Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

The cost of borrowing continues to fall for Ireland

   

IRELAND’S COST OF BORROWING HAS CONTINUED TO FALL, AFTER THE YIELD ON IRISH 10-YEAR BONDS HIT RECORD LOW LEVELS YESTERDAY.

Peripheral euro zone bonds have become popular recently as economic uncertainty has led to an easing of monetary policy globally

A scarcity of bonds – highlighted by the Bank of England’s (BoE) inability to meet its bond-purchase target – has driven interest rates on government debt to record lows across the board.

In the week prior to the Brexit vote on 23 June, the interest rate on Irish 10-year bonds stood at 0.84%.

Yesterday that yield on Irish debt fell to a record low 0.37%, and today it is lower again at 0.34%.

Peripheral euro zone bonds have become popular recently as economic uncertainty has led to an easing of monetary policy globally.

Now further demand has been placed on euro zone bonds after the BoE failed to find enough willing sellers to meet its bond purchase target for the first time since it started buying government bonds in 2009.

German 10-year yields have fallen further into negative territory at -0.1%, while the Netherlands bond yield rate is also negative at -0.01%.

This has seen investors move towards peripheral euro zone bonds, such as Ireland, which would have a relatively higher rate of return.

Investors seeking alternatives

Spooked by the end of a 30-year bond bull run and bouts of money printing which have pushed stock values out of kilter with economic reality, high-profile investors are turning to fine wines, classic cars and jewels, research and index data show.

Even legendary bond investor and ex-Pimco boss Bill Gross said last week that he now favoured real assets like land and gold over more traditional investment classes.

This growing interest saw rare coins, collectable jewellery and classic cars join fine wine among the top performers in the year to end-March, the latest Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index showed.

A record breaking six months for Irish tourism with half a million extra visitors to Irish shores

MORE THAN HALF A MILLION EXTRA VISITORS TO IRISH SHORES FOR FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR…

    

PLAYING HOST TO THE LIKES OF GAME OF THRONES AND STAR WARS HELPED IRELAND ACHIEVE MASSIVE TOURISM GROWTH IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE YEAR, WITH 507,400 EXTRA VISITORS DESCENDING ON THE EMERALD ISLE THAN THE SAME PERIOD IN 2015.

Irish tourism’s best ever first-half performance saw the island welcome 4.4 million tourists, marking a mammoth 13% increase year-on-year.

Aside from the lure of screen tourism, air access, positive publicity and a global marketing campaigning were cited as contributing to the boom.

Tourism Ireland confirmed that revenue was also up 18% for the first quarter. The majority of tourists came from Britain and North America, while trips from mainland Europe were also on the rise.

Ireland now accounts for one in 10 of all American visitors to Europe.

There are 40,000 additional people employed in the tourism sector compared with five years ago.

Niall Gibbons, CEO of Tourism Ireland, said that hotels and other service providers have to continue to do their part to attract people here:

“The industry have to offer excellent value for money. Not be as good as our competitors; we have to be better.

“The good news is that if you look back at the actual statistics, in 1999… 3% of[British visitors] said Ireland was poor value for money. By 2009 that was 43%, and by 2015 that was back to single digits.

“I think we have to sustain and maintain those very positive value for money numbers.”

There were 16% more visitors from the UK in the first half, and Tourism Ireland is set to target that market with an extensive programme of promotions this autumn to boost off-peak business and mitigate for a weakened sterling following the Brexit vote.

Currency movements mean that Eurozone trips are now roughly 10% more expensive for British holiday makers.

Data protection chief Dixon must not distance herself from complainants

DISENGAGING FROM INDIVIDUALS COULD OPEN IRELAND TO A SANCTION BY EUROPEAN COURTS

   

IN A RECENT SPEECH, THE DATA PROTECTION COMMISSIONER HELEN DIXON REFERRED TO SOME SOLICITORS AS “DIGITAL AMBULANCE CHASERS”.

In a recent speech, Irish Data Protection Commissioner Helen Dixon set out her perspectives on data protection supervision – putting her on a collision course with the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union.

At the Irish Centre for European Law annual Data Protection Conference, Commissioner Dixon expressed frustration at the lack of clear objectives for data protection and a failure to detail the harms it is designed to mitigate.

The commissioner went on to criticise the large number of complaints received by her office which, she said, were really proxies for disputes between different parties and had only a marginal connection with data protection issues.

Solicitors were singled out as “digital ambulance chasers” for bringing volumes of complaints of little apparent merit and using subject access requests for fishing expeditions in litigation.

Ms Dixon made it clear that she doesn’t think she should be obliged to consider every complaint received by her office and that she thinks the resources currently committed to investigating individual complaints would be better used examining systemic data protection issues.

So, should – or indeed can – the commissioner distance herself from individual complainants?

In my view, she cannot and should not.

Missed opportunity

To do so would not only require an amendment to European law, which guarantees such a right, it would also be a missed opportunity to engage with individuals in order to close the apparent gap between the general nature of data protection rules and the public’s understanding of the protections that it offers.

In disengaging from individuals, the commissioner would miss an essential aspect of data protection supervision, inevitably resulting in a standard of data protection supervision in Ireland below that set by European law.

Consequently, such a move could open Ireland to a sanction by the European courts.

To see why, it must be understood that data protection touches on every aspect of our lives – as consumers buying goods and services, citizens participating in a democratic society and as neighbours in our communities.

Data protection owes a lot to the experience of many millions of Europeans who lived in authoritarian communist regimes.

It values individual protection over pure self-interest, by setting moral boundaries to how our personal data may be used.

However, these boundaries are always specific to individual circumstances and can change over time. Crucially, data protection law doesn’t lend itself to absolute rules or codified, measurable objectives.

As such, the progressive nature of data protection law brings it into conflict with the conservative free market view that personal data is just another commodity that can be traded for profit.

There are similar conflicts with state bureaucracies looking for easy ways to exert control or deliver privatised public services.

The obligations on data protection supervisors, when hearing individual complaints, were spelled out by the Court of Justice of the European Union in the well-known Google Spain case, which concerned the so-called right to be forgotten, (i.e. the right of individuals to have certain links removed from internet searches on their names).

The court first noted that everyone has a right to make a complaint to an independent supervisor, such as our Data Protection Commissioner.

It then went on to find that interference with data protection rights, if sufficiently serious, cannot be justified on purely economic grounds but only with reference to other fundamental rights such as the right to freedom of expression.

The law is very vague?

Critically, in making a complaint, an individual is not required to demonstrate that they have been prejudiced.

Finally, the court stressed the importance of context. It noted publication by a search engine of personal data already legally published on the internet may nevertheless interfere with an individual’s rights.

Similarly, publication of personal data may cease to be justified with the passage of time.

So, if the law is vague and context dependent, how can the use of personal data be regulated and why are individual complaints so important?

Data protection places a high value on individual protection balanced only against other fundamental rights.

To regulate at the standards demanded of European law, a data protection supervisor must embrace the progressive ideals of this moral framework and engage in empathic dialogue with individuals to build a common shared understanding of data protection norms.

It is only through stepping into the shoes of individual data subjects that data protection supervisors can really give effect to the individual balancing of interests that is demanded.

Trivialising complainants and attacking their advisors is not the way forward.

If resources are truly an issue then Ms Dixon needs to press the State to fullfil its obligation to provide them.

Dialogue with individuals rather than distance is what is required.

It would be a serious mistake to remove the individual right to complain to the commissioner’s office.

This is the amount of exercise you should be doing every day

    

REDUCE THE RISK OF BREAST AND BOWEL CANCER, DIABETES, HEART DISEASE AND STROKE WITH MORE EXERCISE, 

The minimum recommended amount of exercise should be increased, researchers have said after a new study found that more exercise can drastically lower a person’s risk of five serious diseases.

Exceeding the current recommended minimum levels of exercise each week can significantly reduce the risk of breast and bowel cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, experts found.

At present, the World Health Organisation recommends that people conduct at least “600 metabolic equivalent minutes (MET minutes)” of physical activity – the equivalent of 150 minutes each week of brisk walking or 75 minutes per week of running.

Researchers from the US and Australia looked into how much exceeding these levels can reduce one’s risk of the five common chronic diseases.

Their study, published in the British Medical Journal, examined 174 studies published between 1980 and 2016 which looked at the associations between total physical activity and at least one of the diseases.

Having higher levels of physical activity was significantly associated with a reduced risk in the diseases.

The study found two phased reductions in the risk of the five conditions – quick drops in the risk from 600 to 4,000 MET minutes of physical activity per week followed by slow but steady reductions from 4,000 to 10,000 MET minutes each week.

Most health gains occurred when people conducted 3,000 to 4,000 MET minutes per week, they found.

The authors said that 3000 MET minutes each week can be achieved by climbing the stairs for 10 minutes, vacuuming for 15 minutes, gardening for 20 minutes, running for 20 minutes, and walking or cycling for transportation 25 minutes on a daily basis.

“The findings of this study showed that a higher level of total physical activity is strongly associated with a lower risk of breast cancer, colon cancer, diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and ischemic stroke, with most health gains occurring at a total activity level of 3000-4000 MET minutes/week,” the authors wrote.

The crow who amazed the world by bending wire was simply using natural behaviour, 

REMEMBER THAT CROW WHO ASTONISHED THE WORLD BY BENDING A STRAIGHT PIECE OF WIRE BACK IN 2002?

      

SCIENTISTS FINALLY HAVE AN EXPLANATION FOR THAT. THEY SAY THE BIRD WAS SIMPLY ACTING OUT BEHAVIOUR IN HER SPECIES’ NATURAL REPERTOIRE.

Betty bent a straight piece of garden wire into a neat hook to lift a food-baited bucket from a vertical tube in a laboratory at the University of Oxford in 2002.

At the time, it was known that New Caledonian crows manufacture tools from twigs in the wild, but it seemed highly unlikely that this involved bending.

The resulting paper from the experiment suggested that Betty had spontaneously come up with a clever solution after understanding the experimental task.

This shook the field of comparative cognition and was regarded as one of the most compelling demonstrations of intelligence in a non-human animal.

But recent field experiments by biologists at the University of St Andrews have found that tool bending is part of New Caledonian crows’ natural behaviour.

Dr Christian Rutz was leader of the project, the findings of which are published in Royal Society Open Science.

“We couldn’t believe our eyes,” Dr Rutz said.

“Most birds trapped sticks underfoot before bending the tool shaft by bill, but one also pushed tools against the logs to flex them, and another wedged them upright into holes before pulling the shaft sideways, just as Betty had done.

“It turns out, the twigs that wild crows select for making their tools are pliable.

“Our study is a powerful reminder of the importance of basic natural history research.

“When my Oxford colleagues studied Betty’s cognitive abilities almost 15 years ago, very little was known about how these birds make and use tools in their natural tropical habitat.

“Our discovery of tool bending in wild New Caledonian crows has come as a complete surprise, and was the result of patient field research.”

The researchers provided the wild-caught crows with juicy treats hidden in wooden logs, as well as their preferred plant material to manufacture tools.

New Caledonian crows live in the remove tropical archipelago of New Caledonia, South Pacific, where the research for the study took place.

Birds were briefly kept in field aviaries before being released back into the wild.

Dr Rutz said the researchers were “absolutely over the moon” when the birds began making and using tools in their field aviaries.

Some of the crows vigorously bent their twig tools during processing in the same manner as Betty had bent wire in the Oxford experiment.

This time, however, bent tools were not required to solve the task.

James St Clair, report co-author, said: “Our observations raise the question of why wild crows would bend their stick tools as a matter of course.

“We believe a curved tool is advantageous, because the bird can position it in its bill so that the tool-tip is bang in the middle of the field of binocular vision.

“This should improve tool control during foraging.”    

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Ireland’s borrowing costs drop as ratings agency S&P raises our outlook

 

IRELAND’S BORROWING COSTS FELL SHARPLY AFTER A LEADING GLOBAL RATINGS AGENCY LIFTED ITS OUTLOOK FOR THE COUNTRY.

The ratings change is a major boost for the Government’s plans to exit the bailout at the end of this year.

The vote of confidence in Ireland was in sharp contrast to Standard & Poor’s downgrade of Italian government debt earlier in the week.

The rating agency said there was now a one-in-three chance that it could raise Ireland’s main credit rating over the next two years.

After years of ratings downgrades, it would be the first upgrade for Ireland since 2001. A better rating is crucial for borrowing cheaply on the international markets.

Standard & Poor’s (S&P) said it had raised its outlook for the country from stable to positive and heaped praise on Ireland, saying it had not deviated from its budgetary targets since the bailout in 2010.

“Ireland’s economic recovery is under way,” the agency said.

“Given still weak external demand and Ireland’s exports exceeding 100pc of GDP, we expect growth to remain slow in 2013 and 2014.

“Nevertheless, Ireland’s domestic economy is showing signs of stabilising. Unemployment has started to decline while private sector employment numbers are improving.”

The Department of Finance and the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) hailed the move as reinforcing the positive reputation Ireland has earned with the markets.

“It is encouraging that Standard & Poor’s acknowledges the continued progress Ireland is making on the fiscal side and the improved access to capital markets,” an NTMA spokesman said.

The move contrasts with Moody’s ratings agency, which dashed Ireland’s hopes of an upgrade earlier this year when it reaffirmed its negative outlook.

S&P, which upgraded its outlook for Ireland in February also, said it expected our debt level to peak at 122pc of the value of the economy this year, before falling to 112pc by 2016.

It said it believed there was potential for Ireland to recover more rapidly if the eurozone economy picked up. And it also upgraded its outlook for the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) from negative to positive.

But the agency also warned that risks remained, including the rising level of bad loans in the banks, particularly mortgage arrears.

Standard & Poor’s predicted the banks would not return to profitability this year, and in some cases probably not until 2015.

CRITICISM

It said that if the economy remained sluggish and banks were unable to deal with distressed loans, Ireland would not be upgraded.

The announcement follows criticism of the ratings agency yesterday from Italian Economy Minister Fabrizio Saccomanni for downgrading Italy’s credit rating, saying it failed to take account of recent government measures to boost growth.

The Mediterranean country’s rating was reduced from BBB+ to BBB due to weakening economic prospects and the country’s impaired financial system, according to S&P.

Greece is also struggling to recover from the economic backlash as its public sector took to the streets in protest this week against further austerity measures that were put in place.

Bankers tell Shane Filan to sing his way out of his €23m debt

 

Former Westlife star Shane Filan has revealed how bankers told him how he would have to “sing” to pay back his massive debts.

Faced with a bill of €23m over a series of property investments gone wrong, the 33-year-old described how he met with bank officials to try and find a solution.

“I’m sitting there, looking at this person, going ‘So where does that leave me?’

“‘Well you can sing, can’t you?’ That’s what I was told by one of them, ‘you can pay it back that way’.

“I was like, ‘I might be in Westlife, I am not in U2, it’s a lot of money to try and get back’. It wasn’t fair, but then life is not fair,” said Shane Filan.

Speaking for the first time about going bust, the Sligo man revealed how he had found himself next to broke in London last year just days after Westlife played two sell-out concerts in Croke Park.

“It was one of the scariest days I ever had. I walked out of a shop to get some money and there was only £470 in my account. My son asked if I could buy a Spiderman toy, and instead I said I promised I would get it for his birthday.

“I was crying my eyes out inside because, I couldn’t tell anybody how bad my money situation was. I had no money, no record deal and my band was over,” he recounted.

Launching his debut single Everything To Me on Ryan Tubridy’s 2fm show yesterday, the chart-topping singer revealed how he done everything he could to avoid bankruptcy, struggling to pay €30k to €40k each month in interest on loans run up by the property company he operated with his brother Finbarr.

“I sat down and had lots of meetings with the banks. I put it to them: a really good deal that they could have looked at, where I could have worked with them over number of years, and given them back as much as I could.

“It could been all of it, it could been some of it. It was an open book, and they said, ‘No, not suitable to us.’ It got to the stage where no matter what I offered it wasn’t going to happen, I don’t know if that was a public thing I don’t know. I will never know,” he said.

Forced to declare himself bankrupt in the UK in June 2012, he denied the move to Britain was a “bankruptcy thing” and said he had owned “a nice house, not a mansion” in Surrey for seven years.

ENCRUSTED:  Going bust had led to him having to buy back his own diamond-encrusted wedding ring. “The trustees took out a value on it and I had to buy it back.

” You don’t expect to buy your wedding ring twice, it’s not nice,” he said declining to put a price on what the ring had cost to buy back.

However, the father-of-three credited wife Gillian with getting him through the dark days, and said she was the inspiration for most of the new songs on his new album.

“Gillian was incredible at keeping me focused. She kept telling me how everyone who had invested in the property business in Ireland had lost. She gave me 100pc support,” he said.

Ireland’s first Real Estate Investment Trust raises €310m

 

Ireland’s first Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) has raised €310m after strong international interest in the property investment vehicle led to it being significantly over-subscribed.

The REIT backed by executives at Green Property received a major endorsement from US-headquartered global investment group Pimco, which, through a vehicle it controls in Luxembourg, has taken a 10pc stake in the REIT. Pimco has over $2 trillion (€1.5trn) of assets under management.

The Green REIT – due to float on theIrish Stock Exchange next Wednesday – will primarily target investment property in south Dublin.

Green Property executives backing the REIT – including the firm’s chairman Stephen Vernon and chief executive Pat Gunne – had hoped to raise €200m for the investment vehicle. They and other Green Property top brass are stuffing a total of €10m of their own money into the REIT.

Green Property owns the Blanchardstown Shopping Centre in Dublin and has been a canny player in the property market, offloading some valuable assets before the market imploded.

The REIT is the first to be launched in Ireland and comes on the heels of changes made this year to legislation in the Finance Act. It’s also the first such vehicle to be listed on the stock exchange.

Gary Kennedy, the chairman of the REIT, said the fundraising was a “strong endorsement” of investors’ confidence in the Green Property management team and their track record.

“It also highlights the opportunity evident in the sectors of the Irishcommercial property market that Green REIT is targeting,” he said.

After the lock up in the Asylum for Mags

 

People with mental-health problems were once locked away in asylums. Now most live in the community, like Mags Kelly, whose story is told here. But they can easily fall through the cracks of an underfunded service.

Mags wakes up and waits for her heart to slow down. She feels like a woman pulled from a burning building: still not quite able to believe she’s safe.

At 6.30am she slides out of bed, sits at her dressing table and rolls a cigarette. Today, like lots of days, her anxiety is sky-high. In a few minutes she’ll take her anti-depressants and mood stabilisers. They numb the distress and ease the panic – but they don’t take away the pain.

Shards of memories tumble around her head. They are of rough-and-tumble years spent living on the streets: unprovoked assaults, bloodied noses, crack-houses and pimping. It all seems part of one chaotic mess.

Then the faces of her children. The girls she never knew, taken into care because she couldn’t cope.

And the fear that courses through her. What if the psychiatrist she saw thinks she can’t cope living in the community? Maybe she’ll get sectioned again and end up in a locked ward? Or maybe she’ll slip through the cracks of the system and end up back on the street?

“Fear is an awful thing,” Mags says. “If you have a lot of fear in your body, it just doesn’t go away . . . I can put on a false front. Put on a bit of make-up and act like I’m well. People say, ‘She’s better,’ but I can’t seem to relax or anything.

There are days when it feels like she’s making progress. Like the other week, when she discovered a bunch of newborn ducklings in a corner of the garden, all open beaks and yellow and black fur. She was the first to find them. It made her feel elated for days afterwards.

Or recently, when she got a letter to say one of her daughters in foster care wanted to make contact with her. She’ll dress up nicely and send on some photos of herself. Maybe one day they’ll be able to strike up a relationship.

But the bad days still come. And when they do, it can be overwhelming. “Depression is terrible. It’s rotten. Look what it’s done to me,” she says, baring her arms. “I’m destroyed. I’ve used myself like a human ashtray, stubbing cigarettes into myself.

“There are sometimes all these thoughts of self-harm in my head . . . I talk to someone, and I feel okay. Then, an hour later, it’s back. It’s like I’m slipping back into the past, and I can’t see a road ahead.”
Until recently, Ireland’s mental health system dealt with people such as Mags through institutionalisation and drug treatment. It was a model with a long history. For hundreds of years, people with psychiatric health problems were locked away in asylums, behind high walls. We led the world locking people up in institutions, with inpatient admission rates that were multiples of other countries.

Today, most of these institutions have closed or ceased admissions. Only 300 patients remain, down from 25,000 about 20 years ago. The last remaining asylum is due to close within the next 12 months or so. The State’s policy now is to provide care in the community. To do this, it is funding the development of teams of professionals – psychiatrists, therapists, nurses and social workers – who support those with mental-health difficulties in a home environment.

Everyone agrees A Vision for Change, the policy launched in 2006, is a more enlightened and progressive approach. Research shows that a wider range of support is much more effective at helping patients recover than the narrower “medical model” associated with institutional care.

But our community mental-health services are under real strain. Dr Patrick Devitt, the Inspector for Mental Health Services, found the system of support was “stagnant and perhaps slipped backwards” last year as a result of dwindling staff numbers and poor governance.

The concerns were echoed by John Saunders, chair of theMental Health Commission, the State’s watchdog for psychiatric services. “We have incomplete mental-health teams trying to provide multidisciplinary care,” says Saunders.

Last year, millions of euro ring-fenced by the Government to hire more than 400 staff to modernise mental-health services disappeared. It ended up being used to tackle cost overruns in other parts of the health services.

The Health Service Executive says all these posts are being filled this year. But staff have been retiring in even greater numbers, so the extra recruitment is like pouring water into a fast-leaking bucket.

New figures show more than 1,000 fewer full-time posts exist in mental-health services today than in 2009. Staffing levels in some sectors are now at about 50 per cent of those recommended in the Vision for Change policy as being needed to run an effective service.

Records obtained by The Irish Times show unfilled posts are resulting in professionals being pulled out of community services to plug gaps in inpatient care, a move that flies in the face of Government policy. “With the huge exodus of nurses who are retiring, coupled with the recruitment embargo, the community services of which we are so proud are being decimated,” reads an internal email from the clinical director of one HSE service.

DCU Student aims to be the first Irishman to go into space

DCU student, Seán Corcoran will compete this weekend in the Lynx Apollo Space Academy National Challengein London in a bid to win a coveted place on board a space flight next year. 

The Lynx Apollo Space Academy is the deodorant brand’s global campaign to launch one lucky person into space and has attracted 87 000 entries in Britain and Ireland alone.   Seán, a second year Software Engineering student from Finglas will battle it out against 200 other potential astronauts from across Britain and Ireland in a series of gruelling NASA-style physical and mental challenges.

The four strongest candidates from the National Challenge in London will progress to the Global Space Camp in Orlando, Florida to join with finalists from 22 countries across the world.  Following intense preparation for the rigours of space travel and a final set of challenges, one lucky winner will be selected to fly 103km into space in 2014 with space tourism company Spacexc.

The Lynx Apollo Space Academy National Challenge London will take place in front of a live audience at Westfield London on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th July.