Irish Rail & bus fares to increase with CIÉ and Luas
Rail, bus and Luas fare increases are being introduced next month to “protect delivery services”, the National Transport Authority (NTA) said today.
The increases, to be introduced by December 1st at the earliest, will apply to cash, Leap and pre-paid ticket fares across all contracted public transport services provided by CIÉ and the Railway Procurement Agency (Luas).
Fares for Dublin Bus will rise by as much as 17.9 per cent for short trips of less than three stages, while longer journeys will be 5.7 per cent more expensive. Leap prices will increase by 12 per cent and 2.1 per cent for the same journeys while prepaid tickets, such as the Rambler 5-day child ticket and the Travel-90 10-Journey ticket will increase from between 2.7 per cent to 16.8 per cent.
Bus Éireann fares will increase by an average of 6 per cent across all ticket types. Leap card, a top-up card for use on public transport in Dublin, will be phased in for Bus Éireann services from early 2013.
Irish Rail Dublin commuter cash fares will increase by 9.1 per cent (Zone G adult single) to 14 per cent (Zone A adult return). Inter-city fares will increase by 0.9 per cent to 3.9 per cent.
Some Luas fares will remain unchanged, while others will increase by up to 5.7 per cent; an overall average of 2 per cent (weighted by sales volume).
The NTA urged customers to switch to Leap Cards, saying the new higher Leap fares will still be “as cheap or cheaper than the current cash fares, and substantially cheaper than the new cash fares”.
Customers living in cities other than Dublin, where Leap cards are unavailable, could save money by purchasing prepaid multiple-journey tickets, the NTA said.
This year auditors to CIÉ warned about the health of its finances after the the rail section of the company recorded a deficit of €22 million after receiving a subvention for current spending of €149 million.
Praveen Halappanavar the Husband of Savita Halappanavar says
No contact from HSE on inquiry
The husband of the late Savita Halappanavar has had no contact from the Irish authorities and is “very worried” about what sort of inquiry will be established into her death.
Praveen Halappanavar said last night from India that he had heard from no one in the Health Service Executive, the Department of Health or the Taoiseach’s office, the Department of Foreign Affairs or the Irish Embassy in New Delhi.
The HSE said last night its inquiry team would engage with Mr Halappanavar as part of the investigation into his wife’s death in Galway University Hospital late last month.
A spokeswoman said an international expert in obstetrics and gynaecology had been identified to join the inquiry. This is not the specialist from Northern Ireland mentioned by Dr Reilly on Thursday.
Membership of the team was being finalised, she added. The full team and terms of reference would be made public “in a matter of days”.
Dr Reilly insisted there was no split within the Coalition over pressure to legislate for abortion in the wake of Ms Halappanavar’s death. “We have had no difference of opinion in this regard at all,” he said of relations with Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, who has promised the Government will “take action” on abortion.
Dr Reilly is to bring a report to Cabinet next week by an expert group on abortion.
This report does not make recommendations but rather sets out options for providing greater clarity in the area, The Irish Times understands.
Irish Demonstrations planned
M/s Halappanavar (31) died of septicaemia on October 28th, a week after she presented at the hospital and was found to be miscarrying 17 weeks into her pregnancy. Her husband says repeated requests by her for a termination were refused over a three-day period because a foetal heartbeat was still present.
Demonstrations are being held today in her memory and in support of legislative change on abortion. In Dublin, marchers will walk from the Garden of Remembrance at 4pm to the Dáil, where a candle-lit vigil will be held. A vigil is also being held in Galway, where the Halappanavars have lived for four years.
SINN FÉIN IS TO MAINTAIN THE PRESSURE ON THE GOVERNMENT WITH A DÁIL MOTION NEXT WEEK DEMANDING THE IMMEDIATE INTRODUCTION OF LEGISLATION TO GIVE EFFECT THE 1992 JUDGMENT IN THE X CASE.
Irish cereals prices rise by 30% as agricultural costs go up
The price of cereals rose by 30 per cent between September 2011 and September 2012 according to the CSO.
Agricultural output prices were 1.9 per cent higher in September than in August, according to new figures released by the CSO.
Input prices increased by 1.3 per cent during the same period according to the figures.
The price of potatoes soared 171 per cent between September 2011 and September 2012.
The price of cereals rose by 30 per cent, while the price of eggs was up more than 16 per cent, according to the Agricultural Prices Index. The price of milk, however, decreased by 10.5 per cent.
On an annual basis, the agricultural output price index in September 2012 was 5.6 per cent higher than in September 2011. The agricultural input price index was up 6.9 per cent in September 2012 when compared with the same month last year.
Ireland’s fertility rate still below the replacement level required
The fertility rate here continues to remain at a level lower than that required to replace the population over a generation, official figures show.
A report on Vital Statistics 2010 published by the Central Statistics Office notes the average number of children per woman was 2.06 in that year, the same rate as in 2009 and just below replacement level. A value of 2.1 is considered to be the level at which a generation would replace itself, ignoring migration, the CSO said.
Ireland still has the highest fertility rate in the EU. France is next with 2.03 followed by Sweden and the UK with 1.98. Latvia has the lowest, at 1.17.
The fertility rate has fallen by 36 per cent in the past 30 years, from 3.23 in 1980. It dropped below the replacement level in 1989 and again in 1991 and has remained there since, the CSO said.
Some 75,174 babies were born in Ireland in 2010 – 38,395 boys and 36,779 girls.
“While this is the first annual decrease in five years, the number of babies born in 2010 represents the second-highest number of births since 1896,” the CSO report said.
There were 27,961 deaths in 2010, of which 14,334 were males and 13,627 females, a rate of 6.1 per 1,000 of population, compared with 6.3 the previous year and 8.3 in 2000.
There were 495 recorded deaths by suicide in 2010, of which 405 (82 per cent) were men and 90 (18 per cent) women.
Anti-austerity worker protests sweep across Europe
Workers across Europe downed tools in moderate numbers and staged largely peaceful protests in one of the most widespread shows of opposition to austerity policies that trade unions blame for falling living standards across the continent.
As a fresh batch of dire economic data highlighted Europe’s failure to throw off its troubles, trade unionists in the eurozone’s struggling southern member states led a wave of strikes to challenge the deep public spending cuts and their rationale as a means to address the sovereign debt crisis.
Some 40 unions in 23 countries were due to take part in a “day of action and solidarity”, the European Trade Union Confederation said in advance of Wednesday’s action, but the biggest protests were on the Iberian peninsula.
Portuguese and Spanish workers closed schools, brought public transport to a halt and disrupted air travel on Wednesday in the peninsula’s first co-ordinated general strike. Riot police charged hundreds of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Lisbon after at least five people were injured by stones and bottles thrown by protestors. Police were seen make several detentions.
In central Madrid, small shops that had been closed earlier in the day began to open at around lunchtime, with a large police presence on the ground and helicopters circling over the city centre. Bigger demonstrations were planned for the evening, heightening the sense of trepidation on the streets.
Earlier, the Spanish interior ministry said “isolated incidents” during the strike had resulted in 82 arrests and 34 injuries, 18 of which were police officers, as of midday GMT. Protesters and police clashed in central Madrid, Reuters news agency reported.
“We are deeply grateful to the workers, who are in a very difficult situation with unemployment at almost six million,” said Cándido Méndez, secretary-general of Spain’s UGT union, who called for a change of direction in economic policy and claimed turnout was higher than the at last general strike in March.
Some shops remained cautiously open for business. Jose-Carlos Rubio, 48, said his intention was for his shop, a local newsagents, to remain open all day but he was worried about what would happen later in the day, in case people on their way to main protests expected after dusk grew angry that he had not closed.
“There aren’t many people who seem to be doing the strike. It is not the appropriate moment [to protest],” he said. “This is going to reflect badly on us abroad… The problem is unemployment and work, so people need to work to lift the country up by working, not going on strike.”
More than 200 flights were cancelled in Portugal. Lisbon’s normally busy metro was closed and train stations were left deserted by the strike, which mainly hit public services. Rubbish was left uncollected in towns and cities across the country.
Many hospitals and clinics were limited to essential services. The stoppage led to the closure of about 40 Portuguese embassies and consulates overseas.
Ports and shipyards were also affected. Pedro Passos Coelho, Portugal’s centre-right prime minister, said on Wednesday that a fall in exports in the third quarter was “largely due” to a separate longstanding strike by port workers.
Speaking at the reopening of a sausage factory damaged by fire, Mr Passos Coelho said the country as a whole was also engaged in an “intense struggle” to overcome difficulties. Praising those who made an effort to go to work or continue to look for a job despite the strike, he called for “as much political and social consensus as possible”.
However, the participation in the strike by a number of small shopkeepers and family businesses signalled that a previous broad consensus in Portugal over the need for austerity was growing fragile.
Several business leaders, including figures close to the government, have joined unions and opposition parties in pressing Mr Passos Coelho to ease austerity by asking international lenders for more time to meet deficit-reduction targets and to cut the interest rates Lisbon pays on rescue funds.
Spanish unions claimed 80 per cent of the workforce was participating in the strike. Parts of the public transport system in Madrid were running on minimum service, while most small shops in the city’s central commercial districts closed their doors, with only some large department stores remaining open for business.
Unions in Greece and Italy have planned work stoppages of several hours, while marches and demonstrations are scheduled in France and elsewhere. Protests took place in about 100 Italian towns and cities, with groups of workers and students blocking most of Rome’s main roads as they rallied.
Three policemen were wounded during a clash with students throwing stones as they marched to parliament in the capital.
A student in the industrial city of Turin in northern Italy was quoted as saying: “We are in the streets to protest against the law that cuts funds to public schools… How can we go on, we don’t even have enough desks in our school?”
Cgil, Italy’s largest trade union federation, staged its main protest in the small central town of Terni, starting from the plant of ThyssenKrupp, the German steelmaker, which intends stopping production in the site.
“In the last year what has been done [by government] burdens workers in the country and hits the weakest, who continue to become even poorer. Labour and social policies are paying the highest price for the actions of the government,” Susanna Camusso, secretary general of Cgil, told Sky television.
Labouring under the budget cuts imposed as part of EU rescue packages, the eurozone’s bailed-out members led the worst fall in the single currency bloc’s industrial production in more than three years.
Divisions between international creditors over how strictly to impose austerity conditions on rescued states spilled into the open this week when the International Monetary Fund and EU leaders publicly clashed on whether to relax Greece’s timetable for budget targets.
The division over bailout terms – seen as a bellwether for Europe’s response to its debt crisis – is expected to influence the treatment of Ireland and Portugal and comes as Spain is widely expected to seek assistance in funding its debts.
Bono warns fiscal cuts will hurt the world’s poor
The lead singer of Irish band U2 says spending cuts that hit in January would devastate programs to help the world’s poor, leading to more than 60,000 deaths.
Musician and activist Bono speaks during a discussion on ending poverty on Nov. 14, 2012.
“There’s real jeopardy,” Bono said Wednesday at a discussion at the World Bank with bank President Jim Yong Kim. “I’m still terrified of people wrestling the wheel of this mad lorry that they’re driving off the cliff.”
Sequestration — a package of automatic spending cuts set in motion last year — would slash funding for U.S. programs grouped in the federal budget as “international affairs” by 8.2%, or $4.7 billion, in the current fiscal year. Bono said that includes about $2 billion from anti-poverty programs, such as treatment for HIV/AIDS, on which he focuses at his anti-poverty advocacy group, ONE.
“We know there’s going to be cuts,” he said. “We understand that. But not cuts that cost lives.”
Bono spent Tuesday making the rounds in Washington to press leaders in both parties to avoid going over the fiscal cliff and protect antipoverty programs. He met with Vice President Joe Biden and other White House officials, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and numerous other senior lawmakers.
He said Wednesday he’s “at least encouraged by the commitment” from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to supporting antipoverty programs included in the foreign-aid budget, which accounts for less than 1% of the overall federal budget.
Bono cited data from the American Foundation for AIDS Research that budget sequestration would eliminate HIV/AIDS treatment for 276,500 people and could lead to 63,000 more AIDS-related deaths and 124,000 more children becoming orphans. The group also estimates as many as 11,000 more deaths from tuberculosis and 6,500 additional deaths from malaria due to the cuts. (Sequestration would also cut funding to other development programs, including for nutrition and food security.)
At the event Wednesday, Bono praised the World Bank’s efforts to accelerate reductions in extreme poverty around the world. Dr. Kim and other development officials maintain that providing aid for health, education and social-protection programs helps create more emerging economies, like the ones in Latin America, Asia and Africa that have held up global economic growth in the past five years. “For us to pull back now I think has to be understood as undermining the foundations of future growth of the global economy,” Dr. Kim said.
Bono put it more simply: Without recent growth from emerging countries, “we would be f—–,” he said, whispering that last word. “We owe them. The emerging markets are keeping us all afloat.”
“The best medicine to keep us afloat is more countries moving from being LDCs [least-developed countries] to being middle-income countries,” he said.
Alcohol and drug addiction among Irish doctors & the medical profession on the increase
Alcohol and drug addiction is on the increase among doctors, with more than 70 per cent who attended a Medical Council health committee suffering addiction problems, a Medical Council annual conference was told yesterday.
Dr Richard Brennan, chairman of the Medical Council health subcommittee, said 21 of the 35 doctors referred to the committee this year were suffering from addictions. A further three doctors had addictions plus mental disability and one had an addiction and a physical disability.
The health subcommittee provides support and also monitors doctors with physical or mental disability. Doctors can be referred to it by Medical Council fitness-to-practise committees or by third parties, or can self-refer.
Nine of the doctors seen by the committee last year had a mental disability, Dr Brennan said, and one had a neurological disability. Nearly half of those with addictions were misusing drugs, four had alcohol problems and eight had drugs and alcohol problems.
Dr Brennan said in the past there was a 50/50 division between referred doctors with mental illness and those with addictions. However, they were now seeing more “addictions and substance abuses”.
Some 16 of the doctors who attended were GPs, 16 were junior doctors and three were consultants. Many young doctors found difficulties moving from student to a role with responsibility, he said, and they may also have experienced traumas they were not prepared for such as a patient dying in their care. “We need to make sure our curriculum prepares doctors for emotionally difficult consultations.”
Dr Íde Delargy, chairwoman of the Sick Doctors’ Scheme, which provides healthcare and support for doctors with substance misuse problems, said demands on doctors can be relentless. They can lead to burnout, stress and depression.
Doctors, perhaps with additional stressors or vulnerabilities, might initially “drift into substances” to self-medicate which could lead to addiction.
A survey for the Medical Council by Behaviours and Attitudes Ltd was also presented, finding doctors were the most trusted professionals in Ireland.
