Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Irish Government may not win the Seanad vote on water charges

 

Leo Varadkar warns of higher bills in January if concessions and lower charges are not agreed.

The Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said that if the Seanad does reject the Water Services Bill, the existing arrangements apply.

The Government is uncertain of the voting intentions of some Senators nominated by the Taoiseach as it prepares for crucial votes on water charges legislation.

The Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has warned Senators that if they reject the revised legislation this week, people will face higher bills in January rather than reduced bills in April. His comments were described as “unhelpful” by Independent Senator Fiach MacConghail.

The controversial Water Services Bill 2014 is due to be debated in the Dáil on Tuesday and Wednesday before proceeding to the Seanad on Thursday and Friday.

Leo Varadkar, who was speaking at an event in Dublin, said the concessions and reduced charges announced by Government recently needed to be agreed by both Houses of the Oireachtas.

The Status quo

“As I understand it, if the Seanad does reject the Water Services Bill, the existing arrangements apply. So what they would in effect be doing is allowing the status quo to stand, which would mean higher bills landing in January rather than the reduced bills in April,” he said. “So I think the Seanad need to think about whether they want to be responsible for that or not.”

Mr. Mac Conghail said Senators were waiting to see the shape of the Bill when it emerged from the Dáil after amendments had been debated, and were continuing to seek clarity on various issues, such as privatisation and data protection.

“Leo’s comments were unhelpful. The Seanad has a very independent mind,” he said. “I’ll consider the Bill when it comes through. I just want clarification on privatisation; I need more clarity around data people have already submitted.”

The Government is in a minority in the 60-seat Seanad with 17 Fine Gael and 11 Labour Senators. The other seats belong to Opposition and Independent members who sometimes support the Government.

Another Taoiseach’s nominee, Marie-Louise O’Donnell, said she had “very mixed” feelings about the Bill.

Grave doubts?

“I’m not against paying for water but my big worry was privatisation. I’m not too sure my fears have been allayed,” said M/s O’Donnell.“I also have grave doubts about the structure of Irish Water.”

She predicted the debate on the contentious legislation would not conclude this week but would continue into next week.

Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly predicted the legislation would be supported by the Seanad this week.

The Gardai are given 700 new nursing home complaints by F.G. TD Fergus O’Dowd

 

A file of 700 separate complaints about nursing and care homes has been passed by a Government TD to the Garda Commissioner, it has emerged.

The revelation comes in the wake of the Aras Attracta care home scandal last week.

Speaking to the Herald, Fine Gael TD Fergus O’Dowd has said the separate complaints about nursing and care homes that he received through a Freedom of Information request were passed on to Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan.

Mr O’Dowd said the complaints centred around the failure to provide proper care in homes around the country and were included in documents he received from the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA).

He confirmed that the files are also being forwarded to the Medical Council and the Nursing Board for their consideration.

“Some of the complaints deal with shocking cases and such is the seriousness of what was included I felt the need to refer the matter to the Garda Commissioner,” he said.

Mr O’Dowd got an initial file of 300-odd complaints dating from 2013 a couple of weeks ago and has since received a further file of about 400 complaints lodged throughout 2014.

Mr O’Dowd said he obtained a redacted file which omitted the names of the nursing and care homes involved, but said he expected the gardai to get the un-redacted file.

POWERS

The former junior minister has also called for greater powers for HIQA to investigate complaints concerning the treatment of patients.

Meanwhile, HSE Director General Tony O’Brien is to be questioned by the Oireachtas Health Committee this week about the Aras Attracta scandal.

Mr O’Brien will appear before the Joint Committee on Health and Children tomorrow evening to address the controversy.

Confirmation of his appearance comes as families of those who suffered abuse at the care home said they have been “betrayed” by what was allowed to happen.

Committee Chair Jerry Buttimer TD said: “As a Committee, we were shocked at appalling evidence of alleged abuse of residents at Aras Attracta uncovered by RTE.

“This Tuesday, we have asked senior HSE officials to discuss how they propose to respond to the serious issues highlighted.”

Irish Government should stand up to big business on prompt payments

   

The Irish Small and Medium Enterprise association says the Government needs to stand up to big businesses and ensure prompt payments for small and medium firms.

ISME says businesses are waiting more than 60 days to be paid by bigger companies and government agencies.

The business group is calling for a change in the Prompt Payments legislation, calling for the introduction of a statutory 30-day payments regime for all businesses trading within Ireland with other Irish based enterprises.

The CEO of ISME Mark Fielding says the Government needs to stand up to big business much more.

He said: “Small and medium businesses rely heavily on a smooth cash flow from their customers in order to pay their bills, buy the stock and take advantage of market conditions and pay wages and taxes.

“The Government themselves are lax on this one, while their own collector general doesn’t wait around to get their taxes.

“So what we are saying is that the Government should stand up to big business and insist on prompt payments across the board.”

Here is some good news if you earn the minimum wage

 

A new Low Pay Commission is being set up to examine the current rate of €8.65 and whether it should be increased.

A Government Minister has given strong indications that the national minimum wage is likely to be increased as soon as next year as he seeks members for the new Low Pay Commission.

  Ged Nash, the Minister for Business and Employment, today sought expressions of interest for the nine-member panel being set up to examine the current national minimum wage of €8.65 and whether it should be increased.

Speaking today, Nash said he wants to see the minimum wage increased “progressively” in the coming years as the economy improves and said there is an “inevitability” about pay increase demands as the economy improves.

“I want to see the rate of the national minimum wage progressively increased over a period of time. But I will say this, it should increased only in circumstances where circumstances allow,” Nash told reporters today.

He said that the current rate of €8.65, which was reduced to €7.65 by the previous government before being restored by the current administration, has not been properly reviewed since 2007.

The new Low Pay Commission will consist of an independent chairperson, three people with experience of working with low-paid workers, three people with experience of employers’ interests and two members with experience of labour market economics and employment law.

The chair will be paid €20,000 while the members will each earn €11,500 with the commission receiving an overall budget of €500,000.

Nash said he envisages the commission meeting for the first time in February and having its first publicly available report for him by the early spring. He anticipates that its recommendations will be implemented “very soon after that”.

The Louth TD said that while he could “theoretically, hypothetically” ignore the commission’s recommendations but said this would be unlikely as it would provide an “evidence-based approach” using ”a robust set of data sets”.

Martin Shanaghar, assistant secretary in the Department of Jobs, insisted that the UK Low Pay Commission, which has operated for over a decade, has been examined very closely and said its success is based on government usually implementing its recommendations.

More than 82,000 people sought cancer information last year 2013

 

Irish Cancer Society says services need to engage better with men and older people

A report found 70% of people contacting the Irish Cancer Society information services are women.

Cancer information services need to engage better with men, older people and people with disabilities, according to a new report. In total, over 82,000 people contacted theIrish Cancer Society last year and 70% of those contacting for information are women, the report finds.

It says awareness levels of such services are high, but healthcare professionals are slow to recommend them to their patients and families. With cancer numbers set to increase to 40,000 cases a year by 2020, demand for expert information, advice and support is set to increase.

The society commissioned Prof Jonathan Drennan of the University of Southampton to evaluate its information service. He found about 40 per cent of those contacting the service had or were recovering from cancer.

A similar number were making contact on behalf of a family member or friend who had been diagnosed with the disease. People with a disability, such as the deaf and blind communities, may have difficulty accessing the service, according to Prof Drennan.

Donal Buggy, head of services at the ICS, said: “We now have the evidence which will allow us to improve and develop our service to meet the challenges ahead, as well as addressing the recommendations in the report.

“We are committed to evolving and improving in areas such as how we engage with men, disadvantaged communities, older people and non-Irish nationals.”

It was also vital for the society to engage more readily with healthcare professionals, he said.

Geminid meteors photobomb views of Northern Lights

  

What’s cooler than pictures of the northern lights, or pictures of the Geminid meteor shower in progress? How about getting both of those celestial phenomena in one photograph? Veteran sky watchers pulled off that trick last weekend when the Geminids reached their peak just as a high-speed solar wind was sparking heightened auroral displays in high northern latitudes.

“Tonight our group of 10 guests from all over the world enjoyed an amazing display of auroras dancing in the sky with the Geminid meteor shower,” Chad Blakley, the photographer/guide who runs Lights Over Lapland, told SpaceWeather.com in a posting on Sunday. “The auroras started with a burst of energy and slowly calmed down as the meteor shower intensified. At one point we were seeing several meteors per minute.”

Based on the reports gathered by the International Meteor Organization, Blakley and his guests at Sweden’s Abisko National Park weren’t the only ones to enjoy a standout show. Some skywatchers reported seeing 140 meteors or more during one hour of peak time on Saturday night. Sharp-eyed observers can still catch the tail end of the spectacle on Monday night and early Tuesday morning.

Photographer Zoltan Kenwell’s picture captures the aurora’s bright glow over Alberta with the dramatic streak of a meteor’s fall.

About 40 miles (60 kilometers) north of Edmonton, Alberta, photographer Zoltan Kenwell of InFocus Imagery also sampled a double-dip of northern lights and meteor flashes.

“My plan was to capture a few Geminids, and to my surprise I found a little aurora as well,” Kenwell told SpaceWeather.com. “So what does an aurora hunter do when there is a meteor shower on? He kicks back in a recliner, relaxes and enjoys the show!”

The outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center suggests that the show will continue this week, and SpaceWeather.com says there’s a chance that newly emerging sunspots could produce fresh solar flares. As for shooting stars, the next display on the calendar is the Quadrantid meteor shower.

“The bright waxing gibbous moon will wash out all but the brightest Quadrantid meteors,” EarthSky’s Bruce McClure reports. “But if you’re game, try watching between midnight and dawn on January 3 and/or 4.”

In response to our call for Geminid pictures via #NBCmeteor, Roberto De Lorenzo sent this picture of a meteor flash, witnessed in the skies over southern Italy on Saturday evening. “It shows a Geminid meteor crossing the sky between Orion and Taurus,” De Lorenzo wrote in an email. “I shot it with a Canon EOS with standard optics and 15 seconds of exposure.”   

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Ireland needs more indigenous start-ups

 

Forbes magazine’s the choice of Ireland as the best country in the world for business is a big boost. It is an influential publication and it sends out the right signals to the international investment community about doing business here

It just might not send out the right signals at home. The real winners in the current Irish business environment are international investors and multinationals. The investors are punting on a recovery play and, in areas like commercial property, they are being heavily subsidised to do it. The multinationals are simply investing in the country, its workforce and its tax arrangements.

There is no doubt that Ireland is benefiting enormously from the current inflow of foreign capital. You can see it in the job numbers or the big refurbishments that international buyers are doing on hotels and other assets they have bought. But the wider economic benefits of this kind of investment may not be fully flowing through.

I would prefer if Ireland was voted the best country in the world to start a business. That would suggest start-ups by Irish people and entrepreneurs moving to the country, would flourish. This would create more jobs.
Those jobs would be a lot “stickier” in terms of remaining when things get tough. And enterprise jobs would deliver a greater return to the economy as a whole.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business Index, Ireland is 15th. On starting a business we came in 12th this year, down from ninth. It’s a limited measure and it doesn’t carry anything like the PR cache of Forbes.

Would you prefer, from an economic point of view, to live in Germany which came in 24th on the Forbes list, but has an unemployment rate of just five per cent and a debt to GDP ratio of around 81 per cent. We came first and have an unemployment rate of 12.5 per cent and a debt to GDP ratio of 124 per cent.

Commercial property investors and multinationals are the big winners here right now. That is no bad thing, except Ireland needs to be a better place for indigenous start-ups.

Just 69 buyers spent around €1.2bn buying commercial property worth over €1m in the 18 months from January 2012 to July 2013. Michael Noonan’s decision to cut stamp duty in December 2011 from 8 per cent to two per cent saved those buyers €72m.

If commercial property values grow by an average of five per cent per year for the next seven years, those same buyers will save €126m in capital gains tax exemptions when they sell. That is a subsidy of almost €200m on just 18 months of property sales to 69 purchasers.
Contrast the cut in stamp duty on commercial property with the pension levy, where the minister grabbed a chunk of everybody’s pension.

A decade ago, the Exchequer took in €5.1bn in corporation tax, around 16 per cent of its total tax take. Next year it is expected to be around €4.3bn or 10.9 per cent of its total tax take.

We have chosen our route to economic success and it is as an open exporting economy, attractive to inward investment with low business tax. By and large it has worked up to now and is yielding positive results.
The question is whether we need to do more on the indigenous side by incentivising people to set up small, but real companies, which make and sell real things. The answer is yes we do.

Former Tánaiste Mary Coughlan says she knew the Troika move would cost her a Dáil seat

  
Former Tánaiste Mary Coughlan has stated she knew she was in line to lose her Dáil seat as a result of calling in the Troika and the IMF.

In an interview to be broadcast on Raidio na Gaeltachta, she reveals Brian Cowen appointed her as his go-between with anxious ministers in the run-up to the infamous bailout.

Ms Coughlan said she knew she was in line to lose her Dail seat as a result of calling in the troika and the IMF. “We did what we knew needed to be done, we knew we had to make those difficult decisions.
“We also understood the implications for the party, that we would lose seats, including our own, but we were doing the right thing for the State.”

The former Donegal TD, who is said to be testing the water for a possible political comeback, said she got the job to brief others because Mr Cowen and the late Finance Minister Brian Lenihan “couldn’t meet everyone”.

Following on from an interview almost one year ago given in the Abbey Arts Centre in Ballyshannon where she spoke openly about her own position following the death of her husband, David, and in which she alluded briefly to the dying days of the Fianna Fáil government, Ms Coughlan has repeated her belief that the Fianna Fail government “had no choice” but to call in the IMF, adding that the Cabinet acted on the advice of the Central Bank.

“The Taoiseach wanted everyone to have a chance to offer their opinion and that there would be a big debate about the matter,” Ms Coughlan told RTE’s Raidio na Gaeltachta.

She tells Raidio na Gaeltachta in an interview to be broadcast on December 10th, that the government was not aware of the gravity of the looming crisis, particularly in relation to the state of the banking sector.
“I understand that people want someone to blame, but there were lots of people involved, not just one person. It’s clear now that the government didn’t have all the information about the situation – in particular, the state of the banks.

QUESTIONS NEED TO BE ANSWERED.

“We got advice from the Central Bank etc and we had no other choice.
“There was huge pressure on the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance coming from the ECB and the (European) Commission.
“We had no choice but to look for support from the IMF and the Commission,” Ms Coughlan said.

Ms Coughlan speaks candidly in the interview about her own treatment at the hands of the press, how she was hounded by them, in particular during the FÁS scandal, and also talks about the government’s media relations.

“One week during the FÁS story I was on the front page of the Independent for the whole week. Things were very difficult at the time, and perhaps we weren’t as good as we could have been about working with the media as a party and as a government.

“It was difficult for David and the children, because they were able to read at this stage, and we banned the papers for a while in the house, so the children wouldn’t see what was being written.’

“I was under huge pressure everywhere I went. Crowds of journalists would follow me, running down the road after me. That doesn’t happen anymore. It was herd mentality, and they took a lot of what I said out of context.”
Asked whether journalists and/or newspapers had an agenda against her, she answers:

“That’s possible”.
On the current government, Mary Coughlan criticises their neglect of rural issues, but says that Enda Kenny is doing well.

‘We (FF) didn’t neglect rural areas, compared to this government. Almost all the ministers, apart from Enda Kenny, are city based – Dublin, Cork, Limerick. They have a policy not to pay attention to the difficulties in rural areas – garda stations closing, small schools under threat … I don’t see the political support for rural areas.

“Enda Kenny as Taoiseach is doing very well. He’s interested, and he’s working hard, but he’s not visible in enough places. I don’t think he’s being asked the hard questions. He’s like a package for the government and the handlers. I’d like to see him travelling around the country more, and getting asked the hard questions.”

Asked whether she will run in 2016, she says that she hasn’t closed the door completely, but that there’s a need for new blood.

Obesity and health do not go together, A study finds

  

For quite a while some experts believed that a little extra body fat would not necessarily trigger health problems like metabolic syndrome, a cluster of diseases that often accompanies weight gain.

There was even talk of an “obesity paradox,” meaning that some people could derive certain benefits from being obese. But all that may just be fantasy, according to a recent study from Canada.

• Greater Fitness Cannot Mitigate Risks from Unhealthy Weight Gain
“Obese persons are at increased risk for adverse long-term outcomes even in the absence of metabolic abnormalities, suggesting that there is no healthy pattern of increased weight,” wrote Dr. Caroline K. Kramer of Mount Sinai Hospital’s Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute in Toronto and lead author of the study report.

Whether being overweight is immediately harmful depends on a number of factors, including a person’s genes, activity level, hormonal functions, and the source of calories, said Dr. David L. Katz, founder and director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, to HealthDay. Fat accumulation, especially when it affects inner organs like the liver, can do serious damage even at low levels, he warned.
The notion that fat and fit are not necessarily exclusive of one another stems in part from studies

That found overweight but physically active people to be healthier than normal-weight folks who never exercised.
Also, judging someone’s health status based on body-mass index (http://www.timigustafson.com/2009/do-you-know-your-body-mass-index/) (BMI) alone has been widely criticized as an inaccurate measure in terms of overall health. Instead, most healthcare providers now prefer waist circumference as an indicator for weight-related health issues.

According to guidelines published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), overweight people can be considered healthy if their waist size does not exceed 40 inches for men, or 35 inches for women, and if they don’t have high blood pressure, high blood sugar, or high cholesterol.
However, when it comes to obesity (BMI of 30 and above), almost all studies agree that even being relatively fit cannot offset the health risks.

The issue is not so much the extra weight itself but what is called “metabolic health.” For any person – obese, overweight, or normal-weight – to be metabolically healthy, his or her blood pressure must be less than 130/85 mmHg, triglycerides under 150 mg/dL, fasting blood sugar equal to or lower than 100 mg/dL, and HDL (“good”) cholesterol above 40 mg/dL in men and 50 mg/dL in women.

But what about the so-called “obesity paradox,” a finding that overweight and moderately obese patients who suffer from chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease sometimes outlive their normal-weight counterparts with the same disease? There may be a number of explanations for this, including genetic differences and access to treatment options. Either way, the fact remains that both weight management and fitness are important factors for good health, as is dietary quality.

Big business techies go to work on gourmet fare

 
What do Facebook staff eat? What’s on the Twitter menu? The chef who cooks for Ireland’s tech giants.

Does multinational success trickle down to small business and the ‘real’ economy? Critics of last week’s Forbes Irish coronation doubt it.
But don’t tell Gavin Prendergast (above left) that. From being a man with a van doing dawn patrols four years ago, he has grown a new company to 50 people, thanks to his status as unofficial caterer to Ireland’s booming tech multinationals.

It started in 2009 with 4am solo van runs to Facebook’s small, newly established Dublin office.

“Tech companies need to pull out all the stops to attract high-quality staff, which means top-class food,” said Prendergast. “So that’s what I pitched. I was driving the van in the middle of the night with all of this high-end food. But they seemed to like it. Then when they expanded, they stuck with me so I started to upscale. And then word of mouth got around.”

Four years and 46 new staff later, Prendergast’s Urban Picnic company is now serving over 1,000 people daily at canteens in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Zynga and Hubspot.

What they get is something approximating a sheikh’s wedding buffet. On the day I visited Facebook’s Hanover Quay restaurant-canteen, prime beef, pork and salmon fillets made up a small fraction of the fare on offer, with freshly made cheesecake and strawberry vanilla chocolate sauce – among other things – for dessert. One would struggle to find a better meal anywhere in Dublin.

And this is the point: the ultra-competitive market for skilled engineers and coders means that big tech companies now have to lay on the best food in the city. That means serious chefs, fresh food and a constantly changing menu.

“Eating habits have changed,” he said. “People are no longer interested in simply chicken and chips. So all of our chefs comes from high-end restaurants. We operate more as a restaurant ourselves than a canteen. We rarely have the same menu twice. We do a lot of ethnic food days, too. The idea is that people will genuinely find it difficult to get better food anywhere else in the area.”

Ironically, the only place to arguably challenge Facebook’s canteen in this part of Dublin is another tech multinational’s restaurant: Google.
“A lot of staff here came from Google and, yes, they have a pretty good restaurant there. We needed to make sure that we were at least as good.”

Prendergast is not a newbie to fine dining. After college, he went to work in the Four Seasons George V in Paris, before joining up with Gordon Ramsey and a stint with the Ritz Carlton in Powerscourt. This has led to a few high-end habits.

“We employ one person just to research menus,” he said. “What we’re doing differently is we put everything on site. Almost everything is sourced in Ireland. We also operate a ‘clean food’ system and don’t use butter or cream. In fact, we try to limit dairy altogether. It’s light food, with lots of fruit and vegetables.”

Prendergast’s operation works in two ways. For large companies such as Facebook (which has 500 employees now), it occupies a permanently staffed restaurant canteen. For smaller firms (those under 250 employees), it prepares food from a communal kitchen in Sheriff Street.

It seems to be keeping coders and tech engineers happy.
“It’s a pretty superb restaurant,” said Gareth Lambe, director of operations and head of office at Facebook Dublin. “The staff love it.”
Dublin’s digital docklands continues to boom, with new tech firms setting up every month. While rising companies such as Dropbox and Airbnb have recently established European bases here, others such as Evernote are strongly tipped to follow suit.

This should provide Prendergast with opportunities for his next wave of potential clients. However, he has also started to add some non-tech customers to his corporate logs. This includes Communicorp, the media company that owns Today FM, Newstalk FM and a range of other radio and media interests.

“People want good food,” he said. “That’s really the bottom line. There’s a new market here and that’s what we’re doing. The detail we put into the food and the menus is, we think, very high.”

Prendergast’s fortunes mirror the cultural and economic expansion of Facebook, Urban Picnic’s biggest client. The social networking giant recently announced a move into an adjacent building which has the space to accommodate up to 1,000 people. Because of the diversity of roles and nationalities at the company, catering provides a unique challenge.

“We have people working here from countries who never see their national food prepared in Dublin restaurants,” said Prendergast. “You have to respect where people come from and what they want, while keeping it interesting for everyone. The nice thing about companies like Facebook is that the people here are very open-minded and willing to try new things.”

Despite the haute cuisine on offer, Facebook’s canteen restaurant fills and empties in a militaristically scheduled way. There are three two-hour windows throughout the day in which to eat.
“People leave this restaurant motivated and satisfied,” said Facebook’s Lambe. “What you need to understand is that all of this high-end food and other benefits we have here allow people not to have to worry about things or waste time on small issues.”

At the rate of growth in Dublin’s tech sector, will Prendergast’s Urban Picnic remain a boutique corporate caterer? Or is mass-market expansion on the way?
“Right now, we’re happy with what we’re doing,” said Prendergast. “It’s all about the food.”

The number of families going homeless in Dublin doubles in last 6 months

    

The number of families becoming homeless in Dublin has doubled in the last six months, a charity has warned.

With 16 families now losing their home every month in the capital, there are currently five children a week being made homeless in the city, according to Focus Ireland.

The charity said it had recorded an almost 20% increase in enquiries from people across Ireland who have been made homeless, or were in fear of becoming so, over the last year.

It supported a total of 9,237 people so far this year who were homeless or at risk of losing their home, compared to 7,819 people during this same period last year.

The charity highlighted the problem as it appealed for public donations to help its work.
It said it had been affected by state funding cuts at a time when demand was on the rise.

Focus Ireland’s director of fundraising and marketing Lisa Nicole Dunne said: “We are now seeing more people at serious risk of losing their homes due to the impact of the recession and it’s highly concerning to see the rise in the number of families becoming homeless.

“In Dublin alone the number of families becoming homeless has recently doubled from 8 to 16 every month. Worryingly, five children a week are losing their family home.”

She added: “Focus Ireland will simply not be able to cope with the massive spike in demand for our services in to 2014 without public donations. Every euro counts in the drive against homelessness and people can rest assured 90 cents of every euro raised is spent directly on services to combat and prevent homelessness.”