Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Irish Government set to drop the threat of a Bank Levy increase

   

AIB pays the biggest portion of levy, at 60 million euros. The Government may signal extension of banks current levy.

Ireland’s government is poised to drop a threat to increase a 150 million-euro ($170 million) annual levy on the nation’s banks, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

In delivering the budget on Tuesday in Dublin, Finance MinisterMichael Noonan is set to signal the charge will remain in force after 2016, extending its original three-year lifespan, should the ruling coalition win re-election, said the person, who asked not to be named as the final decision hasn’t been made.

National elections are due by early April. Government officials were weighing doubling the levy to fund tax cuts, the Sunday Business Post reported last month, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter. While Noonan warned in May he would introduce a “penal” charge if banks didn’t cut home-loan rates, he said last month that most lenders had done so.

Holding off raising the levy, which is based on Irish deposits, may make it easier to sell the government’s remaining stakes in the country’s banks. Allied Irish Banks Plc, which is 99.8% government owned and pays a 60 million euros a year levy, would be most hurt by an increase, said Diarmaid Sheridan, an analyst with Dublin-based securities firm Davy.

“A significant increase in the bank levy would negatively impact bank profitability and valuations and would come at a time when banks are still state owned,” said Sheridan.

Irish finance ministry officials declined to comment.

Age Action survey highlights problems in Galway hospitals

   

Older people in Galway have criticised lengthy waiting times and high parking costs in a survey of their experience in local hospitals

Older people in Galway have criticised lengthy waiting times and high parking costs in a survey of their experience in local hospitals published by Age Action, who called on hospitals to end the block-booking of appointments.

The online and face-to-face survey of 385 older people attending hospital out-patient appointments was carried out by local Age Action members.

The length of time waiting to be seen by the doctor was identified as the most stressful part of the day with 122 of those questioned highlighting it as their chief concern.

More than two-thirds, 68 per cent, of those who drove to their appointment found the cost of parking to be “excessive”.

Justin Moran, Head of Advocacy and Communications in Age Action, said: “The survey was carried out by local Age Action members who have frequently raised concerns regarding the experience of older people accessing outpatient services.

“A lot of the feedback was positive, with older people generally satisfied with how their appointment was arranged and found they were dealt with sensitively by hospital staff.

Block-booking

“However, they also pointed to areas where hospitals in Galway could certainly improve. The continuing practice of hospitals block-booking appointments means that patients can be left waiting for hours.

“This approach has been frequently criticised, most recently by Minister for Health Leo Varadkar TD who urged hospital managers to bring the system to an end.

“As well as forcing patients to wait longer, block booking can be expensive. Many older people depend on the State Pension of €230 a week, even less for those not entitled to a full pension.

“Excessive parking costs hit their wallets and add to the stress of what can already be a difficult day.”

Driven by members

Mr Moran also pointed out that the research was substantially strengthened by being carried out by local Age Action members.

He continued: “This work was driven by our members. They highlighted the issue in the first place as one of concern and then drove the project.

“By using their own networks of contacts they made the research a lot stronger and ensured we have a deeper understanding of the challenges facing older people when using hospitals in Galway.

“As we mark the end of Positive Ageing Week 2015, the work undertaken by our members in shows that older people are actively engaged citizens who will ensure their voices are heard in the forthcoming election.”

Organic farmers body calls for new reduced inspection certification rates

     

The call for reduced inspection and certification rates is part of the plan to make it easier for organic farmers to stay in the sector and for farmers to enter the sector.

An organisation representing organic farmers has called for reduced certification rates and a reduction in the number of organic certification bodies in Ireland. 

Airing their grievances at a meeting with the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday (Thursday), members of the Organic Farmers Representative Body called for reduced certification rates charged by organic certification bodies. It also welcomed a suggestion that the number of organic certification bodies in Ireland be reduced.

Steered by chair Padraic Finnegan, the voluntary body, set up in 2010 to lobby on behalf of farmers in the sector, listed the average certification rates for organic farmers based on the prices charged by the two largest organic certification bodies in the country, the Irish Organic Farmers and Growers Association (IOFGA) and the Organic Trust (OT).

Finnegan expressed dissatisfaction with the high rates and asked why the Department of Agriculture could not do this work itself in order to lessen the cost burden on organic farmers. The rates given for certification were as follows:

1. A farmer with 12ha pays €2,200 to the bodies over the five-year certification lifetime.
2. A farmer with 30ha pays €3,000 to the bodies over the five-year certification lifetime.
3. A farmer with 50ha pays €3,100 to the bodies over the five-year certification lifetime.

Finnegan said the rates are “absolutely scandalous” and that the Department needs to more clearly outline the role of the certification bodies, whom, he said, also collect certification fees from marts, co-ops and factories.

He said anything between 9% and 25% of the Organic Farming Scheme payment has to be paid back to those bodies each year for certification purposes.

Certification and inspections

Under current EU regulations, organic producers have to host an annual inspection on their farm in order to have their organic certification renewed. As these inspections are currently carried out by private certification bodies, farmers pay for the inspections on an annual basis. However, in June this year most Member States voted in favour of a compromise that would allow inspections to be targeted over two years for compliant or low-risk organic producers, thereby lessening the costs to farmers. The vote paved the way for a possible deal by the year’s end.

Before the vote Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney labelled some of the proposals in the reform package as “too ambitious”.

Cost of certification “exceptionally high”

Finnegan’s comments were received with surprise by the Oireachtas Committee members, who observed that the cost of certification seems “exceptionally high”.

Independent Senator Mary Ann O’Brien suggested that the five private organic certification bodies in Ireland be streamlined into one public body, a suggestion welcomed by the lobbying group. She also suggested that Bord Bia take on the role of inspecting and certifying organic farms as part of its free Quality Assurance Scheme inspection which takes place every 18 months.

Re-convening

Based on what it heard at the meeting, which included the difficulties faced by smaller hectare organic farmers due to the introduction of double funding across both GLAS and the Organic Farming Scheme, the Oireachtas Commitee proposed to re-convene with the organic farmers body at a later date. It said that representatives from the Department of Agriculture, Bord Bia and the organic certification bodies should also be present.

IOFGA refused to comment on these issues when contacted by the Irish Farmers Journal. Helen Scully of the Organic Trust says she is awaiting a transcript of this meeting and, therefore, is not in a position to respond at this time.

Organic farming in Ireland

Currently, 2% of land in Ireland is farmed organically, a figure well below the European average of 6%. In the Government’s Food Harvest 2020 strategy, announced in 2010, a target was set of increasing the percentage of land under organic use to 5% from its then level of 1.1%.

The Government admitted that the target was ‘‘ambitious’’, which the Organic Farmers Representative Body says is a “considerable understatement in light of the fact that the target requires an increase in organic land use to over three times its present level in a relatively short period.”

Will our smartphones ever get usage warning labels?

    

I’M A NON-SMOKING LIBERTARIAN.

That is, I prize autonomy and freedom of choice, but I also know I never would have kicked the habit without pressure from then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and my future wife. Together, their anti-smoking policies set me straight, and saved me from a world of hurt.  

Like a lot of people, therefore, I’m conflicted about mounting pressure to regulate mobile use.

Take a group of psychologists and computer scientists in the UK who are now calling for phone makers to attach warning labels to devices.

These scientists argue that mobile gadgets are turning people into digital addicts. “Excessive and obsessive usage and preoccupation about technology are associated with undesirable behaviors such as reduced creativity, depression and disconnection from reality,” Dr. Raian Ali, a professor of computing at the University of Bournemouth, said in a statement.

In the category of undesirable behavior, we should also add thescourge of distracted driving, which is costing thousands of lives a year in the U.S. alone.

The numbers are definitely scary. According to the second annual report on Consumer Mobility from the Bank of America and Flurry Analytics, U.S. consumers are perpetually plugged-in. Indeed, 71% of those surveyed actually sleep with their smartphones.

Mobile Addicts, consumers who launch applications 60 times or more per day, are growing at the fastest rate, from 176 million in the second quarter of 2014 to a whopping 280 million in the second quarter of 2015 — a 59% increase.

Of course, the industry isn’t helping. On the contrary, top platforms, publishers, and marketers are investing billions of dollars to increase usage numbers and “engagement” rates. At least in the short term, it would be in their collective best interest to glue a virtual reality headset to every consumer’s head, and, in true “Clockwork Orange” fashion, pump them full of content 24 hours a day.

Mark Zuckerberg probably wouldn’t paint that exact picture, but (following the release of Facebook’s Oculus Rift VR headset, early next year) such a scenario would do wonders for the company’s stock price.

So we know the industry isn’t going to regulate itself, and — given my personal experience — I don’t have much faith in the powers of self regulation.

Betraying my libertarian leanings, therefore, I think it may require an independent regulatory body to save us from our mobile-obsessed selves.

Geophysical survey carried out at site of buried Tuam babies

     

A geophysical survey has been carried out on the site of a former mother and baby home in County Galway.

It is believed nearly 800 children are buried in the grounds of what was once a mother and baby home run by nuns in Tuam.

A child died nearly every two weeks between the mid-1920s and 1960s.

The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes confirmed the survey was taking place.

It was being conducted over the surface of the ground and will be done with the consent of Galway County Council, who are the owners of the Dublin Road housing estate site.

The survey was being carried out to detect any possible sub-surface anomalies.

The Tuam home was one of 10 institutions in which about 35,000 unmarried pregnant women – so-called fallen women – are thought to have been sent.

The children of these women were denied baptism and segregated from others at school. If they died at such facilities, they were also denied a Christian burial.

County Galway death records showed that most of the children buried in the unmarked grave had died of sickness or malnutrition.

Ecotourism may be putting wildlife at risk

      

Ecotourists may be putting wildlife at risk by changing the behaviour of the creatures they flock to see, researchers have warned.

Animals that become accustomed to large numbers of visitors are likely to lose some of their instinct for self preservation, experts have warned.

The “taming” effect is said to run the risk of leaving them more at the mercy of predators.

Lead researcher Dr Daniel Blumstein, from the University of California at Los Angeles, said: “When animals interact in ‘benign’ ways with humans, they may let down their guard.

“As animals get used to feeling comfortable with humans nearby, they may become bolder in other situations.

“If this boldness transfers to real predators, then they will suffer higher mortality when they encounter real predators.”

Ecotourism is booming, with protected areas around the world receiving eight billion visitors a year, the team pointed out.

“This massive amount of nature-based ecotourism can be added to the long list of drivers of human-induced rapid environmental change,” Dr Blumstein said.

Writing in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution, the researchers compare the effects of ecotourism with that of animal domestication and urbanisation.

In each case, interactions between people and animals could lead to habituation – described as “a kind of taming”.

Evidence from domesticated silver foxes to goldfish had shown that animals living in close proximity to humans become less wary of predators.

Foxes, squirrels and birds living in urban areas were also bolder and less likely to flee from danger.

In some cases, the presence of humans could discourage predators and create safe havens, the researchers added – like vervet monkeys, who were less bothered by leopards with humans around.

But the scientists questioned what might happen to these animals when the visitors leave.

They wrote: “We know that humans are able to drive rapid … change in other species.

“If individuals selectively habituate to humans – particularly tourists – and if invasive tourism practices enhance this habituation, we might be selecting for or creating traits or syndromes that have unintended consequences, such as increased predation risk.

“Even a small human-induced perturbation could affect the behaviour or population biology of a species and influence the species’ function in its community.”  

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Sunday

Missing Malaysia airlines flight plane MH370

THROWN AROUND LIKE A FIGHTER JET IN ATTEMPT TO DODGE RADAR 

  

THERE HAVE BEEN CLAIMS THE MISSING MALAYSIA AIRLINES FLIGHT WAS ‘THROWN AROUND LIKE A FIGHTER JET’ IN A BID TO DODGE RADAR

The missing Malaysia Airlines flight was “thrown around like a fighter jet” in a bid to dodge radar detection after it disappeared, Malaysian military investigators reportedly now believe.

An unnamed source cited by The Sunday Times added that officials are now convinced that the plane was “flown very low at a very high speed”.

The source concluded: “And it was being flown to avoid radar.”

It is also possible that the flight surged to 45,000 feet – 10,000 above its normal cruising altitude of 35,000 feet – after disappearing, before dropping to as low as 5000 feet, reports by investigators have suggested.

The low altitude would fit in with a report by Malaysia’s New Straits Times newspaper that co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid tried to make a mid-flight phone call shortly before the plane disappeared.

In order for the phone signal to reach the reported telecommunications tower near the Malaysian city of Penang, the plane would needed to have been flying under 7000 feet.

The newspaper report said the signal ended abruptly before contact was established.

Brendan Howlin confident cuts in Irish health budget will be met

 

Minister Howlin responds to the revelation that HSE expects a shortfall of €200m.

Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin has expressed confidence the budgetary targets on health spending will be met.

His comment follows the revelation in The Irish Times yesterday that the Government has been told close to €200 million in health savings for this year will not materialise.

The Minister, speaking today on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics, said the Haddington Road agreement on pay and productivity in the public service pay was a “negotiated enabler’’ of real savings.

“Every line department in the HSE directly was involved in the negotiations and signed off on it,’’ he added.

“Like every other department, I know that it is going to live up to the targets because it is part of the overall budgetary arithmetic.’’

Last week, senior Department of Healthand HSE officials provided a confidential consultancy report to Mr Howlin’s department setting out the potential shortfall in the figures.

Under the HSE’s service plan for the year, the health service was expected to generate savings of €290 million under the Haddington Road agreement which came into effect last July.

The plan also earmarked further pay savings of €108 million to be achieved by additional measures.

However, the report, drawn up by PA consultants, suggested none of the €108 million euro in savings was likely to be delivered and the €290 million euro basic target would not be fully reached.

Students from Sligo Institute of Technology help autistic teens in Valhalla campus

  

The interns are currently living and volunteering at St. Christopher’s Jenny Clarkson campus, a residential treatment center that helps teens with behavioral and learning disabilities.

VALHALLA – A college exchange program is allowing five students from Ireland to help autistic teens in Valhalla.

The interns are currently living and volunteering at St. Christopher’s Jenny Clarkson campus, a residential treatment center that helps teens with behavioral and learning disabilities.

The volunteers attend Sligo Institute of Technology back in Ireland and have plans to work in social care.

The college in Ireland has been sending students to St. Christopher’s Jennie Clarkson campus every year for nearly a decade.

The goal of the program, which lasts three months, is to expose both sides to different cultures and create meaningful bonds.

A hostile world that turns its back on the elderly

 

An 89-year-old woman recently decided to end her own life because she could no longer cope with the pace and reach of an impersonal digital world. So how can the aged cope?

Marie O’Gorman, who turns 80 this month, taught her grandchildren in Armenia to knit using Skype. Having won the inaugural ‘Silver Surfer’ award – an Age Action and Google initiative to recognise older people who have made the internet part of their everyday lives – Marie’s prize was a laptop and she has used it since then to keep in touch not only with her five children, 20 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren, but with nieces and nephews scattered around the globe.

“My daughter Edel and her family moved to Armenia 10 years ago,” explains Marie, a widow. “It was hard at first because it would often take weeks for their letters to arrive and the phone signal was bad, so a friend said to me, ‘Why don’t you learn to do emails?’ I went on an Age Action computer course and it gave me a whole new life. Now I email family members all over the world, from London to Los Angeles. I have five grandchildren in Armenia and when the older ones wanted to know how to knit some fancy lace scarves, I showed them on Skype. They were thrilled and went off to show their Armenian friends how to knit too.

“They text me to let me know when they want to Skype and they line up all the things they want to show me on a table. And when my youngest grandchild, baby Lois, was born a few months ago I got to see her on Skype too.”

Marie’s enthusiasm for new technology, though inspiring, is most unusual for a woman her age. If anything, older people often see themselves as disconnected from the ‘global village’ of the worldwide web and their sense of isolation can have tragic consequences. Last month, an 89-year-old English woman took her own life at a Swiss euthanasia clinic after complaining that she felt left behind by the digital age.

In a world where over half of the planet’s adult population now spend most of their waking hours plugged in to the internet, telephone, TV or other technology, the retired art teacher who wanted to be known only as Anne, lamented what she called a “lack of humanity” in the modern world.

“We are becoming robots,” she said. “Adapt or die, they say. At my age, I feel I can’t adapt, because the new age is not an age that I grew up to understand.”

‘It’s the kind of story that stops you in your tracks and makes you wonder, is this where the world is heading?” says Seán Moynihan, CEO of the voluntary organisation ALONE. “And if it is, we need to tread cautiously.

“Now more than ever we need to help older people stay connected and linked in with the community. The world is full of virtual friends, but nothing can replace human contact.”

The suicide of this disillusioned pensioner throws into stark focus the isolation that many older people feel in an age where texting, tweeting, blogging and Instagramming are the status quo. Technology now drives almost everything we do, from paying household bills, booking flights online and downloading books, to the GPS systems that allow us to find our way anywhere without ever having to stop and ask for directions.

Scientists have already developed robots that can serve you tea and mow your lawn, yet the closer we get to technology, the wider the generational divide becomes. While more and more business and government services are moved online, thus reducing operating costs, figures show that over half of 60 to 74-year-olds in the Republic of Ireland have never used the internet (CSO 2012) and most don’t know how: 46pc of the over-65s cited lack of skills as the main reason they didn’t go online (Eurostat).

There are numerous initiatives to help older people get to grips with technology, such as Age Action’s Getting Started programme, which delivers training on computers, the internet and mobile phones to the over-55s, BT’s Connected Communities initiative and the Google-sponsored Get Your Folks Online,an online Age Action course that makes it easy for people to pass on internet skills with others, as well as a variety of local, community-based classes taking place in local libraries, techs and parish halls across the country.

Yet for every pensioner who has taken to the web, there are many who remain resolutely disconnected.

“Many older people feel there is no role for them anymore,” says Eamon Timmins, Head of Advocacy and Communications with Age Action. “I recently spoke to a woman who pointed out that if her daughter wants a recipe for apple pie, she can get it on the internet. I had to remind her that it wouldn’t be her apple pie, the one her daughter remembers and loves the best.

“The real motivation for older people to embrace technology is to keep in contact with their families. It’s the Irish granny who has breakfast every Saturday with her grandchildren in Sydney thanks to Skype, or the old man who builds a connection with his grandsons through swapping game Cheats. If people are willing to take the plunge, technology can bring endless opportunities.”

According to Michael Foley, Public Affairs Manager with Age and Opportunity, the benefits of engaging with the internet are enormous at any age.

“I taught an older Jewish man living in Dublin how to do basic things on the computer and once he realised that he could sit down with a cup of coffee and read the Jerusalem Post online, he was delighted.” “Now, tablets have made things even simpler. You don’t have to sit at a desktop pressing keys on a keyboard – all you have to do is swipe and point. It takes away all the scary, unfamiliar aspects of using the internet. Older people may face a bigger hurdle because they haven’t grown up with technology, but it’s never too late to learn.”

THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION… HOW THE ELDERLY LOSE OUT

According to Eamon Timmins of Age Action, there are major obsacles facing older people in today’s digital world.

Getting information: “Older people taking our computer training classes complain that many advertisements now feature only website, Facebook or email details for those who want further information,” he says.

“They feel that companies don’t want to talk to them and if they do phone, they’re often frustrated by automated systems”.

Banking and paying bills: “Many banks and utility providers no longer have a local office and some banks have curtailed counter services.

”For older people who are not online, the trek to get to a bank branch can involve a lot of hardship.”

KNOWING YOUR RIGHTS:

“There is a lot of information out there, but most of it is on the internet. Many older people struggle to find out about their rights, especially as their needs change and they become eligible for new supports and assistance.”

The positives: “The internet offers huge opportunities for those housebound by disability or poor health to share interests with like-minded individuals.

‘Blood moon’ attracts stargazers, amid conspiracy theories

  

Stargazers and fans of eerie, prophetic-like omens will be in for a treat early Tuesday morning when a total lunar eclipse will occur, turning the full moon red. 

Also called “blood moons,” total lunar eclipses happen about twice a year when the moon passes directly behind the Earth into its shadow, or umbra.

But what’s up with the creepy red glow that gives the lunar event its nickname?

Well, the red color is actually not unlike a sunset, but from the moon’s perspective NASA describes it as “seeing every sunrise and every sunset in the world, all of them, all at once.” And that red glow from behind the Earth gets projected onto the moon.

This total lunar eclipse will be the first in a series of four appearing every six months, a phenomenon called a “tetrad” – something not particularly rare for this century, according to NASA eclipse expert Fred Espenak. (Via CNN)

While a total lunar eclipse is an interesting sight for stargazing hobbyists, for others the oncoming blood moon and tetrad brings something else – tidings of doom.

CTV News writes that, “Conspiracy websites draw parallels between lunar eclipses and historical events, like the fall of Constantinople and the founding of the State of Israel,” and that the last blood moon occurred when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004.

But perhaps the biggest proponent for any conspiracy concerning the upcoming blood moons is Pastor John Hagee, who released a book titled “Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change in 2013.” (ViaThe Christian Broadcasting Network)

With all four blood moons being viewable from the U.S., New York Daily News notes Hagee claims that “the four blood moons that will soon appear in the skies over America are evidence of a future ‘world-shaking event.’”

In an interview with Fox News, Hagee emphasized the significance that each blood moon will occur during a Jewish holiday as well.

“To have a blood moon, and then for those blood moons to be on this exact date, is something that just is beyond coincidental.”

As noted by Think Progress, Hagee has caused some controversy before; in 2008 he suggested a connection between God’s wrath toward a gay pride rally planned for New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina.

The next three blood moons will be viewable on Oct. 8, followed by April 4, 2015 and Sept. 28, 2015.

‘CO2 levels at 402 parts per million (ppm,) higher than at any time in last 800,000 years

 

Carbon dioxide levels last week were higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years.

For two consecutive days last week, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the earth’s atmosphere exceeded 402 parts per million (ppm,) higher than at any time in at least the past 800,000 years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Carbon dioxide levels tend to peak in May, which means that they are likely to rise even more. According to an article in Mashable, a news and tech website, the latest figures “put humans into uncharted territory.”

Just last month, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a damning report that illustrated the growing dangers of global warming. The panel focused on carbon dioxide emissions and warned about the dangers of inaction.

While some global warming can be attributed to natural trends, the sharp increase in CO2 levels since the advent of industrialization indicates that much of it is man-made; the UN report affirmed with 95% certainty that humans have “been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century.”

Over time, high CO2 concentrations can lead to rising sea levels, heat waves, droughts and floods, posing great risk to coastal communities and human food supply. Experts believe that these worsening environmental conditions could exacerbate existing civil conflicts regarding land, food and water.

“Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice,” said U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last month.