Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Good news for Ireland as it leaves Eurozone behind with exports booming

 

Finance minister Michael Noonan said GDP surged 7.7% this year to June, but is the austerity poster childrepeating history?

Ireland’s gross national product grew 9%, an astonishing pace for a more mature industrial state.  

Ireland’s economy is growing at an explosive pace not seen since the glory days of the Celtic Tiger, setting off a scramble for Dublin property.

Finance minister Michael Noonan said GDP surged 7.7% in the year to June as rising exports to the US, Britain and China transform the former crisis-state into the eurozone’s star economy, reaching “escape velocity” as the rest of the currency bloc languishes in a slump.

Gross national product — a better gauge of Ireland’s internal economy – grew by 9%, an astonishing pace for a mature industrial state. The turnaround comes less than a year after Ireland regained economic sovereignty, the first of the eurozone bail-out countries to emerge from its EU-IMF Troika regime.

The collapse of the banking system in 2008 and the country’s €67bn (£53bn) rescue already seem like another age. The Irish treasury can now borrow for two years at an interest rate of -0.016%, lower than for Sweden, France, Britain or the US.

Dublin house prices have risen 24% over the past year, though they are still far below their peak and 135,000 households are still in arrears from the last crisis. The Irish Mortgage Holders Organisation said the city is once again in the grip of an “irresponsible property bubble”.

Ashoka Mody, former IMF chief in Ireland, said it was still too early to judge whether the country was out of the woods. There have been false dawns before, including a slide back into recession in 2013.

“Irish GDP is very erratic. When you get a bounce-back from a deep slump it always looks impressive: that can be misleading. Investment is still down 20% since 2008 and the country has a lot of debt. Until we see steady growth, we can’t say this is a turning point,” he said. Ireland has been held up as the poster-child of Troika austerity, an example of what can be achieved if a country takes its medicine and regains competitiveness within EMU through an “internal devaluation”. Ireland has slashed wages by roughly 20%.

Yet Mr Mody said the Irish economy is unique, with an “enclave” export industry of pharmaceuticals and computer software, led by US multinationals exploiting Ireland’s 12.5% corporation tax.

The country has a high trade gearing, with an export to GDP ratio of 108%, compared with 40% for Portugal, 34% for Spain, 30% for Italy and 29pc for Greece. This makes it much easier for Ireland to trade its way out of trouble. “The idea that this could be replicated in a country like Portugal is far-fetched,” Mr Mody said.

Irish exports rose 12% over the past year at a time when world trade was almost flat. “Exports of dairy products and baby food to China are soaring. But the high-value goods to the US are also doing very well,” said Simon McKeever, head of the Irish Exporters Association.

Ireland’s biggest exporters are Google (€17bn), Microsoft (€15bn) and Johnson and Johnson (€10.5bn). Pfizer (€5bn) supplies half the world’s patented Viagra from plants near Cork. These sectors are the fruit of an industrial strategy dating back to the 1990s that turned Ireland into an aircraft carrier for US companies.

This has been a success but it is unclear how much benefit stays in Ireland, creating a split economy that has left large numbers on the margins. Unemployment is still 11.2pc despite mass emigration. Investment has stopped falling but only after touching the lowest level in Irish history last year as a share of GDP. Credit is contracting.

Ireland’s public debt has rocketed to 124pc of GDP from 25% in 2007, partly due to the toxic effects of prolonged recession, and partly the result of a taxpayer rescue for Anglo Irish Bank and four other lenders in the white heat of the financial crisis.

This was done under intense pressure from the European Central Bank, worried that a collapse of Ireland’s €800bn banking nexus would set off unstoppable contagion.

The IMF expects the debt ratio to drop to 111pc by 2018, yet warns that the debt trajectory is still on a knife-edge and could be blown off by any fresh shock or banking woes.

Megan Greene, from Trinity College Dublin, said it was far from clear Ireland had really sorted out its problems. “There has been a lot of austerity but very little structure reform. They are still relying on the same old sectors. We have a housing market that is absolutely booming, and people are spending because they are feeling wealthier again,” she said.

The risk is that Ireland lurches back into another property cycle with interest rates stuck at zero, set for the needs of core-EMU. This is starting to look like a carbon-copy of what went wrong a decade ago when Ireland was growing much faster than Europe, forced to import a monetary policy that was far too loose. “There is a risk that we could be seeing a repeat of history,” she said.

Permanent TSB reports 21% decline in its mortgage arrears books

 

THE STATE-OWNED LENDING TSB BANK SAYS 25,000 BORROWERS HAVE NOW BEEN OFFERED RESTRUCTURING ARRANGEMENTS

Permanent TSB has reported a 21% decline in mortgage arrears of over 90 days since the start of the year.

The State-owned lender said 25,000 borrowers had now been offered restructuring arrangements through its asset management unit (AMU).

The unit was set up in 2012 to tackle the high number of problem mortgage accounts left on its books in the wake of the crash.

The bank’s figures show there were 4,357 fewer home-loan customers in arrears of over 90 days at the end of August than at the beginning of the year – a fall of 21 per cent.

The unit received 27,500 completed Standard Financial Statements (SFSs) from customers between January and the end of August this year.

About 300 completed SFSs were now being received each week, down from highs of 600 to 700, the bank said.

On average the AMU proposes a solution to customers within just 10 days of receipt of completed statements, it said.

Shane O’Sullivan, managing director of the AMU, said that split mortgage arrangements – where part of the loan is put aside for a fixed term – accounted for 26 per cent of the proposed solutions.

“The split mortgage is a key offering and our experience is that home loan customers are very positive about the arrangement.”

“We charge 0 per cent interest on the warehoused section of the mortgage and we review a customer’s circumstances – typically every three years – with a view to ultimately eliminating the warehoused amount,” Mr O’Sullivan said.

“Our experience is very clear on this; when customers engage with the bank on their arrears they are receiving practical and workable restructurings which they understand and which they can live with.”

Repossession of properties is a last resort and the vast majority of our proposals see customers remain in their homes – once they engage with us on their situation.”

The bank’s half-year accounts, published last month, show it wrote off €73 million in Irish residential mortgage loans in the first six months of this year.

This was almost seven times the level of write-off in the same period of last year.

University Hospital Galway patients ‘lack privacy and dignity’ and a bed shortage problem

 

UHG ACKNOWLEDGES OVERCROWDING IN EMERGENCY UNIT AND THAT BUILDING NEEDS UPDATING

The West/North West Hospital Group has said some patients have experienced ‘difficulties’ attending the emergency department at UHG despite the efforts of staff and management.

University Hospital Galway has admitted a lack of privacy and dignity for some patients attending its emergency department.

The West/North West Hospital Group, which includes UHG, says some patients have experienced “difficulties” attending the emergency department despite the efforts of staff and management.

The group was responding to criticisms of conditions made by nurses who are today staging a lunchtime protest to highlight overcrowding in the department.

The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation says patients are being deprived of care with dignity because of the overcrowding and the use of corridors in which to treat them.

In its statement, the hospital group says the build-up of patients in the department is linked to bed availability throughout the hospital.

It says there is a commitment from community services to source more beds in the community so that hospital beds currently filled by long-term care patients can be freed up.

“The nursing staff shortage in the ED is being addressed and the applications of 11 new nursing staff are being processed at the moment and nine more job offers have been made.

“We also expect to shortly commence recruitment of four new paediatric nurses,” according to the statement.

Stress management support is being provided to nursing staff, the hospital says, adding that the emergency department building needs to be updated and an application for capital funding is being made.

Today’s protest is being supported by the INMO and Siptu. It is not expected to lead to any disruption of services.

IMO warns Ireland’s health services ‘at critical point’

 

Doctors call for increased health funding, abolition of prescription charges.

IMO president Professor Trevor Duffy: said professionals in the health services now believe the situation is at a critical point.

  Patient safety is being compromised across the health services as a result of successive budgetary cuts in recent years, the Irish Medical Organisation has warned.

Professionals in the health services now believe the situation is at a critical point, according to IMO president Professor Trevor Duffy.

“I think everyone in health has watched with frustration in recent months at how the debate on the health budget is seen almost like a spectator sport by the political class when it is actually a matter of life or death for many people in the system,” Prof Duffy said at the launch of the organisation’s pre-Budget submission.

“We are close to a point where the damage to the infrastructure of our health services will be so great that it will take decades to repair and we simply can’t bequeath this crisis to the next generation. We must act now.”

The IMO says the Government must take five steps to protect patient safety, starting with an increase in funding and staffing across all sectors. It must ensure any cost containment measures are rigorously assessed against risk to patient safety before commencement.

The union also wants GP care to be introduced based on income levels and medical need, together with chronic disease care packages. Co-payment models such as the €2.50 prescription charge should be abandoned because they are “proven to be detrimental to long-term health and disproportionately affect the most vulnerable in society”.

Prof Duffy said young doctors and established GPs and consultants were leaving the country out of frustration. “We need to decide now if we want to be part of a society that provides a health system which can offer the people of this country the kind of world-class care that they expect or if we are going to settle for a fractured service that is detrimental to the long term health of our nation.”

Modern European’s gene pool drawn from three ancient ‘tribes’

  

The modern European gene pool was formed when three ancient populations mixed within the last 7,000 years, Nature journal reports.

  Blue-eyed, swarthy hunters mingled with brown-eyed, pale skinned farmers as the latter swept into Europe from the Near East.

But another, mysterious population with Siberian affinities also contributed to the genetic landscape of the continent.

The findings are based on analysis of genomes from nine ancient Europeans.

Agriculture originated in the Near East – in modern Syria, Iraq and Israel – before expanding into Europe around 7,500 years ago.

It really does look like the indigenous West European hunter gatherers had this striking combination of dark skin and blue eyes that doesn’t exist any more”

Multiple lines of evidence suggested this new way of life was spread by a wave of migrants, who interbred with the indigenous European hunter-gatherers they encountered on the way.

But assumptions about European origins were based largely on the genetic patterns of living people. The science of analysing genomic DNA from ancient bones has put some of the prevailing theories to the test, throwing up a few surprises.

Genomic DNA contains the biochemical instructions for building a human, and resides within the nuclei of our cells.

In the new paper, Prof David Reich from the Harvard Medical School and colleagues studied the genomes of seven hunter-gatherers from Scandinavia, one hunter whose remains were found in a cave in Luxembourg and an early farmer from Stuttgart, Germany.

The hunters arrived in Europe thousands of years before the advent of agriculture, hunkered down in southern refuges during the Ice Age and then expanded during a period called the Mesolithic, after the ice sheets had retreated from central and northern Europe.

Their genetic profile is not a good match for any modern group of people, suggesting they were caught up in the farming wave of advance.

If you look at all the reconstructions of Mesolithic people on the internet, they are always depicted as fair skinned… This shows the opposite”

However, their genes live on in modern Europeans, to a greater extent in the north-east than in the south.

The early farmer genome showed a completely different pattern, however. Her genetic profile was a good match for modern people in Sardinia, and was rather different from the indigenous hunters.

But, puzzlingly, while the early farmers share genetic similarities with Near Eastern people at a global level, they are significantly different in other ways. Prof Reich suggests that more recent migrations in the farmers’ “homeland” may have diluted their genetic signal in that region today.

Prof Reich explained: “The only way we’ll be able to prove this is by getting ancient DNA samples along the potential trail from the Near East to Europe… and seeing if they genetically match these predictions or if they’re different.

“Maybe they’re different – that would be extremely interesting.”

Pigmentation genes carried by the hunters and farmers showed that, while the dark hair, brown eyes and pale skin of the early farmer would look familiar to us, the hunter-gatherers would stand out if we saw them on a street today.

“It really does look like the indigenous West European hunter gatherers had this striking combination of dark skin and blue eyes that doesn’t exist any more,” Prof Reich told BBC News.

Dr Carles Lalueza-Fox, from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (CSIC – UPF) in Barcelona, Spain, who was not involved with the research, told BBC News: “If you look at all the reconstructions of Mesolithic people on the internet, they are always depicted as fair skinned. And the farmers are sometimes depicted as dark-skinned newcomers to Europe. This shows the opposite.”

So where did fair pigmentation in present-day Europeans come from? The farmer seems to be on her way there, carrying a gene variant for light skin that’s still around today.

“There’s an evolutionary argument about this – that light skin in Europe is biologically advantageous for people who farm, because you need to make vitamin D,” said David Reich.

“Hunters and gatherers get vitamin D through their food – because animals have a lot of it. But once you’re farming, you don’t get a lot of it, and once you switch to agriculture, there’s strong natural selection to lighten your skin so that when it’s hit by sunlight you can synthesise vitamin D.”

When the researchers looked at DNA from 2,345 present day people, they found that a third population was needed to capture the genetic complexity of modern Europeans.

This additional “tribe” is the most enigmatic and, surprisingly, is related to Native Americans.

Hints of this group surfaced in an analysis of European genomes two years ago. Dubbed Ancient North Eurasians, this group remained a “ghost population” until 2013, when scientists published the genome of a 24,000-year-old boy buried near Lake Baikal in Siberia.

This individual had genetic similarities to both Europeans and indigenous Americans, suggesting he was part of a population that contributed to movements into the New World 15,000 years ago and Europe at a later date.

The ancient hunter from Luxembourg and the farmer from Germany show no signs of mixture from this population, implying this third ancestor was added to the continental mix after farming was already established in Europe.

The study also revealed that the early farmers and their European descendants can trace a large part of their ancestry to a previously unknown, even older lineage called Basal Eurasians. This group represents the earliest known population divergence among the humans who left Africa 60,000 years ago. 

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Whelan and McAteer found guilty of illegal loans in Anglo Irish trial

 

Pat Whelan and William McAteer were found guilty on 10 counts

Two former Anglo Irish bank chiefs have been found guilty of making loans designed to illegally prop up the bank’s share price.

They are Pat Whelan, 52, former head of lending in Ireland and Willie McAteer, 63, the bank’s former finance director.

Both men had denied the charges at Dublin Criminal Court.

On Wednesday, the bank’s former chairman was cleared of illegally supporting the bank’s share price.

Sean FitzPatrick, 65, held the top job in 2008 when the bank made loans to 10 wealthy customers who used the money to buy the bank’s shares.

The jury found that Mr FitzPatrick’s behaviour had not been illegal. However it convicted the two other men who were more closely involved in arranging the loans.

Anglo collapsed in 2009, costing Irish taxpayers more than 30bn euros (£25bn).

The case concerned a transaction involving the country’s then richest man, Seán Quinn.

He had taken a complicated financial bet which meant he, in effect, controlled 25% of the bank’s shares.

But Mr Quinn’s bet had gone horrendously wrong.

There was the prospect that he would have to dump his huge shareholding on the market and that would cause the bank’s share price to collapse.

The bank’s response was to get 10 of its wealthiest customers to buy the Quinn shares.

The bank lent the investors the money to buy the shares – and did so on favourable terms.

Loans were also provided to other members of the Quinn family to take up some of the shares.

The jury found that the loans made to the Quinn family were not illegal. Those loans were made on less favourable terms than the deal with the 10 other investors.

Whelan, of Malahide, County Dublin, and McAteer of Rathgar, Dublin, were cleared on those counts.

At the time, the deal had the desired effect and helped stabilise the bank.

However, the deal was a breach of company law which prevents a firm lending to a customer with the intention of affecting its own share price.

The judge directed the jury that, to convict, they must be satisfied that the loans had not been made in the ordinary course of the bank’s business, that each of the defendants knew about the scheme and did not take steps to stop it.

Mr FitzPatrick’s barrister had argued that his client’s knowledge of the scheme was limited and that he was out of the country at the time the deal took place.

In court on Thursday, Whelan and McAteer were remanded on continuing bail pending a sentencing hearing on 28 April.

Irish State must grant Travellers offical ethnic status

  

The Irish state must grant Travellers official status as a recognised ethnic minority group, a parliamentary committee in Dublin has said.

The Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality made the call in a new report, published on Thursday.

It calls on ministers to confirm that the state “recognises the ethnicity of the travelling community”.

Travellers’ representatives told the committee that they “feel like second class citizens on a daily basis”.

It is believed that there are about 40,000 Irish Travellers in Ireland, 15,000 in Britain and 10,000 of Irish descent living in the United States.

The committee invited several Travellers’ groups to testify before them, including the Irish Travellers Movement and Pavee Point Travellers Centre.

Brigid Quilligan, director of the Irish Travellers Movement, spoke to the committee about the impact of not being recognised in one’s own country as an ethnic group.

“No matter how many boxes we tick or how much we fulfil our requirements and responsibilities in Irish society, we still experience discrimination and prejudice in every area of life on a daily basis,” she said.

“People justify racism against us by stating we bring it on ourselves. That is what the general Irish population thinks about us and we know this.

“We feel the hate, as do our children. We see the hate in the media and displayed by people in positions of responsibility.”

Ms Quilligan said it “not good enough” for the Irish state not to offer Travellers the protection to which they were entitled.

She said “anti-Traveller sentiment” was common in newspapers, television programmes, social media, shops and on public transport.

Martin Collins, director of the Pavee Point Travellers Centre said that for his community, the “recognition of Traveller ethnicity is the human rights issue of our generation”.

“Not to recognise Traveller ethnicity has profound implications in terms of legal protection. It is questionable whether Travellers are afforded the full protection of the EU race directive,” he said.

“There are also implications concerning support for Traveller nomadism, language, culture, history and the inclusion of Travellers in intercultural and anti-racism initiatives.”

The report calls on the Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) or Minister for Justice to make a statement to the Irish Parliament (Dáil), confirming that the state recognises Travellers as an ethnic group.

It also recommends that the Irish government writes to relevant international bodies, confirming that it recognises Traveller ethnicity, and says the government should examine whether any new legislation is required.

The report will be sent to the Irish minister for justice.

Irish GP’s being coerced on to new deal says the IMO

   

The doctors’ union, the IMO, says it is gravely concerned at indications that the Governments may force GPs to sign up for the new under sixes contract or else face losing their existing child medical card patients.

IMO GP Chairman Dr Ray Walley said suggestions that this might be the case would indicate that the Government had changed its policy on the under sixes deal.

“The Government seems to be reversing its previous stance that GPs would be under no obligation to sign up to the new contract,” Dr Walley said.

He said GPs were now being threatened with losing their existing under sixes medical card patients if they did not take part in the new scheme, which would provide free GP care for all children under six regardless of income.

Minister for Primary Care Alex White recently invited the IMO to talks aimed at ending the long-standing impasse between the Department and GPs over the under sixes scheme. Legislation on the new scheme was agreed by Cabinet yesterday.

The main sticking point to date is the fact that the Government says it cannot directly negotiate fees with the IMO due to competition law restrictions. The IMO says this is not the case, and says direct negotiations on all issues, including fees, must take place before it can recommend the scheme to GP members.

The IMO and GP groups also want major changes to a draft contract recently produced by management for the operation of the under sixes scheme, which GPs claim is unworkable.

The union is now seeking clarification from Minister White on whether or not GPs would face the choice of signing up to the new deal or losing medical card patients.

“This approach suggests that the Government has no interest in negotiations and is more interested in effectively coercing GPs to sign up or else.  This may constitute a breach of the constitutional rights of GPs to earn a livelihood and it runs completely against the legally binding GMS contracts already in place between GPs and the HSE.”

“If the Government proceeds on this basis, they will make a difficult situation an impossible one,” Dr Walley added.

He said the IMO wanted to see the draft legislation, which has not yet been published.

Strict new HIQA guidelines for possible Irish people hip operations

  

New HIQA guidelines have stipulated that patients with hip arthritis should first be managed by GPs and physiotherapists before being referred on for possible hip replacement operations.

The independent health safety body has stipulated that only arthritis patients meeting specific guidelines, outlined in a new report, should be considered for hip operations.

HIQA points out that the cost to the health system of providing hip replacement operations is set to rise, partly due to rising numbers of obese patients having the procedures.

The draft guidelines state that the majority of patients with hip osteoarthritis should be managed conservatively in primary care in the first instance.

Primary care treatment would include pain relief medication, weight reduction, activity programmes and physiotherapy.

HIQA says that the provision of specialist physiotherapy services for hip arthritis patients in hospitals can help cut waiting lists for outpatients appointments with consultants.

Unfortunately, access to hospital physiotherapy services is currently only available through consultant clinics, for which there can be long waiting lists, the guidelines point out.

HIQA recommends that hospital specialist physiotherapy programmes should support GPs and community physiotherapists to manage patients with arthritis who may not need operations.

It also stresses that patients should not be referred for an opinion in relation to hip surgery until there has been a discussion in relation to the pros and cons of an operation, and that they will be happy to proceed with surgery if considered suitable following assessment in primary care.

However, the guidelines state that this will require more time on the part of GPs, and means that the primary care service for managing patients with arthritis needs to be adequately resourced.

The guidelines also note that the extent to which patients must wait for their hip operations once listed for surgery is currently unclear, and it is likely that waiting lists for hip operations remain substantial.

HIQA stipulates that patients should get hip surgery only when they meet specific criteria, including the following:

1. No improvement in the condition following at least three months of GP/physiotherapist treatment.
2. These patients should have severe symptoms and/or moderate to severe movement limitation, significantly affecting their quality of life.
3. Patients should also have x-ray evidence of hip osteoarthritis and have a body mass index of less than 40 (over 40 is classified as very severely obese). Obese patients are generally estimated to be at increased risk of complications around the time of surgery.
4. Patients should also still want the surgery following a discussion with health professionals on its pros and cons.

HIQA says the implementation of the guidelines will depend on timely access to the full range of treatment options in primary care and to radiology services at primary care level.

The HIQA report says the current estimated annual national cost of hip replacement procedures in Ireland is €37.3 million. While the number of these operations provided in the public system has remained constant for several years, demand for this type of surgery is expected to grow.

The report adds that the cost per episode of care is also likely to increase due to rising levels of obesity, and the greater number of operative complications in obese hip replacement patients.

HIQA has also issued guidelines for carrying out shoulder and knee replacement surgery.

Director of Health Technology Assessment at HIQA Dr Mairin Ryan said the purpose of these guidelines was to ensure that the right patients receive referral and treatment at the right time and that unnecessary referrals were avoided in patients who were unlikely to get additional benefit from surgery over other treatment options.

5 common printing problems and how to solve them

 

Printer won’t print? We have got the answers.

If you are having problems with your printing, we have the solution. Here’s how to solve some of the most common difficulties.

Printers can run reliably for many years and thousands of prints, but often they do not. Why is this? Sometimes it is as simple as over or under use. Many home users simply don’t use their inkjet printers often enough and this can lead to problems with dried up ink blocking the nozzles. A two-week holiday can ruin a set of ink cartridges.

Over use is less common, but it can happen in busy offices with shared printers. Paper clips, rubbers, hair bands and other objects fall into printers and cause paper jams surprisingly often. Here are some useful problems and solutions to keep your printer running smoothly.

 The printer won’t print?

There are numerous possibilities, so start with the basics, such as checking to see whether there is an error message/warning light on the printer, making sure there is paper in the tray, the ink cartridges aren’t empty, the USB cable is plugged in or the printer is connected to the Wi-Fi network. If it is a wireless printer, try using a USB cable instead.

Sometimes old printer drivers are still installed and set as the default printer. Open the Control Panel, Devices and Printers, right click the printer to use and set it as the default. Make sure that the correct printer is selected in the program you are printing from.

Microsoft has a printing troubleshooter that can help to identify problems. Click the Fix it button, download and run the program, then follow the steps in the wizard. You can also open the Control Panel, Devices and Printers, right click the printer icon and select Troubleshoot. It doesn’t always help, but it’s worth trying. HP has a Print and Scan Doctor to identify problems, and Canon has lots of great videos on its website – click your printer model and then click the Troubleshooting videos link.

I can’t print from my tablet?

To print from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch, the printer must not only be wireless, but also support AirPrint. The list of AirPrint printers is growing (support.apple.com/kb/HT4356), but there are still a lot of printers, particularly older models, that don’t support it. If you have an Apple Mac with a printer attached, you can turn it into an AirPrint printer using HandyPrint (netputing.com/handyprint). Printer Pro (bit.ly/1jznCYX) is an app for iOS devices that enables them to print to many wireless printers or a wired one attached to a PC or Mac.

Some Samsung phones, tablets and printers are designed to work together and printing is straightforward. To print from any Android phone or tablet to any PC printer you can use Google Cloud Print. Install it on the mobile device from the Google Play store. Next, using Google Chrome on your PC, go to the menu, Settings, Advanced Settings and click Manage. You can then add the printer attached to the PC. Provided the PC and printer are switched on, you can print from the Android device.

My printer tells me to replace the cartridge?

Printers warn that the ink is running out before it actually does. In a busy office it might run dry in an hour, but a home user only printing only occasionally could find that it lasts another couple of weeks. Order new cartridges as soon as the message appears, but don’t install them until it either stops printing or the colours fade.

The web page won’t print properly?

Web pages can be any size and they aren’t limited by the width or height of the paper in your printer. They often aren’t designed to be printed, which is why problems can occur. Always choose the Print Preview option in Internet Explorer so you can see what you’ll get. You might not need all the pages, for example, if there are lots of comments or adverts, so use the option when printing to select the pages to print, such as 2-4 to print pages 2 to 4. Choose landscape mode if the web page is very wide.

Internet Explorer offers a shrink-to-fit option that helps when pages are just a bit too big to fit on the page. Some pages, such as those with coupons, have a print button within the web page. Use that and not the print menu in the browser.

The paper gets stuck in the printer?

When this continually happens, suspect a small shred of paper stuck somewhere in the paper feed mechanism. Take the paper out of the tray, open all the flaps and look inside. You might need a torch to see the paper and long tweezers to reach it, which can sometimes be small and hard to see. Look underneath the printer because there may be an access panel that can be removed to examine and clean the paper feed mechanism.

Old paper can absorb moisture, which makes it stick and then it is pulled through two or more sheets at a time. Keep it in a bag until it is needed. Check out Canon’s troubleshooting videos to see how to remove pieces of paper stuck in printers.

A blank sheet is ejected every time I print?

This is a useful feature in offices where a printer is shared among many people and it separates one print job from another. It’s irritating if you are the only user through. Open Devices and Printers in the Control Panel, right click the printer and select Printing Preferences. If you can’t see an option to enable/disable separator pages, right click the printer and select Properties or double click it. With HP, for example, you double click the icon, double click Customise your printer, and select the Advanced tab. There’s a Separator button to configure the option.

Print quality is poor?

The nozzles on inkjet printer heads can become blocked causing horizontal streaks on prints and poor or wrong colours. Cleaning the print heads can solve the problem. The procedure varies from printer to printer and there may be an option on the printer control panel or in the printer software on the computer. You might need to look this up in the manual. With an HP inkjet for example, there is a Start screen app for Windows 8 users and this has a Maintenance button. Click it and you can clean the print heads or align them. Head cleaning kits are available (amzn.to/1pcwm6p) although you should compare it to the cost of a new cartridge.

The type of paper affects the print quality and photocopier paper won’t do. It is too absorbent and inkjet ink soaks into it like blotting paper. Buy good quality paper for the best prints. It’s a similar situation with laser printers and the right paper gives the best results.

Birdwatch Ireland to turn two bird lovers into Island castaways

   

Rockabill Island, off the coasts of Skerries, in North County Dublin. Remote island job awaits bird watchers with love of the environment.

The perfect job has arisen for anyone with a penchant for bird watching – but it is not for the faint-hearted.

Birdwatch Ireland has advertised for two people to spend the summer on a tiny island off the north Dublin coast.

  The job entails the study and protection of the Roseate Tern on Rockabill Island.

The Irish Times reports that castaways will be paid just over $500 a week, but warns that the jobs are not for the faint-hearted and sleepwalkers need not apply.

The report says the wardens will be based on top of high rocky outcrops on two tiny islands named Rock and Bill where there is a lighthouse and ‘just enough room to stretch the legs.’

The three-month-long jobs involve monitoring and protecting the migrant Roseate, Common and Arctic terns during the summer breeding season.

Birdwatch Ireland development officer Niall Hatch told the paper that the job is a ‘feather in the cap’ for anyone wishing to advance their career in environmental or similar sciences.

Hatch said, “Some people absolutely thrive in that environment, but having screaming seabirds around you for 24 hours a day and being so isolated is tough and not for everyone.”

The Irish paper adds that the successful applicants will be dropped off by boat with supplies and will have two long weekends off the island – weather permitting.

Galway’s drowned forest shows climate change is nothing new

 

Prof Michael Williams of NUI Galway believes planning for an uncertain future is better than spending billions to ‘temporarily defer the inevitable’

Prof Michael Williams with some of the 7,500-year-old tree remains at a drowned forest site exposed by storms in Co Galway.

When Michael Williams, geology professor at NUI Galway, discovered evidence of a 7,500-year-old drowned forest on the northern shores of Galway Bay, he couldn’t have anticipated the huge public response.

Over the last few weeks, low tide has lured hundreds of people out to view, photograph and play around the prehistoric tree stumps with their extensive root systems, which Prof Williams knew to be there and which were exposed in dramatic fashion by this year’s storms on the west coast. A track revealed below the peatline suggests human habitation and adaptation to sea level rise up to 4,500 years ago.

Even as the debate continues as to whether the recent extreme weather is direct evidence of climate change, the transformation of such forests and lagoons into what we now recognise as Galway Bay many thousands of years ago is evidence that such change is nothing new, contends Prof Williams.

The latest UN report

The most recent UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study, released in late March, found that the effects are already being felt on global food supplies, and contributing to the frequency of natural disasters and conflict. It has also highlighted the ill-preparedness of governments. However, Prof Williams believes we have learned to adapt to such change in the past, and such adaptation has influenced human evolution.

“That forest drowned because of weather,” he says. “It was flourishing 5,000 years ago and then the climate in the north Atlantic changed. It became cooler and wetter, and the sea level began to rise. The forest floor became carpeted in reeds, including phragmites, which we can still see traces of, and which can tolerate semi-saline conditions.”

Prof Williams estimates that sea level would have been at least five metres lower than it is now, and the forest floor eventually succumbed to rain and rising sea. And so, the Neolithic people living off the lagoons and forests, among bears and wolves, had to move. This is because, he says, the Earth behaves in cycles, with climate change an integral part of this.

“What would the Earth be like if the climate never changed, if temperatures remained the same all over the planet, sea levels never rose or fell, carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere remained constant?” he asks.

“This is impossible, because of the way the crust of the Earth moves according to the model of plate tectonics. When the plates that make up the crust of the Earth collide, this generates volcanoes, which, if on a large enough scale, can affect the climate.

“For example, the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 reduced global temperatures by over one degree, and it took another five years for climate to return to normal. This was not a super large volcano by geological standards. All the plates of the crust are in constant motion, so parts drift north or south into warmer or colder climates.”

Some would argue that human evolution “would not have even begun were it not for climate change”, says Prof Williams. “Africa suffered increased aridity at various times over the past couple of hundred thousand years, which led to changes in lifestyle from tree-dwelling apes to grassland-living hominids.

“Not only is climate change inevitable, but if we examine past climates which have existed on Earth, we see that at present the Earth is cooler, sea levels are lower and atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are less than they have been for most of Earth history, “ he says, reviewing some “snapshots in deep time