Numbers signing on Irish live Register down by 1.3% in October
There were 332,200 on the register last month as against 336,600 for September
The number of people aged under 25 years continued to decline, falling by 19.7% or 10,084 in the year to October. Annual decreases have occurred in all months since July 2012.
The number of claimants signing on the Live Register fell by 4,400 last month, a decline of 1.3% versus September, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
There were 332,200 on the register at the end of October as against 336,600 for the previous month.
In unadjusted terms there were 320,794 people signing on, down 10.6% on October 2014.
The number of male claimants was down by 3,500 or 1.8% versus September and by 28,105 or 12.9% on an annual basis, leaving a total of 189,667 men signing on at the end of October.
The number of female claimants fell by 900 or 0.7% on a monthly basis and by 9,731 or 6.9% compared to October 2014.
According to the latest figures, the number of long-term claimants on the Live Register totalled 149,603 last month, down 12.5% on an annual basis.
There were 65,184 casual and part-time workers on the register, equivalent to 20.3% of the total numbers signing on in October and up from 19.9% a year earlier.
The number of people aged under 25 years continued to decline, falling by 19.7% or 10,084 in the year to October. Annual decreases have occurred in all months since July 2012.
Overall, there were 31,245 new registrants on the Live Register last month with an average of 3,345 male and 2,904 female claimants joining each week of the month.
CSO began publishing a new series of monthly unemployment estimates in June. the latest figures, published earlier this week, put the State’s jobless rate at 9.3% for October with youth unemployment falling to 19.7%.
The estimates replace the Standardised Unemployment Rate (SUR) as the definitive measure of monthly unemployment, which used to be published alongside the Live Register numbers.
Tánaiste Joan Burton says housing excuses are ‘bogus’
Tánaiste Joan Burton has hit out at local authorities who she says are finding “potentially spurious and bogus reasons” not to build social housing.
Government plans to provide modular housing for homeless families have already sparked a backlash, with one councillor claiming it would lead to “shanty towns” and “ghettoisation”.
There has been sharp criticism about the sites chosen for 153 new units in Dublin City Council, which is controlled by Sinn Féin, with questions about why land in more upmarket areas was not used.
The Labour leader said local councillors needed to put the needs of people first. “It is for council officials and the members of the city council to evaluate the sites,” said Ms Burton.
“But can I ask the members of the city council not to be finding potentially spurious and bogus reasons as to why the day keeps being put off when we actually develop social housing.”
Meanwhile, RTÉ refused a request to use space on its Montrose campus for modular housing, saying it would interfere with the day-to-day running of the broadcaster.
‘It’s not up to Travellers to police other Traveling Communities.
‘It is Extremely naive’ to say no criminal elements within Travelling community’
“Extremely naive” and “nonsense” to suggest there are no Travellers involved in criminal activity. Martin Collins, co-director with Pavee Point.
Pavee Point has said it would be “extremely naive” for the Travelling community to suggest there are no criminal elements in its midst.
Martin Collins, a co-director with the Traveller rights group, was speaking after Sinn Féin justice spokesman Pádraig Mac Lochlainn said some of the “mistrust” felt by the settled community was justified by “very poor behaviour and worse” on the part of some Travellers.
Mr Mac Lochlainn, who is half Traveller and has urged the State to recognise the community as an ethnic group, said: “There is criminality within the Travelling community. They are a disgrace, those involved in criminality, they let down their own community and they shame their own community.”
Mr Collins said it would be “extremely naive for any of us to suggest for one second there isn’t an element in our community involved in criminal activity”.
“That would be just nonsense,” he said. “The point I think Padraig is trying to make is that the rest of the Travellers are being held to account for the minority within the minority who are involved in this behaviour. That’s not acceptable.
“You can’t stereotype and demonise a whole community of people just because of the behaviour of a number within the community.”
Mr Collins added that it was not the responsibility of Travellers to police other Travellers.
“When it comes to Travellers there is an expectation that 100 per cent of Travellers are expected to behave well 100 per cent of the time and it’s only then that Travellers will be treated with respect and dignity,” he said. “We don’t accept that of any other community so there is a case of double standards.
“It’s wrong, it’s unacceptable, and those people need to be held to account, but it’s not up to Travellers to police other Travellers.
“Traveller organisations need to work with the gardaí – and they are working with the gardaí – so that people are held to account for their bad behaviour, but we don’t expect other settled people to police or account for the behaviour of other settled people. That’s just not on.”
Irish Traveller Movement director Brigid Quilligan said Mr Mac Louchlainn’s remarks taken in isolation could present a misleading portrayal of his position in relation to the Travelling community.
“They were made in a bigger context,” she said. “There is a minority of people engaged in criminality within the Traveller community, but he contextualised that by saying that also exists in the settled community.
“When you see what he said out of context, I can see why people might find it offensive but his wider speech was wholeheartedly in favour and full support of Travellers.
“He was acknowledging, as we have done in the past, that there is a small minority of our community engaged in criminality – and we will call those people out as well.”
‘A joint at a concert’ should not be criminalised?
Says Committee
A report says possession of some illegal drugs should be dealt with by ‘Dissuasion Committees’
People caught smoking “a joint at a concert” should not be criminalised, the Oireachtas Justice committee has recommended.
A new report says the possession of small amounts of illegal drugs for personal use should be dealt with by so-called “Dissuasion Committees”, which are used in Portugal, rather than the criminal justice system.
Committee chairman Fine Gael TD David Stanton said gardaí he had spoken to about the proposal informally were “delighted” with the idea of adopting the Portuguese authorities’ approach to small-scale drug offences.
“It’s not going to be legal. It’s not legal in Portugal. We’re not saying it should be legal here, but it should not be criminalised. It should be treated the same way as a road traffic offence or a speeding offence or something like that,” Mr Stanton said.
He said police he had spoken to during a fact-finding mission to Portugal said they were now able to devote their resources to “heavy hitters” involved in drug dealing and trafficking.
“We’re not using the word legalisation. So it’s not that. And also if you go through this report decriminalisation is not mentioned either, because we want to take the focus away from the criminal justice area and move it to the health area,” he said.
“Speaking informally to members of the gardaí, and people who actually work on the ground, have told me informally they’re absolutely delighted because they say they don’t want to be bringing people to the courts for possession of small amounts of illegal substances.”
He said the stigma having a criminal record could have “massive implications” on a person’s future, “for maybe making one mistake, having a joint at a concert for instance”.
Mr Stanton said the committee had been keen to publish its report before the election and hoped the next Government would adopt its proposals.
Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell, who also travelled to Portugal, said “Dissuasion Committees” took place in informal meeting rooms.
“It was somewhere were individuals would, in a very casual format, discuss their addiction…There were no suits, there were no white suits,” he said.
A range of professionals were available to the “clients”, he said.
The launch of the committee’s report was also attended by Independent Senator Katherine Zappone and Labour Senator Ivana Bacik.
In the audience was Dr Garrett McGovern, a GP with experience of treating drug and alcohol addiction, who expressed concern about the “inference” that everybody who used cannabis needed to go before a “Dissuasion Committee”.
He said: “I treat a hell of a lot of addiction. I treat very little cannabis. The vast, vast majority of cannabis users do not have a problem with cannabis.
“To put them through a health committee is going to be very expensive, probably very stigmatising. I don’t think it’s the way to do that. If somebody has a problem with cannabis, that’s different.”
Britain’s oldest tree may be undergoing a sex change?
THE ORIGINAL SIZE OF THE TREE’S TRUNK IS MARKED BY WOODEN POLES.
The Fortingall Yew, one of the oldest living organisms in Europe, may be undergoing a sex change.
The tree in Scotland — which by some estimates has been male for nearly 5,000 years — was recently found sprouting red berries. The berries are female.
“They’re there to attract birds to eat them and disperse the seeds,” says Dr. Max Coleman, a Botanist at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, who first spotted the berries on the ancient Yew.
Many plants have male and female parts, but the ancient Yew is usually one sex or the other. Not both. So what happened? It could be an evolutionary strategy to keep the ancient Yew living even longer, says Coleman.
“It might be that occasional switches of sex can maximize the reproduction potential,” he says of the of evergreen tree.
Still, the sudden apprearance of female parts on a tree thousands of years old is a mystery.
Religion makes children less generous than other kids,
Say Scientists
Religion is often associated with morality, but new research shows that children from religious households are actually less generous than kids from a secular background.
This conclusion comes from a study of over 1000 children from around the world, published in the journal Current Biology. The project was led by Professor Jean Decety, a neuroscientist from the University of Chicago, who didn’t originally aim to compare moral behavior. “I was more interested in whether I would find differences in empathy or sharing depending on the culture,” he says. “It turned out to be a really interesting finding.”
While previous research has examined generosity in adults, Decety’s work reveals that upbringing shapes morality early in life. This includes altruism – actions that benefit a recipient at a cost to the donor. Children learn religious values and beliefs from their family and community, through rituals like going to church. If religion promotes morality, kids from religious households should show stronger altruistic tendencies.
Generosity and punishment. Decety’s team of psychologists assessed altruism using ‘the dictator game’: each child was given 30 stickers and told to choose how many to share with an anonymous child from the same school and similar ethnic group. This task reflects choices in ecology – allocating limited resources – and the results were used to calculate a ‘generosity score’. The researchers looked at 1170 children aged 5-12 years old, from six countries (USA, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa). Most kids came from households that identified as Christian (24%), Muslim (43%) or not religious (28%). (There were small numbers from Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and agnostic homes, who weren’t compared.)
The results show that secular children shared more stickers. Muslim children are less generous than Christian kids, but this is not statistically significant (labelled ‘ns’ in the bar chart below). All three groups became less altruistic with age, though religious children had lower generosity, suggesting that longer exposure to religion leads to less altruism.
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