required in many key areas.
Professor John Sweeney is a lecturer at the Geography Department of NUI Maynooth
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