Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

We have files on suspected jihadis in Ireland

says Charlie Flanagan

He warns Ireland must remain vigilant against terror attacks

  

The Minister of Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan

Ireland needs to “remain vigilant” against Islamic State says Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan, who admitted files were being kept on suspected jihadis in this country. The senior Fine Gael politician made the comments a week after gardaí released a man on suspicion of attempting to travel to Syria to join ISIS.

The man, who is a Syrian national living in Dublin, was sent back to Ireland by Turkish officials after he landed in Instanbul.

Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Flanagan said while Ireland was “very low in terms of threat”, the country needed to remain on “alert and be vigilant against threats.”

“There are files on jihadis in Ireland, of course there are… [but] I work closely with my colleagues in the Justice Department to ensure that any information we have is shared.”

Mr Flanagan was speaking a day after attending a meeting of EU foreign ministers, where recent terror developments, including the deadly attacks in Tunisia that left three Irish people died, were discussed.

It comes as the Turkish government has promised to increase security on its Syria border after 30 people were killed and over 100 wounded in a bombing yesterday linked to ISIS.

The Foreign Affairs Minister told Newstalk Breakfast that the Radicalisation Awareness Network – part of the European Commission – and the sharing of airline passenger data was an important part of the process of preventing any jihad-inspired attack in Ireland.

He also voiced support for the United Kingdom’s new anti-terror legalisation saying that “it was key that we remain in close contact with communities in order to prevent what we call radicalisation”.

“We need to remove the glamour that many of these groups have… and that involves the promotion of the rule of law and democracy… something I think we take for granted here in Ireland.”

The value of court judgments against Ireland's consumers rises by 41% on 2014

  

Irish courts award more than €200 million in judgments against bad debtors.

More than €200 million was awarded in court judgments against consumers in the first half of this year, according to figures from business and credit risk analyst vision-net.ie.

The value of consumer judgments awarded amounted to €202.8 million, which is a 41%  increase compared to the same period in 2014.

The average value of consumer judgments during the first six months of 2015 was €119,879, an increase of 33% or €29,925, on the same period in 2014.

In total, 1,692 judgments were awarded against consumers in the first six months of 2015, a 6% increase on the same period in 2014. More than half (52%) of all consumer judgments were awarded to the Revenue Commissioners.

The value of judgments against commercial entities declined, down 25%, from €22.9 million to €17.2 million.The average value of commercial judgments awarded for the first half of 2015 was €27,911, a decrease of 23% or €8,428 reduction, on 2014’s equivalent figure of €36,339.

Of the 616 commercial judgments awarded in the first half of 2015, 256 were awarded to local authorities.

Leitrim nursing home residents forced to go without bath/shower for weeks

Says a HIQA report

    

Residents in HSE-run nursing home were forced to go without a bath or shower for a month or more because of staff shortages, a damning inspection report has revealed.

St Patrick’s Community Hospital in Summerhill, Carrick-on-Shannon in Leitrim is home to eighty two residents over the age of 65 years, some of whom have dementia or are receiving palliative care.

However, shocked inspectors from the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) found a litany of risks and poor standards of care when they visited over two days in March.

Residents were only offered a shower once every two weeks but on occasions when they declined a bath or shower , or if there were no staff available on that particular day, they had to go for a month or longer without a proper wash.

The report revealed:

* Fire safety equipment had not been installed as per HSE’s response to previous actions.

* There were a significant number of falls in this centre and some residents had fallen repeatedly and were not adequately protected from further injury.

* In one unit the fire, doors were not connected to the fire alarm system and there was no magnetic door release them to ensure they closed and compartmentalised in the event of a fire. In addition; there were gaps in-between some fire doors that had existed since previous inspection, despite assurances that they would be addressed.

* Risks such as fire evacuation and personal evacuation plans were not in place

* Fire safety equipment had not been installed as per provider’s response to previous actions.

The inspectors found that since the last inspection some improvements had been  made.For  example; in two of the units staffing levels had been increased so that adequate staffing was available at the high support need times

But  there was no activities coordinator available to organise activities for residents.There were not sufficient staff with the right skills, qualifications and experience to meet the assessed needs of residents.

They also found that medication practices were not adequately supervised to ensure they were done safety.

More women in Irish politics is long overdue

SAYS TÁNAISTE BURTON

   

The Tánaiste has said that the day Ireland has more women in politics is ‘long overdue’.

Joan Burton was responding to former senior Fine Gael strategist Frank Flannery, who told MacGill Summer School it’s ‘difficult’ for young men in the political arena who are ‘pushed aside’ in favour of female candidates.

Mr Flannery said some male candidates feel ‘aggrieved’ by the quotas – but he said that he does support them.

Tánaiste Joan Burton said that the quotas benefit both men and women, and they should not be regarded as anything other than positive.

“I think it’s good for everybody to have a critical mass of both women and men involved in politics. I think the day is long overdue in Ireland when we have more women in politics, and I’m sure Frank Flannery is very strongly in favour of that,” said the Tánaiste.

Divers recover four Spanish Armada cannons from Streedagh sea in Grange

  

Three more guns off Sligo coast to be brought ashore after lying submerged for 400 years.

One of the newly discovered cannon from the Spanish Armada shipwrecks in Streedagh is brought ashore and set down for a brief public viewing in Mullaghmore Co Sligo,

Two hundred locals gathered at Mullaghmore harbour in Co Sligo on Monday as four bronze cannons that had lain for more than 400 years in a Spanish Armada wreck at Streedagh were transferred to the National Museum.

As onlookers marveled at the detail on the artefacts, including one cannon apparently depicting a bearded St Peter holding the keys to heaven, it emerged that three more will be removed on Wednesday by divers from the underwater archaeology unit of the Department of Arts and Heritage.

One of these cannons is still in situ on the seabed at Streedagh where three Spanish Armada galleons were shipwrecked in 1588. Two others were recovered by divers in recent days from the wreck of La Julianaat Streedagh. They were placed in underwater storage in Mullaghmore pending transfer to the National Museum.

A campaign to establish a permanent Armada museum in Grange village close to Streedagh is gathering momentum. Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys, who visited the site of the wrecks in June said she was very much aware that the Grange Armada Development Association would like to see the material returned to the community to be exhibited locally when the conservation work was done.

Conservation

“I know that the National Museum would not stand in the way of such a proposal,” added the Minister, who pointed out that it could take up to two years for the conservation process to be completed.

Donal Gilroy, a member of the local association, pointed out that as well as the canons, recently recovered artefacts included a bronze cauldron and a wheel from a siege gun. He said local people were acutely aware of the link with the 1,100 Spanish sailors who had lost their lives at Streedagh in 1588. “This is their graveyard,” he said.

The expert divers who were called in after local people recovered timbers from La Juliana following a violent storm last February, say the variety of artefacts illustrates its history.

Built as a trading vessel in 1570, it was later used as a warship during the ill-fated Spanish Armada campaign of 1588. The 860-ton La Juliana , which carried 325 soldiers and a crew of 70, was one of 26 ships from the Spanish fleet of 130 vessels that were lost around the coast of Ireland.

Submerged

Two other Armada ships, La Lavia and Santa Maria de Vison are submerged in sand at Streedagh, but locals have expressed concern about the security of La Juliana, which has been partly exposed by storms .

Ms Humphreys described the quality of material being recovered as remarkable. “The gun carriage wheels, designed for siege warfare on land, paint a very clear picture of the scale and intent of the planned invasion ofEngland by King Phillip II of Spain, ” she said.

The most elaborate of the recovered cannon depicting St Peter has two ornate lifting handles in the form of dolphins with looped tails.

The Minister thanked the local development association and Sligo Sub-Aqua Club for maintaining a watch over the site at Streedagh.

Donal Gilroy pointed out that just 12 of the 32 cannon on La Juliana had been recovered so far – three in 1985, two last June, four on Monday, with three more due to be removed from the sea on Wednesday.

Making the case for a permanent museum in Grange, Mr Gilroy added: “If you wanted a centre for the Cliffs of Moher, there would be no point having it in Merrion Square.”

Stephen Hawking backs new initiative to find life beyond Earth

   

A new $100 million initiative, backed by a Russian entrepreneur and endorsed by physicist Stephen Hawking, has been launched in search of intelligent life beyond planet Earth.

Billionaire Yuri Milner announced his plans on Monday to fund the “Breakthrough Initiatives” project, a 10-year mission using powerful telescopes to examine nearly 100 galaxies for signals of intelligent life forms.

“Somewhere in the cosmos, perhaps intelligent life may be watching these lights of ours, aware of what they mean,” Hawking said at the launch. “It’s time to commit to finding the answer to search for life beyond earth.”

The primary goal of “Breakthrough Listen” is banking on another potential civilization to send a signal that can be retrieved by the high-powered telescopes.

Some are saying this type of search for extraterrestrial life forms is not an entirely new venture. “I don’t think it’s all that big of a deal,” NBC contributor Jay Barbree said on Tuesday’s Rundown. “$100 million dollars isn’t all that much money when they’re already spending billions on it now.”

Barabree added that there are a slew of educational institutions and nationally-funded organizations, including NASA, dedicated to the same mission that Milner and Hawking are backing: finding life beyond Earth.

The push for the program from Hawking and the “Breakthrough Initiatives” team aims to reinvigorate that search by not only combing the galaxies, but by creating an international dialogue. Another aspect of the project, called “Breakthrough Message,” will launch an international competition with a $1 million prize to do just that—to create messages that best represent life on Earth to one day be used as a signal to other potential civilizations.

Barbree worries that the biggest factor is time, given that it could take years to send and receive signals from far away galaxies. Still, he acknowledges the importance of exploration.

“We have to get off this planet. When? That’s the big question,” Barbree said.

All data generated by “Breakthrough Initiatives” will be made available to the public.   

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Thursday

New Irish insolvency rules to allow €899 monthly spend for debtors

SINGLE ADULT WILL BE PERMITTED €247 FOR FOOD AND AND €35.73 FOR CLOTHES PER MONTH

 

Minimum income guidelines for people entering the State’s new insolvency process have not been set in stone or at “subsistence level living or anywhere close to that”, the head of the agency overseeing the process has said.

Lorcan O’Connor of the Insolvency Service of Ireland (ISI) said the new guidelines would be flexible and would not see people’s finances being “micro-managed” by banks or new Personal Insolvency Practitioners (PIPS).

However, he admitted many people would be forced to give up private health insurance, cars and holidays.

The guidelines on a “reasonable standard of living” for insolvent debtors and “reasonable living expenses” are central to the insolvency regime as they set out how much money people will be allowed to spend within any deal agreed with their creditors.

It includes expenditure limits on items such as food and basic medicine.

Under the guidelines a single adult with no car will be permitted expenditure of €898.96 in set cost over and above any mortgage or rent payments. The set costs will rise to €1,030 if that adult has a a car. They will be given €126 a month – or €29 a week to cover social inclusion. An allowance of €204.88 is to made for each child of primary school-going age.

Minister for Justice Alan Shatter unveiled details of the new insolvency process this afternoon in Government Buildingsand the insolvency service has also launched an information campaign. This includes guides to debt settlements along with a websiteand an information helpline for queries.

Mr O’Connor told The Irish Times childcare costs would come under the microscope but he denied people would be forced to give up work if their earnings were less than the cost of childcare.

He said PIPs would have to “ensure that the child care costs are reasonable” but expressed the view that “it would be completely counter intuitive to ask anyone to give up a job.

“It makes sense for people to remain in their jobs and while there may be some people who have childcare costs in excess of their income there may be reasons for this.”

He said some guidelines, including those referring to childcare costs, had been redrafted in recent weeks to make it clearer that people would not be forced to give up work.

He said the redraft was needed because he felt the flexibility “which is so enshrined” in the ISI’s intentions had not been sufficiently outlined in early drafts. While the wording of the guidelines had changed in recent weeks, he said the numbers had not, Mr O’Connor said.

The ISI has relied heavily on work carried out by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice on income guidelines and have been “sense-checked” with both the CSO and the Central Bank as well as the personal insolvency service in the UK counterparts.

Mr O’Connor said the Vincentian Partnership study had been done “in a very scientific way” and its figures were “based on needs rather than wants. I certainly wouldn’t describe the Vincentians as being pro-bank”.

A million of us face paying 15% of wages into pensions

  

OECD recommends no opt-out in Contributions should double

Up to one million workers with no pension face the prospect of being forced to take one out for the first time.

The Irish Independent has also learned a key report recommends that the contributions for these pensions should be double the original plan.

Workers, employers and the State should contribute 15% of salary to the new scheme, it says.

The report commissioned by Social Protection Minister Joan Burton recommends that most of the one million workers with no pensions should be signed up for a private scheme and given no option to leave it. The study — from Paris-based international think-tank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — says the most “effective and least costly” way to deal with the mounting pensions crisis is to force cash-strapped workers to put aside some of their wages to fund their retirement.

At present, six out of every 10 private-sector staff have no work-based pension — and rely on the state- contributory pension when they retire.

With the number of pensioners set to explode over the next three decades, the taxpayer can no longer afford to keep state pensions at the current level.

This means workers will have to boost their own pensions at a time when they can least afford to do it.

The move will be seen as a tax on middle-income workers who cannot afford to put their own pension arrangements in place.

And employers are likely to baulk at having to stump up money to provide pensions for staff, particularly smaller firms.

OECD officials were commissioned by the Government to tell them how to tackle the country’s pensions time-bomb.

Although the Government has yet to make a formal decision on the timeframe and structure for the new scheme, it will be difficult for it to go against the advice of the prestigious think-tank.

The report states that compulsory private pensions are “the least costly and the most effective approach to increasing private-pension coverage”.

Ms Burton is known to be in favour of some form of private pensions arrangements for the more than half of the workforce who will only have the state pension when they retire.

She has spoken of a system where those who have no private pension are automatically enrolled in one, but can then choose to opt out.

Up to now, the expectation was that contribution levels would be around 8pc, with workers, the State and employers all making contributions.

ENROLLED

However, the OECD is set to recommend that middle-income people over the age of 22, without a private pension, should be automatically enrolled and given no opportunity to opt out.

It says lower-paid people will not have to take up the scheme as they will already qualify for the state contributory pension and the level of their earnings means they would not gain much from having an additional private pension.

Not allowing middle-income earners to opt out is likely to be hugely controversial as many of those in middle-income jobs in the private sector are already struggling to make ends meet.

The OECD is recommending that the level of contributions into the new auto-enrolment system should be double what had previously been outlined in government proposals.

The state pension, which is around ¿230 a week for those who have paid sufficient pay-related social insurance (PRSI), is not seen as adequate for a comfortable retirement. Most workers pay 4pc in PRSI.

There is also concern that just one-eighth of the population is aged over 65 at the moment, but up to a quarter of the population will be over that age by 2050.

The Irish auto-enrolment scheme had been due to come in next year. At Christmas, Ms Burton said she was pressing ahead with the plan, but stressed that it would not be introduced until the economy improves.

She said recently that auto-enrolment would be particularly beneficial for people on low and middle incomes. It would also help those moving in and out of different jobs, who had very little opportunity to save for a traditional pension with their employer.

“With an auto-enrolment scheme, they would be paying a fixed amount relative to their income and the Government would also contribute to that,” she said.

“That would mean that by the time they retire, they could look forward to a decent level of pension — the contributory social welfare-based retirement pension but also an additional amount of savings, which would give them a bigger income in their retirement.”

The State first launched a plan for an auto-enrolment pensions as part of the National Pensions Framework in 2010.

The OECD also recommends that workers in defined-benefit schemes should get more of the assets when the plans are wound up. At the moment, pensioners have first call.

OECD official Paulo Antolin consulted widely with people with an interest in pensions in drawing up the report, which will be launched on Monday by Ms Burton and the OECD.

A spokesman for Ms Burton’s office had no comment.

Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton, Enterprise and Innovation launches IDSA

   

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD, has formally launched the Irish Debt Securities Association (IDSA) at the Royal College of Physicians.

The IDSA is an industry organisation whose membership includes the corporate administrators, audit firms, legal advisors, listing agents, and other parties involved in the structuring and management of special purpose vehicles (SPVs) in the industry in Ireland.

Around €500 billion of SPV assets are already resident in Ireland, representing approximately 22% of all European SPV assets. The IDSA’s objective is to enhance the environment in Ireland for structured finance and debt securities and to promote the country as the leading jurisdiction for SPVs.

Introducing the association, the chairman of IDSA, and partner at Matheson, Turlough Galvin noted: “The IDSA was established to promote and develop Ireland as the premier European location for activities to support the global structured finance, debt securities and the specialist securities industries.”

Galvin went on the highlight that “the mission of the Association is to promote high standards of professional conduct among industry service providers and lead the industry activity to develop and provide a world-leading environment from Ireland for structured finance transactions and for the issuance of debt securities and other specialist securities”.

Welcoming the establishment of the IDSA, the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD said: “International financial services forms a key part of the Government’s plans for jobs and growth, and through our Action Plan for Jobs we are targeting the creation of 10,000 additional jobs in this sector over the coming years. We are putting in place a range of measures to support expansion in this sector, including the establishment of a new team in IDA Ireland to target investment and jobs from this sector and exploiting opportunities offered by high growth sub-sectors such as green finance, Islamic finance, structured finance and post trade services. Today’s announcement is a major boost for the sector in Ireland, I commend all involved and wish them every success with this new venture”.

The chief executive of IDSA, Gary Palmer noted that for many reasons the traditional means of raising finance is being challenged and other sources of capital are needed. This is especially so in Europe with it reported, he said, “that there now exists a funding gap of many trillions of Euros and all of the discussion around this funding gap is concluding that this needs to be addressed in the non-bank financing areas of special purpose vehicles and securitised structures”.

Palmer added: “As an open, transparent and tightly legislated jurisdiction with a foundation of existing industry expertise, Ireland and our sector has the opportunity to provide the products and solutions that the international industry is seeking.”

Infant universe had a ‘star factory’

 

Light captured from when the universe was still in its childhood has shown a massive galaxy that churned out nearly 3000 stars per year, a rate 2000 greater than our own Milky Way today, astronomers say.

The galaxy, called HFLS3, has a mass of stars nearly 40 billion times the mass of the Sun.

Its light, snared by a network of 12 telescopes, was emitted around 12.8 billion years ago, less than 900 million years after the birth of the cosmos, according to their study, published in Nature.

‘This galaxy is proof that very intense bursts of star formation existed only 880 million years after the Big Bang,’ said Dominik Riechers of Cornell University in New York.

‘We’ve gotten a valuable look at a very important epoch in the development of the first galaxies.’

Separately, the European Southern Observatory (ESO) on Wednesday reported remarkable results from a brand-new telescope in the Chilean desert designed to pinpoint such ‘star factories’ in the early universe.

The instrument, the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), uses a small forest of antennae to pick up light at relatively longer wavelengths, which penetrates dust that obscures star-forming galaxies.

ALMA was inaugurated only on March 13 but in the months before the ceremony, astronomers were able to put part of the network through its paces.

Even when incomplete, the telescope located more than 100 of the most fertile galaxies in early universe, ESO said.

‘ALMA is so powerful that, in just a few hours, it captured as many observations of these galaxies as have been made by all similar telescopes worldwide over a span of more than a decade,’ the observatory said in a media release.

The data is published in the Monthly Notices of Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society and the Astrophysical Journal.