Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Monday

Irish Revenue to use GPS technology to calculate property tax

 

They will see how far properties are from key amenities

The tax man is to use GPS style technology to help work out how much each Irish household owe on property tax.

The Revenue Commissioners is preparing to send letters to every home in Ireland telling them how much tax is due.

Among the tools being used to help calculate how much is owed Revenue is to use Geo directory which has been developed by An Post and Ordinance Survey.

It identifies how far properties are from key amenities like transport links, health, education, retail and emergency services.

CENSUS RESULTS TO BE INCLUDED

Revenue is also geographically linking its data with publicly available sources such as the the 2011 census results from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

It is also using a Deprivation Index developed by Pobal.

Its estimated the average household in Dublin will face a bill of around €405, while rural households are expected to pay around €249.

Speaking in the Dail last week, Richard Boyd-Barrett challenged the Taoiseach Enda Kenny on amendments to the tax.

The average age of Irish emigrants jumps to 32

  

Thirty two year Old’s are now the most common age bracket applying for visas to places like Australia and Canada.

The average age of people looking to emigrate from Ireland has risen from 29 to 32 years.

The latest data also confirms that significantly more men than women are emigrating.

Migration agent VisaFirst.com said the numbers of people leaving is increasing year on year.

Applications for second year Australian visas rose by 36pc in 2012, showing that emigrants want to stay in the country.

The number of applications for Canadian work permits was 16pc greater last year than in 2011, while permanent residency applications more than doubled.

The ratio of men to women remains at 60:40, while the average age of visa applicants has risen from 29 to 32 years, figures from the company’s Irish database show.

Edwina Shanahan of VisaFirst.com said: “The increase in the average age is interesting as it’s quite a big jump. The difficult work environment in Ireland is a primary driver here.

“It’s not just affecting the young and newly qualified — it’s taking its toll of people of all ages and all levels of expertise.”

She added: “The age jump may also have something to do with the fact that spousal applications are also on the rise.

“The number of spousal applications for Australia doubled last year. More and more families are seeing emigration as a better, if not their only, financially viable option.”

The figures from 2012 highlight the growing level of interest from trades and professions including teachers, welders, solicitors, mechanics and IT workers, according to VisaFirst.com.

There has also been a noted increase in applications from articulated truck drivers because they are now in such high demand in Canada, it added.

Ms Shanahan said: “The interest from people in various occupations often changes depending on the demand for those occupations in certain countries.

“In addition, a fall in interest might simply reflect the fact that a sizeable portion of these people have already left the country — for example, while we saw large numbers of architects leaving in 2011 and 2010 — this figure has dropped almost 80pc in 12 months.

Over 4,000 protest at front-line workers rally in Dublin

  

More than 4,000 front-line workers attended a rally in Tallaght to protest at Government plans to cut an extra €1bn from the State payroll bill over the next three years.

Government negotiators at the talks to extend the Croke Park deal have rejected claims by the 24-7 Frontline Alliance that they have targeted frontline workers disproportionately for cuts in earnings.

The alliance represents 70,000 nurses, prison officers and Gardai,

Seamus Murphy of the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association received a standing ovation, saying “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

He also responded to the possibility of the Government introducing legislation to cut pay by saying: “They need to be careful. Do you remember what happened to the last crowd that cut our pay?”

He told the crowds that “in 1913 we had a lockout, in 2013 we have a sellout”.

Garda Representative Association General Secretary PJ Stone  warned the Enda Kenny that workers will not continue to deliver public services for the “miserable measly wage you think you can negotiate in the Croke Park talks”.Mr Stone accused Mr Kenny of threatening public frontline workers. He said they had never flinched from doing their duty.He warned that the campaign would be resolute and determined.

He said this was the start of a campaign which would only end when the Taoiseach understood that they were not giving any more pay-cuts.

He said they could not be afraid of the consequence of actions when the cause was just and fair.

He received a standing ovation as the crowd chanted “no more cuts”.

John Clinton of the Prison Officers Association warned against punishing those who had already made a massive contribution.

“They’ll be trouble ahead, trouble that can be avoided if a just and equitable solution can be found which will not further punish those who have already made a massive contribution,” he said.

Sean McEniff wants media to stop ‘hounding’ him over Traveller row

     

Donegal County Council’s longest serving elected member, Sean McEniff, has called on the media to stop hounding him about an issue which, he says, is something he firmly believes in.

The Bundoran councillor recently became embroiled in controversy when he stated that Travellers should live in an “isolated community” and be kept together.

He said yesterday that he was fed up being hounded by the media. His comments came after a weekend protest in Dublin outside a hotel of which he is part-owner.

Read the full story, and the reaction of other councillors, in today’s Donegal Democrat and Donegal People’s Press.

Man turns dog’s best friend as heroic first-aider brings Hector back to life

     

A Coast Guard volunteer has been hailed as a hero for saving the life of a dog after performing CPR on it.

Hector, a three-year-old collie, stopped breathing after a ball lodged in its throat. But Gary Creighton carried out CPR on the family pet and brought him back to life.

“If it wasn’t for Gary and the Skerries Coast Guard, there is no doubt that Hector would be dead,” said Colette Connolly, Hector’s owner.

Every morning Colette and her two dogs – Hector (3) and Libby (2) – go for an early-morning run on the south beach at Rush in north county Dublin. “We were playing ball and it bounded high and as he jumped up to catch it he twisted and landed badly on his back legs. The ball went way down the back of his throat.”

The ball is made for dogs and would not usually get stuck in the animal’s throat.

“I could feel it in his throat with my hand and I started trying to push it back up his throat. He was getting short of breath and collapsed on to the sand. I was trying to stay calm and must have spent eight minutes trying to push the ball back up out of his throat.”

Colette was about to give up. “Then I looked up and saw a white jeep. I ran at it like a mad woman waving my arms and it stopped.”

It was a Skerries Coast Guard 4×4 and driver Gary Creighton went straight into life-saving mode.

Gary, who is a fully trained ‘cardiac first responder’ and an officer in the Order of Malta in Balbriggan said: “I just thought okay, what would I do to relieve choking in a person – he was a pretty big dog so I started doing chest compressions.”

As he did them, Colette kept trying to push the ball up the dog’s throat and then they saw it appear at the top of his throat and Gary pulled it out.

“His heart started to beat and he began breathing. I just threw my arms around Gary. He was like an angel coming from heaven to our rescue.”

Vanessa Gaffney, officer in charge with Skerries Coast Guard, said it was the first time in living memory an animal was rescued using advanced first aid.

The Skerries Coast Guard is run by volunteers and covers 30 miles of coastline from Malahide in Co Dublin to Laytown in Co Meath.

Arctic now on thin ice as melting picks up speed

  

The first of a three-part series examines what science is telling us about the weather – it’s not comforting

Nicholas Stern, the author of the influential 2006 review of the economics of climate change, now says he “underestimated the risks”. Had he known how bad things were going to get, “I think I would have been a bit more blunt [and] much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise” in average global temperatures.

Interviewed by the Observer newspaper at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, where the focus of most participants was on more short-term concerns, Lord Stern said: “This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for many people are existential.”

Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank’s president, issued an equally strong warning about the risk of conflicts over natural resources if global temperatures went up by four degrees Celsius. “There will be water and food fights everywhere,” he said, and then pledged to make tackling climate change a priority of his five-year term.

Extreme weather

This was in the wake of a series of “extreme weather events” over the past year including Superstorm Sandy, which caused billions of dollars in damage to New York City and New Jersey as well as serious drought in the US and Russia, devastating floods in the Philippines and scorching temperatures and fires in Australia.

But the “canary in the coalmine” is summer sea ice in the Arctic, which has been declining each year and hit a record low of 3.4 million sq km last September – 770,000sq km below the previous minimum of 4.17 million sq km in 2007.

This Arctic warming may be at the root of climate change in the northern hemisphere.

Disappearing ice: The rate of sea ice decline is much faster than anticipated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its Fourth Assessment, in 2007, mentioned that “in some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century”. Now, it could be gone by 2020 or 2030.

Columnist George Monbiot blamed governments: “Having abandoned any pretence of responding to the environmental crisis during the Earth Summit in June, now they stare stupidly as the ice on which we stand dissolves . . . Their one unequivocal response to the melting has been to facilitate the capture of the oil and fish it exposes.”

Last month, a draft of the latest US National Climate Assessment, compiled by 240 scientists, warned that 13 US airports could be inundated by rising sea levels and that billions of dollars will be needed to repair roads, pipelines, sewerage systems, buildings and airports in Alaska due to damage caused by melting permafrost.

The draft’s bluntness “reflects the increasing confidence we have in the science and day-to-day realities of climate change,” one of its authors, Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Centre at Texas Tech University, told the Guardian. “This is no longer a future issue. It’s an issue that is staring us in the face today.”

A new study Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of A Hot Planet, published last September, found that nearly 400,000 premature deaths per year could be attributed to climate change, which is already costing more than $1.2 trillion (€887.3 billion) annually, equivalent to 1.6 per cent of global GDP.

By 2030, the combined cost of climate change and air pollution would double, with poorer developing countries – those least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions – likely to suffer most. But richer nations would also be hit, with GDP in the US falling 2 per cent while the cost to China alone would be $1.2 trillion annually.

No benign shift: Any notion the northern hemisphere would benefit from global warming has been undermined by the US and Russian droughts. “Many hazards come with climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It’s not a matter of a benign shift to a longer growing season for northern nations.”

Meanwhile the IPCC is working on its Fifth Assessment, due for publication next year. An early draft was leaked online by an American climate change sceptic called Alec Rawls, who claimed it had conceded that cosmic rays may influence the climate system – an alleged admission that deniers immediately hailed as “game-changing”.

In fact, the draft says it is “virtually certain that [a net energy uptake of the Earth system] is caused by human activities, primarily by the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations”.

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Flag vote stirs Loyalists protesters to storm Belfast city hall

 

Protesters have tried to storm Belfast City Hall and burnt Irish tricolours after councillors voted to remove the Union flag from the building.

Hundreds of loyalists took to the street and burnt Irish tricolours to show their opposition to a motion to have the Union flag removed for the first time in over a century.

Minutes after the vote was taken, hooded loyalists tried to kick down the back doors of City Hall.

Loyalist protestors carrying Union flags (pictured) had been blocking the back of the City Hall while the vote was being taken.

Currently the flag is flown every day of the year at the building.

However Nationalist councillors want it removed as they argued that it would create a more equal and neutral environment.

Asperger’s disorder dropped from psychiatric manual as it is revised

 

The term ‘Asperger’s disorder’ has been dropped from one of the world’s most influential psychiatric manuals.

And abnormally bad and frequent temper tantrums will be given the scientific-sounding diagnosis ‘DMDD’.

But ‘dyslexia’ and other learning disorders remain.

  The revisions come in the first major rewrite in nearly 20 years of the American Psychiatric Association’s ‘Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’ (DSM), approved by the board on Saturday.

Full details of all the revisions will come next May when the new manual is published, but the impact will be huge, affecting millions of children and adults worldwide because the manual is one of the most influential reference points for mental health professionals.

This diagnostic guide “defines what constellations of symptoms” doctors recognise as mental disorders, said Dr Mark Olfson, a Columbia University psychiatry professor.

More important, he said, it “shapes who will receive what treatment. Even subtle changes to the criteria can have substantial effects on patterns of care.”

The changes were approved in the US over the weekend by the psychiatric association’s board of trustees.

One of the most hotly argued changes was how to define the various ranges of autism. Some advocates opposed the idea of dropping the specific diagnosis ‘Asperger’s disorder’.

People with that disorder often have high intelligence and vast knowledge on narrow subjects, but have poor social skills. Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label.

Severe

And some families opposed any change, fearing their children with Asperger’s would lose a diagnosis, and no longer be eligible for special services.

But the revision will not affect their education services, experts say.

The new manual adds the term “autism spectrum disorder,” which is already used by many experts in the field. This new category will include kids with severe autism, who often don’t talk or interact, as well as those with milder forms.

Asperger’s disorder will now be incorporated under that umbrella diagnosis.

Millions more women are getting behind the wheel today than men according to a new study

    

Millions more women are taking to the road, while driving among men in their 20s is on the decline.

The number of women holding driving licences rose 14% between 1995 and 2010, and has increased to 2.5 million.

A new study has revealed that the number of women drivers has increased dramatically while the number of male motorists has dropped. The survey was conducted by Professor Peter Jones at University College London. Women are also driving greater distances with the average mileage up 22 per cent during the same period.

More women are also choosing to travel by train. There has been an 86 per cent increase in the number of women passengers in their 30s. This is compared to an increase of 54 per cent for the total number of rail passengers.

Professor Jones found that the number of men in their 20s with driving licences fell between 1995 and 2010 by 13 per cent. Mileage figures for company cars, usually associated with men, are down more than 50 per cent.

Although the average mileage for all cars across the UK is rising, in London the distances being covered by both company and privately owned vehicles is dropping.

A growth in the number of women behind the wheel has been attributed to increased independence. Since the 1980s more women are likely to be working and there are more women living by themselves.

Dropbox file storing company to establish Dublin office

  

Taoiseach Enda Kenny welcomed announcement that Dropbox is to locate international headquarters in Dublin.

Dropbox, a free service that lets users access documents, photos and videos everywhere and from different devices and share them easily, is to establish a Dublin office.

The Dublin office will be the centre of the company’s international operations and will provide technical support to its more than 100 million service users, one third of whom are in Europe. The service is available in eight languages.

“As part of Ireland’s mission to become the best small country in the world for business we have become the European hub for many of the world’s leading digital companies and the arrival of a top cloud company like Dropbox indicates Dublin’s growing capacity to usher in the next generation of internet companies,” Taoiseach Enda Kenny said.

“Ireland has many advantages to offer international companies, including our young, passionate and talented workforce, all of which will be a great asset to Dropbox as they make their new home in Dublin.”

“We’re delighted to be closer to tens of millions of our European customers,” said Drew Houston, Dropbox chief executive officer and co-founder.

“By opening our international headquarters in Dublin and tapping into the large talent pool that exists there, we’re better positioned to serve even more people locally while we continue to grow.”

Some 30-40 new jobs will be created with the establishment of the international headquarters, with the comapny seeking to hire multi-lingual sales teams, account management and user operations staff.

Elsewhere, healthcare provider Centric Health said it will create 200 jobs at 10 new centres.

The first is due to open in Newbridge, Co Kildare, next February, with new builds also under way in Celbridge on the Navan Road.

About 50 are expected to be filled within the first year and include medical, paramedical and administrative posts.

HSE services will also be facilitated on to the sites in line with the Government’s primary care strategy.

Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton said the substantial capital investment and the associated jobs by investment by partner Metric Capital Partners (MCP) — the European private capital group was very positive news.

Half of us fail to save as we can’t afford it as Cash crisis hits home

     

Almost half of all Irish adults cannot afford to put anything aside in savings, shocking new research has indicated.

The level of non-savers has hit critical levels and is at the highest point in the two-year history of the Nationwide UK Ireland and the ESRI index.

Just three in 10 people are putting something aside regularly, the research has indicated.

A total of 47pc of adults are not saving at all — this is a marked increase from the 42pc measured in October.

This time last year, the level was at 33pc.

The figures of those who are saving regularly are also at a record low.

Within the bracket of individuals that are saving, only 28pc of people are doing so regularly. This is a record low for the index and is down from a reading of 41pc from November of last year.

But despite being unable to put aside money, most people think that now is a good time to save — jumping from 27pc of respondents to 30pc in the last 12 months.

decline

Nationwide UK Ireland managing director Brendan Synott said throughout the year, there has been a consistent increase in the number of people who are not saving and a steady decline in those that save on a regular basis.

“At the same time, however, people continue to believe that they should save,” he said.

“There is positivity towards the idea of saving, given the economic environment, and the preference to pay down debt or save as opposed to spend also remains.

“This diverging attitude and behaviour has been apparent throughout 2012 and the budget is likely to further re-enforce this trend.”

But the Government could do more to encourage people to save, according to the research. Some 57pc of people think that the Government is discouraging the habit of saving — 5pc more than thought so this time last year.

Consumers were also asked what they would do if they came across spare cash. A total of 50pc said that they would pay off some of their debt, 39pc said they would save and just 9pc would consider spending it.

“Consumers appear to be no closer to achieving the spend-and-save balance than they were in 2011,” Mr Synott added.

“Although there is an appetite to save more money, most can ill-afford to do so.”

Look He’s behind you! Whale watchers look the wrong way

as huge creature breaches the waves

 

A dolphin, bottom right, looks tiny next to the huge giant of the deep as it rises up for air in the chilly November waters of the Atlantic. A whale Causing a splash in the calm waters off the Cork coast, this humpback is certainly having a whale of a time, but the passengers on board seem oblivious to the 45 ft giant leaping up behind them.

It is one of the five humpback whales which have made the south-west Irish coast their home over the past few weeks, as they feast on native shoals of sprat and herring.

Sightings of the magnificent humpbacks throwing their 30-tonne bodies into the air have triggered an upsurge in interest at nearby Baltimore Harbour – to the delight of tourist bosses and businessmen.
A boat of whale watchers look the wrong way as a humpback dramatically breaches off the coast of Ireland, the moment was captured by crew aboard a nearby lifeboat

The humbacks have even been joined by a number of fin and minke whales and common dolphins.

Nic Slocum, who runs Whale Watch West Cork, would normally have stopped his seasonal whale-watching trips by now.

But he said he is extending his daily cruises in his 32ft catamaran for as long as the whales remain off the coast.

He said: ‘Baltimore has been given a huge boost. I would normally be operating until the end of November, but I’ll keep going while the whales are there.
‘Although they can be seen from the shore, there’s been a big demand from tourists to go out in a boat to look at them. It’s been great for business.

‘But it’s impossible to say how long the whales will be around for. There’s lots of herring for them here at the moment, but they could be gone any day.

‘I’ve rarely known the seas off Baltimore as active as this.’

Kate Cottrell, whose husband Micheal runs Baltimore Sea Safari, said her phone hasn’t stopped ringing over the past few days after word of the humpbacks spread. She said: ‘Everyone’s hoping the whales will be around for a good bit longer. Everyone’s  benefited and it would be great if the humpbacks did for Baltimore what Fungi has  done for Dingle.’

‘Although they can be seen from the shore, there’s been a big demand from tourists to go out in a boat to look at them. It’s been great for business.

‘But it’s impossible to say how long the whales will be around for. There’s lots of herring for them here at the moment, but they could be gone any day.

‘I’ve rarely known the seas off Baltimore as active as this.’

Kate Cottrell, whose husband Micheal runs Baltimore Sea Safari, said her phone hasn’t stopped ringing over the past few days after word of the humpbacks spread. She said: ‘Everyone’s hoping the whales will be around for a good bit longer. Everyone’s  benefited and it would be great if the humpbacks did for Baltimore what Fungi has  done for Dingle.’

The playful pod have been seen feeding and appearing to play as a group.

And these pictures were captured by lifeboat man Youen Jacob, 37 – as he and his crewmates were treated to a spectacular display.

He said: ‘They have been bubble feeding for the past two weeks, using bubbles from their blow holes to push fish to the surface, and they have been tail slapping and seeming to play with one another.

‘They looked like they were enjoying themselves as well, blocking each other and breaching out of the water.

‘When this one whale breached by our boat we knew about it, he was massive, and when I looked at the photo I realised everyone else was looking the wrong way.’

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‘Mental Health’ improving the length as well as the quality of life is paramount

   

Mental healthcare is different. A substantial proportion of us will have mental health problems at some point in our lives.

The Government current policy is based on the 2006 report A Vision for Change, it aims to provide services “equitably and across all service user groups”. It calls for an orientation towards recovery and more social inclusion. I welcome this, but I am struck by how different policy is from general medical care, which is based on treating specific illnesses to improve outcome.

Perhaps these, more fundamental aims, have already been met in mental healthcare? Having spent almost 20 years as a clinician treating and researching severe mental illness I do not believe this is true. I find the difference disturbing.

If you have a heart attack or stroke and are too incapacitated to consent, you will receive medical care using the “best interests” principle. Many people with serious mental illness don’t believe that being admitted to hospital is in their best interest. However, there were 2,057 involuntary admissions in 2011 under the Mental Health Act 2001.

At least three-quarters of these were for treatment of two disorders:schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. What the figures reflect is that these two conditions are more common than generally appreciated (there are likely to be more than 50,000 people in Ireland affected).

Most treatment is actually provided in the community by teams including doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and occupational therapists. Involuntary admission is reserved for where this approach fails because a person’s judgment is impaired by illness. This could mean that you develop a complete conviction that others are involved in an international conspiracy to kill you or that you have uncontrolled mania causing you to behave recklessly.

This is likely to affect your decision-making, but admission under the Act is reserved for situations where “judgment of the person is so impaired that failure to admit would result in a serious deterioration in the condition, or immediate and serious harm to the person or others”. The average duration of admission, unclear to me from annual reports, is probably fewer than 21 days.

Similar legislation is present in other EU countries. With the implementation of the 2001 Act, Irish admission rates, average by European standards, have fallen by more than a third.

Representative of much of the debate about mental health by Dr Pat Bracken, a consultant psychiatrist, arguing that this practice is too “paternalistic” and “at odds with” national policy. I couldn’t help wondering how this might sound if applied to acute medical care. Would one argue that the provision of care to incapacitated medical patients is too “paternalistic”.

He appears to argue for a person’s “right to define the nature of one’s own problems” even if judgment is impaired by illness. Do we expect patients suffering heart attacks or strokes to “define” their own problems? No. He questions the central role of the consultant in providing acute psychiatric care. We trust hospital consultants to manage acute medical problems.

Maybe serious mental illness is not medically important compared to cardiac disorders, strokes or cancer? Tragically, this is not so. People with schizophrenia have an average life expectancy 17 to 25 years shorter than the general population; for bipolar disorder the figure is 10 years. This is based on international data – Irish figures are not collated – but I doubt the picture is better here.

The facts and their potential consequences for thousands of people go unmentioned in the Irish mental health policy document. If these conditions were physical, with this information, wouldn’t health policy focus on improving the length, not just the quality, of life?

Perhaps psychiatry has nothing to offer? Dr Bracken echoes a prevalent view that effective medical treatments are unavailable and describes current treatments as “a mess” and “toxic”. This is wrong. Take schizophrenia; we know the condition is debilitating and 80 per cent of patients relapse within five years.

Treatment with medication is effective in reducing initial symptoms, but staying on medication, from early in the illness, reduces risk of relapse by more than 50 per cent.

This is similar in efficacy to treatments for diabetes, and better than current treatments for asthma and high blood pressure. Despite the evidence, medical nihilism has had a damning impact on investment in the development of new and better treatments compared to other medical areas. (Pre-empting criticism that as an academic psychiatrist my opinions are “corrupted” by the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t receive funding from industry for my work.)

Rather than helping people to live with serious mental illness, our focus could include improving life expectancy. People with serious mental illness die because of suicide, increased rates of accidental death, from heart disease and as a consequence of poor health related to smoking, low physical activity, poor nutrition and medication.

Can we improve life expectancy? Yes. One function of the Mental Health Act is to allow the management of immediate risk of suicide or serious accident. Patients who take antipsychotic medication live longer. Treating depression in schizophrenia with antidepressant medication reduces death by suicide.

Addressing lifestyle changes and reducing smoking rates is challenging but achievable. People with heart disease and schizophrenia die because of poor medical care. Across international studies, it has been shown that these patients receive fewer heart surgeries and are less likely to be prescribed heart medication than the rest of the population.

Mental healthcare policy is different, but it shouldn’t be. All patients should have access to the best medical care irrespective of whether their condition is physical or mental. The focus of this article has been on only one aspect of treatment. Regrettably provisions for psychological or social interventions are also neglected. Limited mental health resources are currently spread “equitably and across all service user groups”. Based on medical need and available medical interventions, people with serious mental illness may have the greatest claim.

Irish Government appoints a new head of banking policy

  

John Hogan has been appointed to the new position of head of banking policy in the financial services division in the Department of Finance.

According to a statement from the department, Mr Hogan will be responsible for developing and delivering policy in key areas such as credit and lending to small and medium-sized businesses, mortgage arrears and consumer issues.

The department appointed Mr Hogan following a competitive process ran by the Top Level Appointments Committee.

The head of banking policy is a newly created position in the restructured financial services division as set out in the department’s strategy statement, which was published in May. Mr Hogan’s appointment will complete this restructuring.

Mr Hogan has held a number of positions in the department to date and joined the financial services division in 2009. He is head of credit and lending policy and played a key role in the completion of the inter-departmental report on mortgage arrears (Keane report).

How & why our muscles become paralysed during sleep?

  

When you are asleep, you cycle through different phases, including one called rapid eye movement or REM sleep. This is the phase where you typically have the dreams you later recall.

Did you know though that in normal REM sleep, your eyes may be moving but many muscles in other parts of your body don’t act like they do when you are awake? Why is that?

The muscles that go offline in normal REM sleep are skeletal muscles, which are involved in moving parts of your body like your arms and legs, rather than other muscle types that keep the heart or other vital processes chugging along.

One theory is that these skeletal muscles go into a temporary state of paralysis during REM sleep to literally stop us acting out movements from our dreams.

Quite how that happens at a biochemical level is still a matter of debate, and a new study on a rat model suggests that multiple brain chemicals and receptors could be involved.

The research, carried out at the University of Toronto, found that chemicals called GABA and glycine shut off motor neurons during REM sleep and appear to trigger REM paralysis, according to researcher John Peever from the University of Toronto in a press release about the findings.

“But we also identified the way cells detect GABA and glycine,” he adds.

“Motor neurons, like all brain cells, listen to these transmitters through receptors and we identified the receptors that allow GABA and glycine to shut the motor neurons off – the three different types of receptors that are required.”

The study was published this month in The Journal of Neuroscience.

W.B. Yeats was ‘conflicted’ about death of close friend Lady Gregory

     

YEATS SUMMER SCHOOL SLIGO:

Had she lived longer, Lady Augusta Gregory might have tempered the increasingly strident political views WB Yeats adopted in the late 1930s. She might also have discouraged the poet’s “somewhat adolescent dalliances” with women half his age, students at the 53rd International Yeats Summer School in Sligo heard yesterday.

James Pethica, director of the school, explored Yeats’s “massively conflicted” feelings on the death of his oldest friend, concluding that, as well as being a blow he had dreaded, her passing was a “liberation”.

Students heard that the woman Yeats had described as “more than mother or father or friend . . . the only person in the world to whom I could tell my every thought” had also been his moral compass up to her death in May 1932.

Pethica, who is writing a biography of Lady Gregory, said critics suspected that the owner of Coole Park in Galway would have tempered the “increasingly strident political views Yeats adopted in the late 1930s”, including his flirtation with fascism and the Blueshirts.

She would also have disapproved of his dalliances with “name hunters, would-be bohemians and hostesses”.

“It is hard to imagine that she would have remained silent about his treatment of his wife and his disingenuous effort to hide his last affairs from her,” Pethica said.

Lady Gregory had been quick to reprove Yeats, and when he fell “too obviously” for a young London actor called Florence Darragh, who performed at the Abbey Theatre, she had told him “with relish” how Darragh had mocked the way he “trotted all over the theatre after her like a little dog”.

When another young woman told Yeats, in 1913, that she was pregnant by him, which turned out to be untrue, his sometimes “domineering and unforgiving” friend told him that the episode “has not been worthy of you”.

But Yeats’s devotion to the long-time friend, who helped found the Abbey, was underlined when he stayed at Coole for the last nine months of her life.

The poet was not there when Lady Gregory died in the early hours of May 23rd, 1932, but arrived at Gort station hours after being summoned by telegram.

Lady Gregory’s granddaughter Catherine, then 18, told Pethica how she and Yeats had travelled from the station, facing each other in a side car, in total silence. “He wasn’t in a state where he could talk to anyone. He was sobbing.”

Pethica said there had been a claustrophobic co-dependent aspect to the Yeats-Gregory relationship, and, after her death, the poet had embraced the possibility of new beginnings.

While he was bereft at the loss, he also felt freed from the judgment of a woman he regarded as thoroughly Victorian.

HSE to fund blood-thinning Pradaxa drug for some Irish patients 

 

A Heart drug that could prevent up to seven strokes a week that the Health Service Executive (HSE) had refused to fund will now be funded for some, according to the HSE.

Pradaxa, a prescription blood thinner, is claimed to be safer and more effective than the widely used warfarin for many patients with atrial fibrillation, a condition that affects some 57,000 people in Ireland.

One clinical trial showed it reduced the risk of stroke 35 per cent more than warfarin.

While some Irish clinicians switched their atrial fibrillation patients to Pradaxa when it was approved by the Irish Medicines Board last year, the HSE said that while those switched before November 9th would be reimbursed under the GMS scheme to remain on it, future patients would not.

Last week, however, the HSE said while warfarin remained the default treatment, it would now reimburse Pradaxa for patients with poor coagulation control, those whose other medicines interact poorly with warfarin and those allergic to it.

The HSE said physicians would have to justify prescribing Pradaxa, which has a wholesale cost of €2.35 per patient per day, before it will be reimbursed.

Separately, the chief executive of the Cystic Fibrosis Association of Ireland, Philip Watt, has called on the HSE to expedite its approval of the cystic fibrosis drug, Kalydeco, also known as Ivacaftor.

The oral drug, the first to treat the underlying causes of a particular form of CF, has recently been approved by the European Medicines Agency.