Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Enda Kenny aims to reduce taxes to encourage the return of Irish emigrants

Taoiseach greeted by anti-water charge protesters at MacGill summer school

  

Taoiseach Enda Kenny prior to his address at the MacGill Summer School.

Irish emigrants are not returning to the country because they fear they will get “screwed” for tax, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has claimed.

Speaking at the MacGill summer school, where he was greeted by several dozen anti-water charge protesters on Friday evening, Mr Kenny said the tax rate was “too high a rate and it kicks in too early”.

He reiterated the plan to cut the 7% rate of Universal Social Charge in the forthcoming Budget.

“In doing so, we will bring down the marginal rate of tax paid by people earning less than €70,000 to less than 50%.”

“You have to have a stepped approach to this. That makes it more difficult for our sons and daughters to come home if they want to because they’ll say ‘why should I? Why should I go back if I’m going to get screwed for tax here?’”

He wanted 2016 to be “our own year of family reunification, where our children come home at last from Melbourne or London or New York”.

Addressing the packed room, Mr. Kenny referred to the theme of this week’s summer school, ‘Ireland at the crossroads’, noting there was also a political crossroads.

He said people had two roads to choose from. They could choose the road to strengthened economic recovery, or decide to take another road “that’s maybe unmined or unmapped and certainly untested”, a road that “gambled the recovery”.

The Taoiseach also said he believed the next general election would be “like the Grand National” with “lot of runners and riders”.

“I hope we don’t end up with a Tower of Babel in respect of Independents and nobody can get anything done.”

Mr Kenny took several questions from the floor, including one from a local Fine Gael councillor and one from Michael Gallagher, whose son Aidan was killed in the Omagh bombing.

Mr Gallagher said he had “repeatedly asked” for an opportunity to meet the Taoiseach in relation to a report on the bombing that had been presented to him in 2012.

“I’ve actually had to pay €5 to come into the hall. Will you have a meeting with the Omagh families and listen to what they have to say?”

Mr Kenny said he would fix such a meeting “as soon as I can, but it will probably be September”.

Protest

There was a heavy Garda presence around the village on Friday as a group of protesters gathered outside the Highlands Hotel ahead of Mr Kenny’s address .

Crush barriers were brought in early in the morning and cones were used to restrict parking on the main street. The Garda helicopter also patrolled overhead.

During the afternoon’s session on rural Ireland, protesters could be heard shouting and chanting outside.

Chants from about 50 protesters carrying banners and placards included: “No way, we won’t pay” and “Labour, Blueshirts, Fianna Fáil; jail, jail, jail them all.”

Catherine Murphy TD told the event a “culture of excessive secrecy” pervaded our politics.

“It is only after the event that we get a glimpse of a decision or set of decisions that on too many occasions favour those in the know; those with connections and those with money. It is quite destructive and indeed highly offensive to the vast majority of people.

She said she got a glimpse of some of that when she pursued the issues surrounding Siteserv and IBRC.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin told the summer school he was concerned that a poor policy on migration seemed to be “giving rise for the first time in Irish society to a political party focusing on the single issue of immigration”.

Hospitals to face unannounced inspections over patient nutrition

Costs associated with malnutrition add up to more than €1bn of healthcare spending

 

Older patients, cancer patients, surgical and gastrointestinal patients are more vulnerability to malnutrition and dehydration.

Hospitals will undergo unannounced inspections as the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) attempts to tackle patient malnutrition and dehydration.

Malnutrition affects more than a quarter of patients admitted to Irish hospitals. It affects their recovery and causes illness and death, said Hiqa chief executive Phelim Quinn.

“Evidence shows that malnutrition and dehydration often occur together. Dehydration occurs when more fluid is lost than taken in. It has been reported that patients already malnourished on admission are more likely to lose weight during their hospital stay, and their weight loss is proportionately higher,” Mr Quinn said.

Under the new review guidelines, all public acute hospitals, other than stand-alone maternity and paediatric hospitals, will be expected to complete a self-assessment questionnaire and submit it to the authority. Hiqa will then carry out unannounced inspections in about 13 hospitals to verify results and understand how nutrition and hydration care in the hospital is delivered.

Older patients, cancer patients, surgical and gastrointestinal patients are more vulnerability to malnutrition and dehydration.

Hiqa said in 2007 the annual costs associated with malnourished patients was estimated to be more than €1.4 billion, 10 per cent of the healthcare budget that year. About 140,000 adults are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition at any given time.

Hiqa said it wants to encourage hospitals to follow evidence-based best practice in nutrition and hydration care with a focus on screening and assessment, arrangements at mealtimes and the patient’s own experience.

“We want to ensure that patients are adequately assessed, managed and evaluated to effectively meet their individual nutrition and hydration needs. Initially, hospitals will self-assess their position. The information provided by hospitals in self-assessments will inform the programme of unannounced inspections, which is due to start later this year,” said Mr Quinn.

An overview of the authority’s findings will be published in 2016.

New York bar run by two Irish men named ‘The world’s best bar’

The Dead Rabbit in Manhattan is described as a unique take on the traditional Irish pub

  

The Dead Rabbit in Downtown Manhattan which has been named as the ‘world’s best bar’.

A New York bar founded and run by Belfast natives Jack McGarry and Sean Muldoon has been named the world’s best pub, winning a drinks industry competition.

The Dead Rabbit Grocery and Grog, in Downtown Manhattan, won the award from 2,000 entries in the annual Spirited Awards.

McGarry and Muldoon opened the tavern in February 2012 and described it as a unique take on the traditional Irish pub.

The pair, both originally from Belfast, previously worked together in Belfast’s Merchant Hotel cocktail bar.

It was there they met Conor Allen, an Irishman working in New York’s financial sector, who offered to support the two in setting up their own bar.

The Dead Rabbit, which features an extensive selection of Irish whiskeys and cocktails, takes its name from an Irish-American street gang run by the boxerJohn Morrissey in the 1850s.

Located in a 19th century redbrick building, the bar seeks to commemorate the history of the area in its name, vintage decor, and recreations of historic cocktails.

As well as taking the main award, the Dead Rabbit also won the ‘World’s Best Cocktail Menu’ award.

The Spirited Awards are held each year in New Orleans as part of Tales of the Cocktail, an event for global producers of spirits.

A judging panel of 50 industry experts decided the winners.

The seagull hysteria in Ireland shows a complete lack of awareness of nature

Say’s Birdwatch Ireland.

  

Seagull numbers have declined considerably over the past two decades.

Enthusiasts cautioned against sensationalist media coverage about seagulls, including calls for protected birds to be culled.

Seagulls very rarely harm people, they don’t have claws and their numbers have fallen dramatically in the past 20 years, birdwatchers have pointed out.

Enthusiasts cautioned against sensationalist media coverage, including calls for protected birds to be culled, after a week where gulls have been accused of killing sheep, stealing phones and attacking motorcyclists.

“It’s no coincidence that this news story flares up at this time of year and does so every year,” said Birdwatch Ireland development officer Niall Hatch. Most of the year gulls are quite docile but they become protective in mid to late July when their chicks are about to leave the nest. “They tend to get a little more vocal and tend to swoop a bit more. People might perceive it as a threat”

But he said it’s extraordinarily rare for them to actually harm or hit anybody. “In all the media hysteria over the few days there’s actually been remarkably few reports of anyone being hurt by these gulls.”

He added that gull populations aren’t increasing, in fact the opposite is true with numbers of the smaller herring gull declining substantially in the past two decades.

“Just over 20 years ago there were 60,000 pairs of these nesting around Ireland and that population plummeted to around 6,000,” said Mr Hatch.“They’re now on the red list in Ireland as being endangered.”

Rónán McLaughlin, a birdwatcher and photographer based in Co Cork, said overfishing in Irish waters conrtibuted to the herring gull leaving coastal nesting sites in favour of landfills. When the landfills closed the birds had to find another food source, so they headed for urban areas. “They’re very adaptable and very intgelligent, they’re going to go where the food is.”

The scavenging birds eat discarded food in towns and in some cases keep rodent populations down by eating rats. “It’s not the loss of a habitat, it’s just that the birds have adapted in a different way to feeding and decided: ‘we can go to the beach, we can go to seaside resorts because it’s easy pickings’,” said Mr McLaughlin.

He added that recent headlines about giant gulls using their claws to kill sheep in Kerry amount to media scaremongering. “I mean, a seagull doesn’t have claws. It’s got webbed feet for starters.”

He said the last thing birdwatchers wanted was for someone to “go down to Dingle with a loaf of bread and just lace it with rat poison or something like that”.

An article by Calvin Jones on irelandswildlife.com this week noted an online poll where more than half the respondents supported culling gulls. “I can’t help feeling that’s partly because people are reading and believing all of these horror stories in the media, without any balancing arguments, or a full understanding of the facts,” he wrote.

Niall Hatch from Birdwatch Ireland agrees. He said the coverage has been “extremely frustrating”. But it also highlights a disconnect between Irish people and nature. “There does seem to be a lack of awareness of nature and of wild animals and of how wild animals behave. That’s something we find a lot in Ireland and it’s not necessarily the same in other European countries,” he said.

Either way, the coverage is likely to die down shortly enough. Gulls don’t need to look after their young for too long, said Mr Hatch. “This aggression or what perceived aggression there is will cease in the next week or two. There are actually more gulls in our cities during the winter but we don’t hear any complaints like that, it’s just a late-July phenomenon.”

The end of the world is nigh! Maybe not quite yet?

    

A doom-laden US study in 1972 predicted that the earth would run out of food and resources, becoming uninhabitable by around 2050.

The end of the world has been put back by at least 50 years by a team of British scientists.

A doom-laden US study in 1972 predicted that the earth would run out of food and resources, becoming uninhabitable by around 2050.

Now scientists at Anglia Ruskin University’s Global Sustainability Institute have claimed we have a little more grace – until the end of this century, or the year 2100.

To come to their conclusion, the team updated the 1970s computer model used to predict how finite the Earth’s resources are. Aled Jones, co-author of the study in journal Sustainability, said: “They made a good attempt in the 1970s but it might have been too pessimistic.

“The limit is pushed back to the second half of this century.”      

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Ireland’s existing health system demands an extra €1bn to run it?

Says Leo Varadkar

  

The Minister for Health Leo Varadker says serious questions about health funding must be answered.

The Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, says serious questions about the level of funding for current healthcare must be answered if the country aspires to an adequate health system.

The health service needs as much as another €1 billion of investment to simply meet existing demands, and even more is required to cope with a growing and ageing population, Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar, writing in Wednesday’s Irish Times, also says serious questions about the level of funding for healthcare must be answered if the country aspires to an adequate health system.

“Questions remain, such as whether we are willing as a society to pay for it, and whether we are willing to embrace the major organisational changes required,” he says. “This will require courage and trust, but I am confident that with the right vision we can succeed.

“No form of universal healthcare is possible unless we are willing to find the resources needed to make it work.”

Underfunded service

He says an underfunded service will be a poor service, even if it is well organised.

“With the current staffing of specialist doctors, midwives and nurses, critical care beds and other capacity, no system of universal healthcare will be able to deal with unmet demand.

“What really matters is having adequate well-trained staff, sufficient capacity and infrastructure, good organisation, management and financial control, clinical governance, quality and safety systems.”

Meeting existing, unmet needs “would cost between €700 million and €1 billion, on top of the natural increase needed every year to cope with a rising and ageing population”, an amount he says seems like a lot but would only restore health budgets to where they were eight years ago.

Mr Varadkar also outlines how he believes primary care can be achieved over five years, effectively the duration of a second term in office.

Whether the funding for future health needs comes from the exchequer or an insurance-based system like Universal Health Insurance is secondary to whether enough money is made available, and whether it is correctly spent, he says.

The Irish Times reported earlier this week that the annual cost of UHI, championed by Mr Varadkar’s predecessor Dr James Reilly, could be between €2,000 and €3,000 to cover a standard package of benefits for one adult.

External consultants also told the Government in a confidential report the estimated cost of a more comprehensive series of benefits could be between €3,000 and €4,000 per year, far higher than previously estimated

About 70% of Irish households register with Irish Water on time for grant

But we still do not know exactly how many people have paid their first bills to the semi-state body.

 

An estimated 70% of householders had registered with Irish Water by Tuesday’s deadline date to allow them claim a €100 water conservation grant from the Government.

It is still not known exactly how many people have paid their first bills to the new semi-state company.

The first quarterly billing cycle for Irish Water was for January, February and March, with the first bills landing in April. The second round of bills will be sent out from July onwards.

It is understood the board of Ervia, Irish Water’s parent company, has been informed of the level of payments but is not yet known when the figures will be released.

A Government spokesman said on Tuesday the figures will be published “in due course” and added the Coalition would have “no issue” with publication of the figures once they have been finalised by Irish Water.

Under severe pressure

The Government has come under severe pressure from the Opposition to publish the figures, and another anti-water charges protest is planned for outside the Dáil tonight.

An Irish Water spokeswoman said over 1.32 million people, or 70 per cent of those who can register with the semi-state, had done so as of earlier this week.

Registering with the company does not mean a householder has to pay their water charges, and they are entitled to claim the €100 grant even if they do not pay.

The grant will be administered and paid by the Department of Social Protection, and a separate application process for the payment of the €100 will open later this year.

Of the 1.32 million who have registered, about 80 per cent are customers who will be billed for their water, while the remaining 20 per cent have their own water services, such as group water schemes.

An estimated 1.5 million households are either connected to mains water or waste water services, which means they will be billed by Irish Water. Some 1.05 million of those – 70 per cent – have registered.

The spokeswoman said while Irish Water experienced a lot of activity on Tuesday, it was not enough to hugely change those figures.

Meanwhile, the lifting of boil water notices for thousands of people “would simply not be possible” without Irish Water, Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly has said.

He was speaking after the company confirmed the HSE had lifted boil water notices for 11,300 customers in the Killeglan and Castlerea areas of Co Roscommon.

This came after Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) inspections of related water treatment plants earlier this week.

A boil water notice for 6,000 customers in Boyle was lifted on May 1st.

“This now means that over 17,000 people can drink their water in Roscommon this year that couldn’t last year,” said Mr Kelly.

“This would simply not be possible without the creation of Irish Water. Irish Water was able to target and prioritise these vulnerable areas and bring to a close the sorry saga of boil water notices in quick fashion.

“I have no doubt that similar successes will be replicated throughout the country.”

John Tierney, Irish Water’s managing director, said dealing with the boil water notices had been a “top priority” since the utility came into existence.

“Irish Water as a national water utility has been able to fast-track and co-ordinate the completion of this and other projects in Co Roscommon so that boil water notices will be lifted for 22,700 customers in Roscommon by the end of this year,” he said.

“We acknowledge the work of the contractors and Roscommon County Council in helping us to achieve this.”

Ireland’s national house prices are up 1.7% in second quarter

Says Myhome.ie

   

The average asking price nationwide for a house is €202,000

House price growth continued in April, May and June with the national asking price rising by 1.7% in the three month period, while prices were up 6.1% on the year.

According to the latest house price survey from MyHome.ie, the rate of increase was higher in Dublin with prices up 2.3% over the three months, and 10.4% on the year.

The average asking price nationwide is €202,000, while in Dublin it is €282,000, according to today’s figures.

MyHome.ie also noted that cash buyers still account for over 50% of transactions in the housing market.

The author of today’s report, Conall MacCoille, chief economist at Davy, said the data pointed to a modest increase in house prices for the rest of the year.

The economist said that while the outlook remains uncertain, he believes house prices look set to rise by close to 10% for the calendar year.

“However as the figures for new instructions indicate, annual price inflation is likely to slow towards 5% by the end of the year. This is not a negative given that wages have not kept pace with house prices, stretching affordability,” he added.

Today’s report also found some evidence that the supply situation for housing was beginning to improve.

Angela Keegan, Managing Director of MyHome.ie, said the total number of homes listed on the site rose by 9.4% between the first quarter and the second quarter.

“The upward trend has been most marked in Dublin where we now have 5,550 properties listed, up 18.6% from March,” she added.

Ms Keegan also said that transaction levels remained strong early in 2015, but as with supply, they are coming off a low base.

In the first four months of the year for which the data is close to complete, transaction values are up 59% and by 48% in volume terms on the same time last year.

“While it is encouraging to see the market moving in the right direction the bigger picture continues to show that the Irish housing market remains illiquid. It’s clear we still have some way to go before we can say we have a properly functioning market,” Ms Keegan stated.

With a general election looming, Davy economist Conall MacCoille urged the Government to avoid introducing any measures aimed at relaxing credit constraints and inappropriately stimulating demand even further.

“The key to restoring a healthy Irish housing market is to implement sorely needed measures to alleviate planning and other bottlenecks that are holding back housing supply,” the economist stated.

BBC Three to be axed despite an outcry

   

The BBC’s director-general Tony Hall last week said the BBC needed to make some more cuts.

BBC3 has been the launchpad for hits such as Gavin and Stacey

BBC Three is to be axed from television despite evidence that moving the youth-oriented channel online will offer poor value for money.

The BBC Trust has given provisional approval to the plans, which, by its own analysis, are likely to limit the channel’s reach among young audiences and alienate viewers in ethnic-minority, lower-income and rural households.

The recommendations will disappoint actors such as Aidan Turner, Olivia Colman and Daniel Radcliffe, who joined the campaign to save the 12-year-old channel, praised as a seedbed of talent that has given many household names their first break.

The trust said the decision had

Children in Ireland who have been diagnosed with cancer

Will be issued with medical cards for five years

    

THE CHANGE WILL APPLY AUTOMATICALLY FROM TOMORROW,

Children under 18 who have been diagnosed with cancer will be issued with a medical cards for five years.

The change will apply automatically from tomorrow, July 1st, according to Fine Gael Senator Colm Burke and TD Mary Mitchell O’Connor.

On a support page for Lucy O’Connor – a nine-year-old girl who was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer in September 2014, and was refused a medical card until February this year – her family writes “one of the positives of going public, with Lucy’s story, is that from July 1st 2015, all children under 18, diagnosed with cancer in Ireland, will receive a medical card for 5 years.”

“Delighted that no other family will have to go public with their story. In saying that, the support from you all has been amazing, so thank you,” the post adds.

Minister for Primary Care, Kathleen Lynch, says it is a key recommendation of the Clinical Advisory Group which was set up to look at medical card eligibility.

Deputy Lynch said, “this decision is welcome. It is in line with the more compassionate approach that we have adopted towards awarding discretionary medical cards.

“I support it and look forward to the HSE implementing it in an efficient and sensitive manner,” she adds.

The free GP care for children under six scheme is also set to commence tomorrow.

Northern Ireland firm 3fivetwo buys Sligo hospital 

  

A Northern Ireland’s large private healthcare firm is expanding into the Republic as part of its “multi-million pound” investment after buying a private hospital in Sligo.

3fivetwo is finalising a deal to acquire the 19-bed St Joseph’s Hospital, which is set to be rebranded as Kingsbridge Private Hospital Sligo, in a nod to the firm’s private business in Belfast.

The deal secures all 60 jobs at the hospital, and 3fivetwo has said it’s aiming to create new roles on the back of the deal.

The value has not been disclosed, but it is understood much of the “multi-million pound” figure will go towards the “expansion and development of services in the years ahead”.

And the final sale is expected to be agreed in the new few weeks.

Headquartered on the Lisburn Road in south Belfast, the group – which boasted increased turnover of more than £40m in its last set of published accounts – employs 240 staff. That’s alongside the services of a further of 400 consultants and 300 nursing staff.

St Joseph’s Hospital was founded in the 1950s and until early last year was part of the Mount Carmel Medical Group.

Mark Regan, 3fivetwo group development director, told the Belfast Telegraph: “It’s a multi-million pound investment, not in the purchase alone but in the expansion and development of services in the years ahead. You can’t put a price on the provision of healthcare to a local community.

“In addition to obvious benefits for patients, the securing of hundreds of jobs at KPH Sligo and peripheral suppliers is priceless.”

And earlier this month the firm revealed it was adding another 20 jobs as part of a £3m investment.

The company said plans for growth were in response to increasing demand for private health due to budget cuts, soaring waiting lists and pressure on public services.

It now has three facilities in south Belfast, including cosmetic surgery, dental and fertility businesses.

It also operates the Chelsea Private Clinic on King’s Road, London.

And Kingsbridge Private Hospital on Belfast’s Lisburn Road is now being extended in a £2.5m project.

Signs of human-esque communication discovered in babbler birds

A key element of the human language has been discovered in the Australian babbler bird.

  

A key element of human language has been discovered in the babbler bird.

Stringing together meaningless sounds to create meaningful signals was previously thought to be the preserve of humans alone, but the new study has revealed that babbler birds are also able to communicate in this way.

Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Zurich discovered that the chestnut-crowned babbler, a highly social bird found in the Australian Outback, has the ability to convey new meaning by rearranging the meaningless sounds in its calls.

This babbler bird communication is reminiscent of the way humans form meaningful words. The research findings, which are reveal a potential early step in the emergence of the elaborate language systems we use today.

Lead author Sabrina Engesser from the University of Zurich said that although previous studies indicate that animals, particularly birds, are capable of stringing different sounds together as part of a complex song, these songs generally lack a specific meaning and changing the arrangement of sounds within a song does not seem to alter its overall message.

In contrast to most songbirds, chestnut-crowned babblers do not sing. Instead its extensive vocal repertoire is characterised by discrete calls made up of smaller acoustically distinct individual sounds, she added.

Researcher think that babbler birds may choose to rearrange sounds to code new meaning because doing so through combining two existing sounds is quicker than evolving a new sound altogether, said co-author Andy Russell.

The researchers noticed that chestnut-crowned babblers reused two sounds “A” and “B” in different arrangements when performing specific behaviours. When flying, the birds produced a flight call “AB”, but when feeding chicks in the nest they emitted “BAB” prompt calls.

The authors report that in the chestnut-crowned babbler, the first sound element “B” is what seems to differentiate the meaning between flight and prompt vocalisations, akin to cat and at in English, where the c represents the meaning differentiating element, or phoneme.