Irish households continue to cut its debt by repaying loans 

LATEST FIGURES FROM CENTRAL BANK SHOW HOUSEHOLDS STILL THIRD MOST INDEBTED IN THE EU

    

HOUSEHOLD DEBT HAS DECLINED CONTINUOUSLY FOR THE LAST 29 QUARTERS AND HAS FALLEN BY 26.6% SINCE ITS PEAK. 

Irish household debt fell by 1.1% in the fourth quarter of last year as borrowers focused on repaying loans.

The latest figures from the Central Bank show household debt continued to decrease, falling by €1.6bn, or 1.1%, to €149.6bn.

This represented a household debt per capita of €32,269. Household debt is now at its lowest level since the first quarter of 2006.

The Central Bank said the decline over the quarter reflected net debt repayments (-€1.1bn) and debt write-downs (-€0.6bn), which were slightly offset by positive reclassifications (€0.1bn).

Household net worth increased by 1.4% to €626.1bn, or €135,078 per capita, during the same period. This increase was largely driven by a rise in housing asset values (€6.3bn), as well as a further decline in household liabilities (€1.6bn).

Compared to a post-crisis low of €444.0bn in the second quarter of 2012, household net worth has risen by 41%. However, it is still 12.8% lower than its pre-crisis peak of €718bn in the second quarter of 2007.

Household debt has declined continuously for the last 29 quarters and has fallen by 26.6% since its peak of €203.7bn in the third quarter of 2008.

Indicators of household debt sustainability continued to improve during the same period. Debt as a proportion of disposable income fell from 159.8% to 155.1%, reflecting both the decline in household debt, as well as strong growth in annualised disposable income.

Overall, the ratio of household debt to disposable income has fallen by 60.2% since its peak of 215.3% in the second quarter of 2011.

Debt as a proportion of total assets also decreased, falling to from 19.5% to 19.1% over the quarter.

Despite a “significant decline” in debt as a proportion of disposable income over the year to Q4, Irish households continued to be the third most indebted in the European Union. Irish household debt fell by 25.1 per points over the year.

The Central Bank noted this was “significantly more” than any other country examined.

Spanish and Portuguese household debt also fell considerably over the year declining by 6.1%% and 4.6% respectively.

Household investment in financial assets rose to €1.9bn. This represented the highest level of investment in financial assets by households since the third quarter of 2009.

The increase in financial assets over the quarter largely reflected transactions into deposits.

Investigation launched after death of a man in his (70s) in Garda custody

GSOC CONFIRM GARDAÍ ADMINISTERED CPR AFTER MAN ‘BECAME UNWELL WITH BREATHING DIFFICULTIES’ IN A GARDA CELL.

   

THE GARDA OMBUDSMAN HAS CONFIRMED THAT THEY ARE INVESTIGATING THE DEATH OF A MAN IN CUSTODY.

The man, who was in his 70s, was discovered dead in a cell at Westport Garda station in Co Mayo at 11am.

The man was detained earlier today and sources have indicated he may have suffered a heart attack.

A spokeswoman for the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission (GSOC) has confirmed that a team is on their way to the scene where an investigation will be carried out.

A referral was made to the body under section 102 of the Garda Síochána Act 2005.

This evening GSOC released a statement about the incident.

A statement?

A spokeswoman confirmed: “The Garda Ombudsman is examining the circumstances surrounding the death of a man in his 70s while in custody at Westport Garda Station, Co. Mayo.

“The incident was referred to GSOC by the Garda Síochána under section 102 of the Garda Síochána Act at about 12.30pm this afternoon.

“The man who was under arrest became unwell with breathing difficulties and CPR was administered by gardaí. A doctor and the emergency services were called and the man was pronounced dead at the scene.

“The State Pathologist has been informed and a post-mortem is scheduled to take place in Castlebar in the coming days.

“GSOC Investigators are at the scene and an independent examination is underway to establish the facts of the situation.”

The published Panama Papers reveals thousands of secret offshore companies

A SEARCHABLE DATABASE DISPLAYS MORE THAN 200,000 ENTITIES FROM THE PANAMA PAPERS

     

THE INTERNATIONAL CONSORTIUM OF INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISTS (ICIJ) TONIGHT PUBLISHES A SEARCHABLE DATABASE (HTTPS://OFFSHORELEAKS.ICIJ.ORG) THAT STRIPS AWAY THE SECRECY OF NEARLY 214,000 OFFSHORE ENTITIES CREATED IN 21 JURISDICTIONS, FROM NEVADA TO HONG KONG AND THE BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS.

The data, part of the Panama Papers investigation, is the largest ever release of information about offshore companies and the people behind them. This includes, when available, the names of the real owners of those opaque structures.

The database also displays information about more than 100,000 additional offshore entities the ICIJ had already disclosed in its 2013 Offshore Leaks investigation.

THE PANAMA PAPERS DATABASE.  

(HTTPS://OFFSHORELEAKS.ICIJ.ORG)

THE ICIJ IS PUBLISHING THE INFORMATION IN THE INTEREST OF THE PUBLIC .

The data the ICIJ is now making public represents a fraction of the Panama Papers, a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.

The consortium is not publishing the totality of the leak, and it is not disclosing raw documents or personal information en masse. The database contains a great deal of information about company owners, proxies and intermediaries in secrecy jurisdictions, but it does not disclose bank accounts, email exchanges and financial transactions contained in the documents.

In all, the database reveals more than 360,000 names of people and companies behind secret offshore structures. As the data are from leaked sources and not a standardised registry, there may be some duplication of names.

The data was originally obtained from an anonymous source by reporters at the German newspaper Süeddeustche Zeitung, who asked ICIJ to organise a global reporting collaboration to analyse the files.

More than 370 reporters (https://panamapapers.icij.org/about.html) in nearly 80 countries investigated the files for a year. Their investigations uncovered the secret offshore holdings of 12 world leaders, more than 128 other politicians and scores of fraudsters, drug traffickers and other criminals whose companies had been blacklisted in the US and elsewhere.

Their status as outlaws or public officials did not prevent them from obtaining shell companies in locales where secrecy laws often make it impossible for prosecutors and other investigators to trace their assets.

The files revealed, for example, that associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin secretly shuffled as much as $2 billion through banks and shadow companies.

THE GLOBAL REACTION? 

The reaction to the Panama Papers was immediate and viral.

Outraged citizens took to the streets in Reykjavik, Malta and London while the hashtag #panamapapers trended on Twitter for days after the story broke on April 3rd.

The prime minister of Iceland resigned over the British Virgin Islands company he co-owned with his wife, while other world leaders scrambled to explain their secret holdings.

It took UK’s prime minister David Cameron three days to publicly acknowledge he had profited from an investment fund, created by his father, that was incorporated in Panama and managed in the Bahamas.

In Spain a minister resigned after being caught in a series of lies about his connections to offshore, and in Uruguay police arrested five individuals suspected of laundering money for a powerful Mexican drug cartel.

The Panama Papers underscore the fundamental injustices and inequalities created by the offshore system, media commentators and political leaders say.

“When taxes are evaded, when state assets are taken and put into these havens, all of these things can have a tremendous negative effect on our mission to end poverty and boost prosperity,”

Jim Yong Kim, the president of the World Bank, said as he opened the spring meetings of the World Bank and IMF in Washington soon after ICIJ and more than 100 other news organisations, including The Irish Times, began revealing the results of the media collaboration’s investigation.

President Barack Obama, meanwhile, pointed out that the biggest problem was that many of the schemes revealed by the Panama Papers were legal. “It’s not that they’re breaking the laws, it’s that the laws are so poorly designed,” he said.

The revelations reignited the debate about the need for public registries in which information about who ultimately controls a company be accessible to all. The UK has made disclosure of beneficial owner data mandatory and public, but British Overseas Territories such the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, some the busiest offshore havens, have agreed to share that information by law enforcement.

Citing the Panama Papers, the US government also announced on Thursday that it has sent legislation to Congress to create a centralised federal registry of the actual owners of any newly created company.

The registry would help law enforcement authorities ferret out the real people behind anonymous companies used in money laundering and other wrongdoing.

The governments of Australia and Germany have said that they too intend to create public registries of company owners.

On Friday, the anonymous leaker of the Panama Papers, known only as “John Doe, ” spoke publicly for the first time in a written statement and called out for concrete steps to combat tax havens .

“In the European Union, every member state’s corporate register should be freely accessible, with detailed data plainly available on ultimate beneficial owners,” the source wrote. Doe added that the US “can clearly no longer trust its fifty states to make sound decisions about their own corporate data.”

EXPLORING THE DATABASE? 

(HTTPS://OFFSHORELEAKS.ICIJ.ORG)

The searchable database that ICIJ publishes today allows users to explore the networks of companies and people that used – and sometimes abused – the secrecy of offshore locales with the help of Mossack Fonseca and other intermediaries. The leaked data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015.

The data, which includes postal addresses, displays links to more than 200 countries and territories, from China to Chile.

Users can filter the information by country and by offshore jurisdiction. They can also explore the role of banks, law firms and other gatekeepers of the financial system in facilitating the creation of offshore companies for high net worth individuals.

For the first time, they can see details about shadowy Panamanian private foundations, including when available information about who controls them.

While the database opens up a world that has never been shown in this much detail, not every owner of a company that appears in the Panama Papers shows up in the public database.

This is because ownership information is often buried in emails, power-of-attorney letters and internal notes of Mossack Fonseca employees and cannot easily be extracted in a systematic manner.

In addition, Mossack Fonseca often failed to collect the necessary information about the ultimate owners of companies, relying instead on banks and other intermediaries to keep track of that essential data.

Still, it is expected that Panama Papers revelations will continue to surface as regulators and ordinary citizens from around the globe probe the newly available data and find new connections that may have escaped reporters. Concerned citizens are encouraged to share tips with ICIJ and the Panama Papers journalists who continue to investigate the documents. The full dataset is also available for download: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/pages/database.

“Transparency is not going to move backward,” Kim said in his World Bank spring meetings remarks, warning that those trying to avoid taxes or steal money from public treasuries should be “very careful” because they will eventually be tracked down.

“The world is only going to become more and more transparent as we move forward.”

Aldi and Lidl prove incredibly astute at tapping into what Irish consumers want

IRISH CONSUMERS MOVING TO OWN-BRAND OFFERINGS IS NO SURPRISE

    

IRISH CONSUMERS ARE NOW DISCARDING BRAND NAMES MORE IN FAVOUR OF THE OWN-BRAND OFFERINGS ON THE SHELVES OF ALDI AND LIDL IN GREATER NUMBERS THAN EVER SHOULD COME AS NO SURPRISE.

The share of the Irish grocery market held by the German discounters Aldiand Lidl has just increased dramatically, with confirmation due on Monday that nearly one in four Irish consumers do their shopping in either one of the two stores.

Last month, figures from industry analysts Kantar Worldpanel painted a very different picture.

THOSE FIGURES PUT SUPERVALU ON 24.9% OF THE IRISH MARKET, WHILE TESCO HAD 23.9% -JUST 0.4% AHEAD OF DUNNES STORES.

Lidl and Aldi had 8.5% and 8.4% market share respectively – good certainly, but nowhere as near as good as the new figures suggest.

The change is due to a recalibration from Kantar rather than any shift in spending.

There is no change in the running order, with Supervalu still in the number one position and Aldi still in fifth – but the combined market share of Aldi and Lidl is 22.1%. Lidl now has 11.5% of the Irish market, while Aldi is just behind it on 11.2%.

Aldi is arguably the better performing of the pair, because it has an almost identical market share with significantly fewer stores.

Brand names:  That Irish consumers are eschewing brand names in favour of the own-brand offerings on the shelves of Aldi and Lidl in greater numbers than ever should come as no surprise.

In the mid-1990s, Lidl and Aldi were unfamiliar to most Irish shoppers. Then, in 1998, Lidl arrived and was joined the following year by Aldi.

In the early days growth was slow, with Irish people reluctant to swap branded products for unfamiliar labels, while Irish suppliers and producers were reluctant to do business with untested chains who were not highly regarded among shoppers.

People were amused by the pair’s eclectic weekly special offer – but the allure of delights such as jackhammers jostling for position with canoes, luridly coloured onesies and flat-pack gazebos was not enough to bring people through their doors in significant numbers.

Their Spartan shelves did Lidl and Aldi no favours either. A big Tesco outlet might have more than 20,000 different items on their shelves, while the discounters contented themselves with around 1,000.

Then the bubble burst – and everything changed. The growth of both retailers has been relentless ever since but it would be wrong to suggest that growth has been simply down to cash strapped times. Far from it.

Both Aldi and Lidl have proved themselves to be incredibly astute at tapping into what Irish consumers want. They tweaked their product lines to offer more Irish produce, their ranges improved dramatically and they established very good relationships with Irish suppliers.

Crucially, both Aldi and Lidl were also able to prove that people who did their shopping in their stores saved money, a lot of money.

Canny shoppers realised they could easily knock over a third off their annual grocery spend by shopping with the Germans, without sacrificing anything significant in terms of quality.

The perception of both companies is also very good. Both featured in the top 10 most respected companies in the Republic in a survey published last month by the Reputations Agency, while a separate survey from Amárach on consumers’ attitudes published late last year rated Aldi fourth most highly rated company in Ireland in a poll of more than 2,700 people.

“That really surprised me,” said Gerard O’Neill of Amárach when the survey was published.

“We lived through the recession and watched as the discounters changed the retail rules and relentlessly pushed down prices, but now they are changing the rules again. They are aiming for better prices, better experiences, and better service.”

Speaking yesterday, O’Neill elaborated. “The recession gave them [discounters] a foothold – but there is more to it than that. They have completely changed the conversation about value and made people realise it is not all about price.

“It is about affordability, but also about the sense of how a person feels shopping. Aldi and Lidl have made people who shop in their stores feel prudent, discerning, more astute – almost German.”

O’Neill said the two had been “very clever in how they have dealt with their competition. It has been like a bait and switch. They made the conversation about price and then switched it to Irishness and community.

“If a Martian was to arrive in Ireland they would be sure that both Aldi and Lidl were indigenous companies, so embedded in the local communities do they appear,” he suggested.

Customer experience

He pointed out that customer experience “is driven not by value for money – because we rationalise that after the fact – but by something more emotional. We like to come away from the shopping experience feeling smug – in the nice sense of the word – and safe in the knowledge that we have got a bargain. Aldi and Lidl understand that.”

It is not just by offering good value and toying with our emotions that Aldi and Lidl have grown so strongly. Both have opened stores at a phenomenal rate.

Last Thursday, the former opened its 124th – and largest – store in Sallynogginin Co Dublin, while Lidl has 147 stores.

Both have plans for more openings in the months ahead.

Damian O’Reilly, who lectures in retail management in the Dublin Institute of Management, described how effectively the discounters have been playing the retail game in recent years, capitalising on changing economic conditions, improving consumer knowledge and very effective store design and stock maintenance.

He pointed out that their modular units were very cheap to put up – a store can be opened for about €3 million – and their compact size means they can be squeezed into small spaces in rural towns which has allowed them to take on Supervalu in areas where that retailer used to be traditionally untouchable.

And, he said, Aldi and Lidl have been outspending their rivals on television and newspaper ads over the last two years, working relentlessly to promote their Irishness.

They also have some canny tricks they play. “They have longer conveyor belts leading to the cash registers, so shoppers think they are nearly there when they start putting their shopping out – even though there might still be three people ahead of them. The staff have to scan 30 items a minute – so the check-out process moves very quickly.”

But where to next? “In terms of market share I think they are nearly there,” O’Reilly says. “They might be able to grow another couple of per cent but the rate at which they are opening stores is slowing and that will put a limit on how much they will grow.”

O’Neill agreed, although he suggested the Germans could get to 30% of the market. “They will be constrained by the amount of real estate they can buy and the competition is not just going to sit there and watch as they grow bigger.”

Full moons influence less sleep in children

    

THE FULL MOON CAN SOMEHOW INFLUENCE CHILDREN’S BEHAVIOUR AND EVEN AFFECT THEIR SLEEP? ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT ENOUGH TO STRENGTHEN ANCIENT BELIEF ON THE LUNAR PHASES’ EFFECTS ON HUMAN BIOLOGY.

A recent study published in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics showed that children are no more active during full moon than in any other phase of the moon. The full moon, on the other hand, may interfere with their sleeping time, potentially owing to its brightness particularly “if the window curtain is not sufficiently opaque.”

“[S]leep duration was 1 percent shorter at full moon compared to new moon, while activity behaviours were not significantly associated with the lunar cycle in this global sample of children,” wrote the researchers, with this specific finding translating to around five minutes less sleep.

According to researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Canada, the study offers “solid evidence” that the links between moon phases and children’s sleep duration and activity behaviors do not come across as meaningful from a public health perspective.

The team analyzed data from over 5,800 children, who were ages 9 to 11 and came from 12 countries. Unlike previous research relying on human judgment, subjects wore accelerometers, which are akin to fitness trackers recording body movements or monitoring sleep for 24 hours a day for at least seven days.

The kids got five minutes shorter sleep on nights with a full moon, deemed an effect “unlikely to be important.” And it remains unclear why children had less shuteye on full-moon nights.

 It could be that the full moon’s brightness was interfering with sleep, although the researchers considered this implausible given the abundance of artificial light – such as from smartphones and mobile devices – in modern societies.

The team urged future studies to see if the human body is somehow synchronized with the moon’s cycles, or if the full moon has a more pronounced effect on certain groups of people.

The belief that the moon affects people’s behavior dates back ancient times, although studies have seen little evidence to back up this idea. The moon mystery, suffice it to say, has fascinated many civilizations and generations.

For instance, no peer-reviewed study yet has seen any notable association between the full moon and epileptic seizures, psychiatric ward visits, or emergency room cases. Even when it comes to menstrual cycles, there is no research so far that makes a significant correlation between lunar phases and the condition across a huge swath of participants.

In addition, the effects of the moon on the ocean are notable not only during the full moon – the tides, too, are highest during the new moon.   

Donies Ireland daily news BLOG Friday

I hope Ireland realises that a lot of help has already been provided

 

“WE KNOW FROM EXPERIENCE THAT STRUCTURAL REFORMS COMBINED WITH FISCAL ADJUSTMENT, OVER TIME LEADS TO HIGHER GROWTH”

PRECAUTIONARY CREDIT LINE FOR IRELAND

Ireland is entering the final phase of the programme – it had its eleventh troika review last week – and intends to exit its bailout programme and return to private market funding by the end of the year. When asked in an interview on the 22nd July do you think it needs the support of a precautionary credit line?

Klaus Regling of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) managing director said It’s hard to say. The first thing to say is that Ireland has made very good progress. The objective of every support programme is to return to the market. Ireland has been able to return to the market already, even with a 10 year government bond issue, there was one in March , and there were shorter maturities and all were at reasonable rates. 10 year government bonds for Ireland now have a yield in the secondary market of below four per cent.

That’s a very reasonable rate and in that sense Ireland is already a success story and very close to normal market conditions . I know there is a debate out there about what should happen after the end of this programme, but I cannot add very much to that because we are now in July and the programme ends in December. I am very happy to see the 11th review was concluded successfully like all the reviews before, so let’s see in a few months time where the country stands. Concerning your question on a precautionary credit line I can only say that in principle the instrument is available.

Q: Yes, so what possibilities are there from the ESM’s perspective?

KR: The ESM has a precautionary programme, like the IMF offers such a programme. It has never been used so far at the ESM. It does require a request from the government of the beneficiary country to the group of euro finance ministers, the euro group, which is our board of governors. It would require, in five or six member states, approval by their parliaments.

Q: What kind of conditions would it require?

KR: That is really impossible to say. That would depend very much on the assessment at the time.

Q: As you say the bond yields have come right down below 4 per cent. There’s been a huge drop.

KR: By more than two thirds. Very impressive!

Q: But how important is it – Ireland has a budget coming in October – that Ireland implements this cut of €3.1 billion in terms of it exiting the bailout and keeping those bond-levels down?

KR: I think that is certainly one of the elements markets are looking at. They want to know how the budgetary developments are. Ireland comes from a particularly high fiscal deficit. We know why, it is the result of recapitalising banks. Ireland had in that context the highest deficit of any country in Europe, or maybe the world, so Ireland has made good progress. But it is important tocontinue that. All our member states agreed on the revised stability and growth pact which requires to move first to a deficit below 3 per cent of GDP and then towards a balanced budget. It is important to make progress in that direction. I think that at the end of the 11th review, it was very clear that another €3.1 billion fiscal adjustment as foreseen under current rules and as previously agreed with the authorities is the important next step.

Q: You mentioned there that any decision on a precautionary credit line would need the support of the euro group…

KR: Oh absolutely, there the rules are very clear. We can only engage into a new programme, whether it’s a full scale macroadjustment programme or a precautionary programme, if the euro group takes an unanimous decision.

Q: So do you think that Ireland needs to stick to its target in October in order to get the support of the euro group?

KR: I don’t know what the conditions would be, but if the agreed target were not reached I’m sure that would not be well-received.

RETROSPECTIVE RECAPITALISATION

Q: Ok, to move on, to the direct bank recapitalization instrument. This was a real priority for Ireland in terms of the retroactivity element, and it was seen as a victory for Ireland and Portugal last month when the euro group agreed to look at this on a case by case basis. Irish people have been told, or believe, that this will be open to Ireland. Do you think this is realistic?

KR: Firstly the agreement to create the instrument of direct bank recapitalisation once the ECB plays its role as a single supervisor is a very important step for Ireland, but also for the entire euro area. The reason is that it is one of several elements of the banking union that we are trying to achieve and I think that’s very important for the euro area as a whole, including Ireland. The question of retroactivity is controversial. The euro group agreed to consider it on a case by case basis and to decide on it by mutual consent, that’s what the communiqué said. So it’s impossible for me to judge today under which circumstances it might be approved.

Q: Is it not the case that the whole ambition of direct recap has been scaled back slightly? There’s a belief out there that it might never happen. Now it is dependent on the Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive being passed by the European Parliament. Is direct bank recap ever going to happen?

KR: The euro group, the 17 finance ministers of the euro area, agreed on the main features of the instrument, so here at the ESM we are preparing ourselves to be ready in case a formal decision is taken later to create this new instrument. We received the mandate to prepare ourselves and I assume we would not have been asked to do that unless ministers wanted to use it once the circumstances are in place under which they want to use this instrument.

When you say there is a general feeling it has been scaled back, I don’t know whether you refer to the media, or to analysts. There is a bit of fluctuations in these feelings. Two weeks before the main features of the direct bank recapitalisation instrument were agreed there was a general feeling in many newspapers that it would never happen, that there would be no agreement. But there was agreement. And I think that was positive for the euro area as a whole.

Of course one has to look at the overall context. The ESM has an overall lending capacity of €500 billion. We have many instruments available. We know that direct bank recapitalisation takes a lot of our capital, up to three times more than for a normal macro-economic adjustment programme. That’s why the overall amount that is potentially available for direct bank recap was capped at €60 billion. The reason for this cap is that everyone agrees that enough money should be left for the other instruments that the ESM has at its disposal, in particular the macroeconomic adjustment lending . That will remain the main focus of the ESM. But direct bank recap very likely will become a new instrument, an additional instrument, and again we are preparing ourselves.

Q Do you have any views on its suitability for a country like Ireland. Politically a lot of store is put on something like this . A lot of ordinary tax payers feel that while the changes in banking union shifts away the burden from the tax payer and onto private creditors, that’s too late for Ireland, that wasn’t available for Ireland, so Irish people feel they are entitled to get some of the money they put into the banks. Do you agree with that? Or do you think that Ireland doesn’t necessarily need this to regain private market funding? How important do you think it is?

KR: It is easy to say it would help, but the eurogroup communiqué said that the decision to use the direct bank recapitalization instrument retroactively would be taken on a case by case basis and by mutual agreement. It will be up to the political level in the euro area to decide how that is interpreted. At the same time I hope Ireland realises that a lot of help has been provided, because the financing we provided, that the IMF has been providing, and also third countries have provided over the last two and a half years comes at very low interest rates, so Ireland benefits from this low interest rate.

Our own lending is provided at less than one and a half per cent for instance so that’s a big benefit for Ireland as it is for other countries that borrow from the EFSF. There are also special arrangements with the ECB that have been found, where the Irish banking sector benefits greatly. We know that the crisis has put a huge burden on the Irish taxpayer, the Irish population, but there has also been a lot of solidarity from Europe and the international partners.

Health Minister James Reilly sets a target of just 5% still smoking by year 2025

  

THE HEALTH DR. JAMES REILLY AIMS TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF SMOKERS TO FEWER THAN ONE IN 20 I.E. 5% PEOPLE BY 2025.

That would mean slashing current statistics which show almost one in three smokes.

Dr Reilly said he wants a tobacco-free Ireland in the next 12 years, and his plan has been approved by the Cabinet as the centrepiece of a new Government strategy to tackle tobacco use. It is due to be launched in September.

Dr Reilly, right, yesterday told the Oireachtas Health Committee that the tobacco industry is “gearing up big time” for what he described as a “battle”.

And he vowed never to meet tobacco lobbyists, saying he has “strong professional and personalfeelings about this particular industry”.

Dr Reilly’s father and brother, who were also doctors, died from smoking-related illnesses, and the Dublin North TD said the fight against tobacco companies is one the Government must not lose.

“It’s the only product I know that is legally freely available that will kill you if you use it,” Dr Reilly said. “It’s a fight that we cannot turn away from and that we can’t afford to lose. It’s a battle that will continue until it’s won – and it will be won.”

The strategy document is called “Tobacco-Free Ireland”, and aims to bring the proportion of the population who smoke down to 5pc from its current level of 29pc. The OECD average is 21pc.

Dr Reilly also met a number of campaign groups including the Irish Heart Foundation, the Irish Cancer Society, Barnardos and Cystic Fibrosis Ireland yesterday to discuss “the dreadful damage” of smoking.

He was also asked by Senator John Crown about progress on legislation to ban smoking in cars where children are passengers, a proposal Prof Crown introduced and the Government supported.

Dr Reilly said the proposal is one of his priorities, but added that the Government had many pieces of legislation to deal with.

TAXATION: He also said the country has officially begun the process of introducing plain cigarette packaging.

An extension of the smoking ban from the workplace to public areas such as parks and beaches is on the cards, but will be introduced only after the car ban is in place.

However, smokers’ group Forest Eireann said: “It is totally unrealistic to think that Ireland will be tobacco-free in 12 years.

“Recent anti-tobacco measures such as the smoking ban, increased taxation and the display ban have done nothing to reduce smoking rates in Ireland.”

Research confirms family link to 13 different cancers

   

Study of 23,000 people finds that for all 13 cancers, close relatives had an increased risk of same disease

The results of research confirmed known associations such as the increased risk of developing the same cancer as a first-degree relative

A family history of a particular cancer increases the risk of other members of the family developing not only the same cancer but also of getting cancers at different sites in the body, research published this morning suggests.

Researchers from Italy, Switzerland and France looked at some 12,000 cases of cancer occurring in 13 different body sites and then matched these with a control group of 11,000 people without cancer. The results confirmed known associations such as the increased risk of developing the same cancer as a first-degree relative.

But the study also found a 3.3 – fold increased risk of developing oral cancer for someone with a close relative who had been diagnosed with cancer of the larynx (voice-box) and a four-fold increased risk of cancer of the oesophagus (gullet) in a person with a first-degree relative who had oral cancer. And family members had 3.4 times the risk of developing prostate cancer if a first – degree relative had bladder cancer.

The research, published in the European cancer journal Annals of Oncology provides a comprehensive picture of the risk of developing various different types of cancer in families where there is a history of the disease; it also takes into account other factors, such as individual characteristics and lifestyles, that could affect the degree of risk as well.

Dr Eva Negri of the Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Milan, Italy, said: “We have also found that if a patient was diagnosed with certain cancers when they were younger than 60, the risks of a discordant (different) cancer developing in family members were greater. ”

She added that some of the associations between cancers at different sites were probably due to shared environmental factors such as family habits of smoking and drinking but that the possibility of a genetic link would also need to be explored in future research.

15% of HSE junior doctors are agency staff

   

The HSE has spent €8.6 million so far this year on employing agency medical staff to fill vacant hospital junior doctor posts.

The total paid out last year on agency hospital doctors was €18.4 million, according to figures provided by the HSE to Senator Colm Burke of Fine Gael at the Oireachtas Health Committee this week.

A report on junior doctor posts to the Committee said there were 31 doctor vacancies in hospitals at present, following the normal July doctor changeover. The HSE said this summer, all hospitals have been able to secure sufficient numbers of doctors to resolve recruitment issues and maintain existing services.

At present, around 15% of junior doctor posts are made up of agency staff.

According to the HSE report, some hospitals have been employing doctors at consultant level to ensure a greater level of senior clinical decision making, in the face of junior doctor recruitment difficulties.

There are currently nearly 5,000 junior doctor posts in Irish hospitals, according to the HSE.

Health Minister James Reilly yesterday said the current system under which junior work was ‘perverse’.

He said it was unacceptable to ask juniors to make life and death decisions after working long hours.

The Minister said it was also wrong that our system educated the brightest and best doctors yet forced them abroad and then had to recruit doctors from developing counries to work here.

Dr Reilly has established a working group to look at alternative career and working systrems that could be put in place for junior medics.

Meanwhile, the HSE also told the Oireachtas Committee that only 60 put of 117 hosital consultant posts advertised since June of last year have to been filled.

A Full Moon can disturb a good night’s sleep researchers say

  

The disturbance in sleep patterns is not connected to the extra light of a full Moon

Researchers found evidence of a “lunar influence” in a study of 33 volunteers sleeping in tightly controlled laboratory conditions.

When the Moon was round, the volunteers took longer to nod off and had poorer quality sleep, despite being shut in a darkened room, Current Biology reports.

They also had a dip in levels of a hormone called melatonin that is linked to natural-body clock cycles.

When it is dark, the body makes more melatonin. And it produces less when it is light.

Being exposed to bright lights in the evening or too little light during the day can disrupt the body’s normal melatonin cycles.

But the work in Current Biology, by Prof Christian Cajochen and colleagues from Basel University in Switzerland, suggests the Moon’s effects may be unrelated to its brightness.

Lunar rhythms: The volunteers were unaware of the purpose of the study and could not see the Moon from their beds in the researchers’ sleep lab.

They each spent two separate nights at the lab under close observation.

Findings revealed that around the full Moon, brain activity related to deep sleep dropped by nearly a third. Melatonin levels also dipped.

The volunteers also took five minutes longer to fall asleep and slept for 20 minutes less when there was a full Moon.

Prof Cajochen said: “The lunar cycle seems to influence human sleep, even when one does not ‘see’ the Moon and is not aware of the actual moon phase.”

Some people may be exquisitely sensitive to the Moon, say the researchers.

Their study did not originally set out to investigate a lunar effect. The researchers had the idea of doing the lunar analysis years later, while chatting over a few drinks.

They went back to their old data and factored in whether or not there had been a full Moon on the nights the volunteers had slept in their lab.

UK sleep expert Dr Neil Stanley said, nonetheless, the small study appeared to have significant findings.

“There is a such a strong cultural story around the full Moon that it would not be surprising if it has an effect.

“It’s one of these folk things that you would suspect has a germ of truth.

“It’s up to science now to find out what’s the cause of why we might sleep differently when there’s a full Moon.”

UCD volunteers build Stone Age Mesolithic dwelling

  

The structure is six metres in diameter and seven metres tallThe UCD group plans to carry out further experiments by building a number of other structures on the same site

A team of volunteers from the School of Archaeology at UCD have built a Mesolithic dwelling, largely using Stone Age technologies and materials.

The project – based closely on archaeological data from Mount Sandel in Co Derry – aims to cast new light on how such structures were built in the centuries following 8000 BC.

The UCD structure is six metres in diameter and seven metres tall.

It has been built from a number of birch posts, which go up to form an apex, with willow sticks weaved between them.

Turf has been laid across the roof.

The team believe structures like this, which can be found across Europe, raise many important questions about the nature of Mesolithic life.

“For example – structures like this are generally interpreted as houses, and they are often reconstructed repeatedly on the same location over the span of 100-150 years” explains Dr Graeme Warren of UCD’s school of archaeology.

“The large size and clear permanence of these buildings is a challenge to many of our ideas of Mesolithic settlement which have tended to stress that people were highly mobile and characterised by little in the way of permanent architecture.”

“Such questions can be approached through the techniques of experimental archaeology, which involves the creation of objects, buildings, activities and contexts, through which ideas about people’s lives in the past can be thought about in practical terms.”

The structure, in a corner of the UCD campus, will be left to decay to allow researchers to estimate how long such buildings lasted before the early settlers decided to rebuild or move on.

The UCD group plans to carry out further experiments by building a number of other structures on the same site.