Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Total Irish employment figures set to top 2 million after strong quarter of growth

LATEST FIGURES SHOW SIGNIFICANT DROP IN YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT

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The total number of people in the labour force in the first quarter of 2016 was 2.16 million, an increase of 13,600 over the year. The number of people not in the labour force in the first quarter was 1.47 million, a rise of 5,300 in the year.

The number of people working in the State is on course to reach two million this year, analysts said, after the jobless rate dipped below 8% for the first time since the crash.

Female employment is rising at a faster rate than male employment, but new data also points to a strong rebound in construction employment. As recovery proceeds, the high rate of youth unemployment is also in decline.

The Central Statistics office said the official unemployment rate dropped to 8.3% in the first three months of the year from 9% in the final quarter of 2015.

In addition, a revision of monthly data in the lastest quarterly household survey showed the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell to 7.9% in April from 8.1% in March. The jobless rate in April 2015 was 9.8% and it was 11.8% in April 2014.

“The data released today show that the numbers at work continue to grow and that the level of employment is now just shy of the two million mark. We have now seen 14 consecutive quarters of employment growth,” said Minister for Finance Michael Noonan.

Alan McQuaid, chief economist at Merrion strockbrokers, said the labour market had improved dramatically. This was in keeping with the accelerating recovery, even though emigration had been a factor to some extent in keeping unemployment down.

“Consecutive gains in employment have been posted in the past three years and the Department of Finance is projecting that Ireland will pass the two million people in employment mark in 2016 and replace all of the jobs lost during the downturn by 2018. All in all, it is hard to disagree with this assumption,” said Mr McQuaid.

The decline in the jobless rate came as number of people working in the State rose by 46,900 or 2.4% in the year to end March, the CSO said.

Female workers accounted for the bulk of the increase, with the number of working rising by 27,900 in the year. The number of males at work rose by 19,000 in same period.

Youth unemployment fell to 16.9% in the year to the first quarter of 2016 from 21.5% 12 months previously.

Support services up 9.9%.

The largest rates of increased employment was in the administrative and support service activities, which rose by 6,100 or 9.9%, and in the construction sector, which rose by 9,500 or 7.8%.

The biggest decline in employment was in financial, insurance and real estate activities, which eased by 1,500.

On a seasonally adjusted basis, the number of people at work rose by 15,400 or 0.8% in the first quarter of 2016 over the final three months of 2015. This followed a seasonally adjusted quarterly increase in employment of 6,600 or 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2015.

“Unemployment decreased by 33,300 or 15.7% in the year to the first quarter of 2016, bringing the total number of persons unemployed to 179,500.

“The long-term unemployment rate decreased from 6 per cent to 4.7% over the year to [the first quarter of] 2016,” said the CSO.

“Long-term unemployment accounted for 56.1% of total unemployment in [the first quarter of] 2016 compared with 59.7% a year earlier and 60.5% in the first quarter of 2014.”

In the year to the first quarter of 2016, the number of persons classified as long-term unemployed declined by 26,500 or 20.9%. This brought total long-term unemployment to 100,600.

Short-term unemployment decreased by 11,300 or 13.7% in the year, to 71,200.

The total number of people in the labour force in the first quarter of 2016 was 2.16 million, an increase of 13,600 over the year. The number of people not in the labour force in the first quarter was 1.47 million, a rise of 5,300 in the year.

Allied Irish Bank reports a 4% drop in number of Irish mortgages in arrears

    

AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne (right picture).

ALLIED IRISH BANK (AIB) HAS MAINTAINED ITS MOMENTUM FROM 2015 AND HAS REPORTED STRONG PROFITABILITY, INCREASED LENDING, AND REDUCTIONS IN IMPAIRED LOANS IN THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF THE YEAR.

In a trading update released to shareholders this morning, AIB posted a net interest margin (NIM) of 2.09pc, an increase on the 1.97% for the full year of 2015.

New lending drawdowns increased by 17% in the period as the bank held on to leading market shares in both retail and business sectors.

AIB chief executive Bernard Byrne said the bank has continued the positive trend from 2015.

“Our focus on growth, a more efficient operating model and improved funding costs enabled us to pass on a 4 reduction of 25bps to variable rate mortgage customers and a €2,000 contribution to switching costs.

“We look forward to increasing our payments to the State to around €6.5bn when we pay a further €1.8bn in capital and interest in July on the maturity of the Contingent Capital Notes.”

Excluding currency costs performing loans increased by €500m, which AIB said was driven by increased new lending and restructures offset by redemptions.

Impaired loans were down by €1bn to €12bn due to ongoing case by case process of bringing in restructuring solutions.

Irish mortgages in arrears fell by 4% in the three months with similar declines visible in both early and late stage arrears. AIB said the number of accounts in arrears in both the owner-occupier and buy-to-let portfolios dropped by 29% and 27% respectively since December 2014.

Thousands of Ireland’s families paying over the odds for health insurance

    

THOUSANDS OF FAMILIES ARE OVERPAYING FOR HEALTH COVER.

Four out of five consumers who have health insurance are on the wrong plan, according to research by one of the country’s leading health insurance experts.

This means thousands of families are overpaying for health cover.

And employers who pay some or all of the health insurance costs of staff are not getting the best value in the market, according to Dermot Goode of TotalHealthCover.ie

Some 2.12 million people now have health insurance, up 4,000 since last December, according to recent research from the Health Insurance Authority.

Mr Goode said 80% of those with health cover are on a plan that is too expensive or does not give them the benefits they need.

This implies that up to 1.7 million people could be on unsuitable plans.

The health insurance expert said consumers make it too easy for insurers to keep them on plans that do not suit them and are too expensive.

“But we can’t lump all the blame on insurers – as consumers we need to be more proactive in terms of reviewing our cover properly to bag healthcare savings wherever possible.”

He said that both consumers purchasing individual plans and employers spending hundreds of thousands on employee cover need to do more to ensure they have the right plan.

There are some 420 health insurance plans from the four insurers, with companies changing the benefits on existing plans, increasing prices and bringing out new schemes at regular intervals.

Mr Goode, who is speaking at the Future Health Summit in the Citywest Convention Centre near Dublin, said too few people review their cover.

“If we do go to review, we generally leave it too late, and even when we phone the insurer we ask the wrong questions and are too accepting of the first answer as the final answer.”

He said that those who are on the same plan for two years or more are usually overpaying by the greatest extent. These people could make savings of 20% plus, he said.

Employer schemes stand to make the biggest savings, often up to 20%.

“To make these savings you need to put the health insurers ‘under pressure’ as too many consumers make it too easy for them to recommend the plans that suit them,” Mr Goode said.

Your profile picture could be telling people more about your personality than you had thought

    

THE SOCIAL MEDIA PROFILE PICTURE COULD BE THE WINDOW TO YOUR SOUL.

That’s according to a group of researchers who have investigated the link between people’s profile pictures and their personality traits.

According to the study, social media users can be grouped into one of the Big Five model personality traits – openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism – based on their profile picture alone.

For instance, extraverts are more likely to have a profile picture with several faces in it. They are also likely to portray a younger image either through the use of a picture from years ago or with them posing with younger people.

The study used the Twitter profiles of more than 66,000 people – making it larger than most psychological studies – while 429 users filled in a standard personality questionnaire and found “significant differences in profile picture choice between personality traits”.

So the question is, what category does your profile pic fall in and how much is it giving away to other social media users, not to mention future employers or advertisers?

Openness

The analysis revealed that these users are “likely to have profile pictures other than faces, which reveals non-conformance with what is expected”.

Photos are also likely to be more aesthetically pleasing and use an artistic quality such as grey scale. Users are often seen wearing glasses, but not sunglasses, show less emotion and the ratio of the face size is usually larger than others.

Conscientiousness

The study describes conscientiousness as the personality trait associated with orderliness, planned behaviour and self discipline and for that reason these users “prefer the expected behaviour”. A picture showing the users face only is therefore most expected and they are more likely to appear as happy, smiling or positive than any other trait.

They don’t tend to use grey scale images, they rarely wear glasses and the size of the face is usually smaller. The pictures also make users appear older than they actually are.

Extraversion

Extraversion is a trait marked by engagement with the outside world and “these type of users are correlated the highest out of all traits with colourful images”. An extravert’s picture tends to have many faces in it – which is different from all personalities – and they usually present as a younger age using a picture from when they were younger or surrounded by younger people.

The strongest correlation compares to other traits is that the ratio of their faces is smaller – although that might be because they tend to have more people in the picture.

Agreeableness

This trait is described as being “characterised by social harmony and co-operation”. These users like to have profile pictures with faces in them and the correlation to colour is opposite to openness. That means they usually present colourful profiles, but the pictures are usually low in sharpness, blurry, bright and tend to be cluttered and not that aesthetically pleasing.

Neuroticism

pictures for neurotic users are perhaps unsurprisingly anti-correlated with colourfulness and are opposite to the traits displayed by agreeableness and extraversion users. The study found that “overall, neurotic people display simple, uncolourful images with negative colour emotions”.

It also found that neurotic users tend not to use faces as a profile picture and when they do they have the strongest correlation to people who are displayed wearing reading glasses. When a face is present in the picture it is also “significantly larger” than other users’ pictures.

Blood-sucking fish on the rise in the most of our rivers

       

SWIMMERS ARE ON RED ALERT AFTER A HUGE RISE IN THE NUMBER OF A ONE METRE LONG BLOOD SUCKING FISH WITH ROWS OF RAZOR SHARP TEETH IN THE COUNTRY’S RIVERS, INCLUDING THE TRENT WHICH RUNS THROUGH

Once bitten says Jeremy Wade of the ITV show River Monsters, having his blood sucked by a hungry lamprey, The number of lampreys, which are known to attack humans when hungry, are soaring all around the UK, with record numbers found in some of the country’s water ways.

The rise in the ‘vampire fish’, which kill off other fish by latching onto them and sucking their blood out, has been flagged up on outdoor swimming websites where members swim in rivers and lakes. The Swimmer’s Daily website carried a report into the rise of the lampreys warning swimmers ‘Return of the lamprey – ancient, ugly and swimming up Britain’s rivers’. 

Outdoor swimmers are now ‘keeping an eye out’ for the blood-sucking creatures during dips in rivers. As well as the Trent, they have been spotted in the Great Ouse, Trent, Derwent and Wear. Wild swimmer Matt Clarke, who swims all over the UK, but who normally swims in the River Great Ouse as it runs through the town of Olney, Bucks, said he was alerted by a pal last week who saw a warning on the Swimmer’s Daily website. Mr Clarke, 31, of Milton Keynes, Bucks, said his pal also alerted him to an episode of ITV show River Monsters aired in May 2013 about lampreys and called ‘Vampires of the Deep’.

The show, which stars biologist Jeremy Wade, shows him up to his shoulders in a lake with a lamprey attached firmly to his neck as it sucks out his blood.  Speaking during the episode, Mr Wade says: “The parallels with vampires are striking – they both tap into that that same dark place, the primal fear they will drain the life force from us.” 

The lamprey has a formidable mouth full of sharp teeth. As he stands in the shoulder-height river with the creature sucking out his blood, he says: “There’s suction, but there is something sharp going on as well.  “If you get these things attached you’re going to want to get them off.” He warned swimmers: “If you’re swimming you’re needing your limbs to keep you afloat and to keep you moving, but what are you going to do (if) you’ve got these attached to you?

Do I carry on swimming with maybe more and more attaching (to me), or do I stop swimming and try and get these things off – these things are like aquatic vampires.” The TV host was investigating reports of lamprey attacks on swimmers at Lake Champlain in north America in 2007, with several swimmers reporting ‘being attacked’ by up to seven lampreys at a time.

The attacks on humans at Lake Champlain were made into a 2014 movie called Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys, starring Back to the Future star Christopher Lloyd and Beverly Hills, 90210 star Shannon Doherty. Accounts worker Mr Clarke said: “My friend told me to watch out for lampreys as he’d seen the River Monsters episode and heard that lampreys were on the rise around where I normally swim.

“I’m not really worried, but after watching that episode online last week I will be keeping an eye out for them.”The numbers of lampreys – which have been around for 360m years and have a permanently open mouth armed with a powerful sucker and rows of razor-sharp teeth – in the UK have shot up in recent years.

Numbers had been dwindling after man-made barriers to alter the flow of the water, called weirs, prevented them from swimming upstream to their breeding grounds, where females lay around 170,000 eggs at a time. Mark Owen, head of freshwater at the Angling Trust, said last week that ‘fish passes’ allow lampreys to get through weirs had helped boost numbers. He said: “The fact they’re coming back indicates the water quality is improving, which is welcome for all fish species.”   

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Irish the biggest losers from financial crash  “Says the ECB”

Typical Irish person lost €18k between 2009 -2013 figures show, more than in Greece and Spain

   

In an analysis of the years between 2009 and 2013, ECB experts discovered that Ireland lost more than €18,000 per person, while Spaniards saw wealth dwindle by almost €13,000 as property in both nations plummeted.

The Irish lost more of their personal wealth than any other euro zone country in the aftermath of the financial crash while Germany and the Netherlands gained the most, fresh data from the European Central Bank shows.

In an analysis of the years between 2009 and 2013, ECB experts discovered that Ireland lost more than €18,000 per person, while Spaniards saw wealth dwindle by almost €13,000 as property in both nations plummeted.

Greeks saw their notional wealth decline by almost €17,000 for the same reason.

In the Netherlands and Germany, by contrast, the wealth per capita grew by roughly €33,000 and €19,000 respectively, due in part to a boost to financial investments over that time.

The data, which takes a snapshot before the recent economic upswing in Spain and Ireland, illustrates the stark differences between countries in the 19-country euro zone that extends from cities such as Helsinki in the north to Athens in the south.

By presenting the data in this manner, the ECB acknowledges the divergence, although there is little the central bank can do to remedy it.

Its money-printing scheme known as quantitative easing is spread out according to euro zone member countries’ relative size and not determined by their economic needs.

To fix imbalances between strong industrial nations such as Germany and countries such as Spain, experts have long pushed for a system of financial transfers or payments from rich to poor states.

Germany, which fears that this would lumber it with unmanageable costs and believes that handouts would discourage spendthrift countries from reforming, has flatly rejected the suggestion.

A separate chart published by the ECB, with data up until the start of this year, shows, however, that the situation of weaker nations may be gradually improving.

Data shows an improvement in income almost across the board in the euro zone, barring a small number of stragglers including Cyprus.

Pensioner woman (90) will not have to pay costs in satellite dish case

Anne Rudd says ‘justice done’ after court rules she need not pay €1,500 legal bill

    

Anne Rudd, a great grandmother from St Enda’s Road, Terenure, was summoned by Dublin City Council which had sought an order for legal costs. Following pleas from her lawyers that it would be unfair if Ms Rudd had to pay the expenses, which the council had reduced from €2,100 to €1,500, Judge John O’Neill dismissed the case.

TOM TUITE

A judge has thrown out a case against a Dublin woman (90) who faced a €1,500 legal bill for having an unauthorised satellite dish on the front of her house.

Anne Rudd, a great grandmother from St Enda’s Road, Terenure, was summonsed by Dublin City Council which had sought an order for legal costs.

Mrs Rudd’s lawyers argued it would be unfair if she had to pay the expenses, which were reduced from €2,100 to €1,500 by the council.

Judge John O’Neill dismissed the case, saying it was a substantial bill and he was not going to order her to pay costs due to exceptional circumstances.

Following the verdict, Mrs Rudd stood outside the courthouse with her daughters Anne Claxton and Teresa Davey and her son Peter Rudd and told reporters “justice has been done”.

“I have had my family around me, there are women and men who have nobody. It was an oversight,” she said.

Mrs Rudd said she was shocked by the attention she had received following the initial hearing. “I could not believe it, me, little me, Australia, England, Wales, San Diego in California, people offered things. Bunches of flowers, money was sent and I gave it to charity. In Wales a man wanted to start up a fund.”

Ms Claxton thanked the public for their good wishes as well as Judge O’Neill, the legal team and the news media.

Mrs Rudd was accused at Dublin District Court of failing to comply with an enforcement notice issued on May 28th last telling her she had to remove “the unauthorised satellite dish” along with all associated fixtures and fittings from the facade of her house under Section 154 of the Planning and Developments Acts.

James Cosgrave, a planning enforcement officer with the council, had told the court he spoke to Mrs Rudd in March and told her the dish could not be fixed to the front of her home. She was given until the end of June to move the dish.

Mr Cosgrave gave her more time to remove it but that had not been done by the time of his next inspection, on July 21st, after which proceedings commenced

Solicitor Michael Quinlan, prosecuting, said Mrs Rudd had been told then that something had to be done. The proceedings were a result of non-compliance.

Her family told the court last month that their mother would not have known what the letter pertained to but they later learned it was official and arranged to have the dish taken down.

Court proceedings had been initiated by then. Her daughters told the council last month that €1,500 could be paid.

The case resumed yesterday and this time Mrs Rudd was represented by barrister Peter Maguire (instructed by Thomas Loomes and Company solicitors). They had wanted to help, free of charge, and Ms Rudd did not seek legal aid.

Mr Maguire argued that it was unfair to ask the pensioner in receipt of €230 a week to pay a legal bill she could not afford.

He said regulations stated that in exceptional circumstances such as these, the judge has discretion in relation to making an order for costs and is not solely a “mouthpiece of the law”.

Recession’s always damages the mental health of our families,

A study shows

A report says falling incomes and unemployment place heavy strain on relationships

    

Prof Richard Layte (r), author of a new report on childhood in Ireland. 

The financial strain on families as a result of the recession has “hugely damaged” many parents’ and children’s mental health, a new study shows.

The findings are based on analysis of the Growing Up in Irelandstudy, which tracked the lives of almost 20,000 children between 2008 and 2011.

The latest analysis of the study shows that falling incomes and unemployment have placed a heavy strain on family relationships.

Among families under economic pressure, the risk of mothers showing clinical levels of depression jumped by 84 per cent compared with families unaffected by the downturn.

The equivalent increased risk for fathers was 61 per cent.

Parents experiencing financial distress reported more arguments and were more likely to report that they were unhappy with their relationship.

The study also provides stark evidence of how this parental stress had a much wider impact on children’s wellbeing.

Parents under stress were found to use harsher parenting styles with less warmth, the study found.

This change was true for parents across the levels of education and social class.

These worsened relationships between parents and children were linked to higher anxiety and worse conduct, as well as lower child happiness.

This, in turn, led to deterioration in conduct among children at home and poorer test results at school.

Unhappy children

One of the report’s authors, Prof Richard Layte of Trinity College Dublin, said the findings had long-term implications for young people.

“Anxious, unhappy children do worse in school, often with long-term consequences for both wealth and health,” said Prof Layte.

“By investing in children and young people, we will be developing healthier, happier and more productive adults for all our tomorrows – and saving money in the process.”

The results also show the extent to which personal income fell during the recession.

Cutting back on basics?

The proportion reporting some degree of difficulty in making ends meet doubled, rising from 31 per cent in 2008 to 61 per cent.

Almost 30 per cent of mothers reported cutting back on basics, while 8 per cent said they fell behind with their rent or mortgage.

Overall, household income fell by 16 per cent between 2008 and 2011 for families who participated in the study.

Unemployment among fathers rose from 6 per cent to almost 14 per cent.

The report also found a number of key gender differences.

For example, the effect of economic strain on a relationship was perceived to be higher among mothers.

It also recorded a relatively low level of separation or divorce among parents – at 2 per cent of parents – but Prof Layte said it was too early to draw any definitive conclusions from this.

The Irish kings of online ‘mystery shoppers’ now with $20m in their coffers

    

Clavis Insight was founded in 2008. Soon it will employ 300 people worldwide.

A DUBLIN COMPANY that takes the ‘mystery shopper’ concept online for the world’s biggest grocery producers has announced a major cash injection as it ramps up its international expansion.

Clavis Insight has received a $20 million (€17.6 million) investment from US venture capital firm Accel-KKR to fuel its growth in the US, Europe and China.

Garry Moroney started Clavis in 2008 and it has since expanded to almost 150 staff across offices in Dublin, Boston, London and Shanghai.

The majority are employed in its Dublin headquarters, where the company handles its main software development and data analysis.

Moroney sold his previous business, software firm Similarity Systems, to US-based Informatica in a cash deal worth nearly $55 million in 2006.

Clavis is expected to double its headcount to around 200 staff in Ireland over the next two years as part of the global push.

Online sales

The company checks how products from its clients are being sold over the internet – from their availability to how the goods are advertised on e-commerce sites like Amazon and Tesco’s virtual store.

That information can then be used to tweak the online selling process to help suppliers offload more of their products. In return, it charges up to $20,000 (€17,600) per retailer it analyses as part of its service.

Clavis’s software is already used by the world’s 10 largest manufacturers of consumer packaged goods, including Unilever, Nestlé and Mondelēz.

The company, previously known as Clavis Technology, has previously raised money from investors including Dublin venture-capital firm Delta Partners, Enterprise Ireland and millionaire Irish software entrepreneur Jim Mountjoy.

European greenhouse gas emissions drop

   

Greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union are down 23 percent since 1990, but the reductions are expected to slow before the EU can hit a self-imposed carbon goal. 

In a report published Tuesday, the European Environment Agency (EEA) said the EU has cut its emissions faster than previously predicted and most member states are on pace to hit their individual reduction targets.

The EU has already met its goal of cutting emissions by one-fifth by 2020, all while seeing its economy grow by 46 percent since 1990.

But its greenhouse gas reduction rate is expected to slow: By 2030, when officials have hoped to reduce emissions by 40 percent over 1990 levels, the bloc will only cut emissions by between 27 and 30 percent, according to the report.

“To achieve our longer-term goals for 2030 and 2050, a fundamental change is needed in the way we produce and use energy in Europe,” EEA Director Hans Bruyninckx said.

The report tracked country-by-country progress on greenhouse gas reductions, renewable energy goals and energy efficiency targets.

Twenty-four countries are expected to hit their carbon targets, but only 13 of the 28 EU members states are expected to meet all three goals. The report says the countries “will have to increase considerably their efforts” in order to meet longer-term environmental goals.

The EU’s emissions target is an important component of an international climate change accord the United Nations hopes to reach later this year. The EU member states, taken as a bloc, are one of the world’s largest polluters, behind only China and the United States.