Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Complacency, arrogance and back-slapping on recovery ignores the reality for Ireland

  

As the ingredients of an economic recovery continue to take hold in Ireland, the risk of complacency and arrogance looms large.

These attributes plagued Ireland as the Celtic Tiger roamed the land.

Ensuring such attitudes do not resurface is almost as important as managing the recovery itself.

It is odd to be writing about ways of maintaining some balance while economic momentum builds.

It is a short six years since all of us were in the depths of depression as waves of awful economic data crashed over us.

Aside from an imploding banking system, we had to contend with a collapsed and frozen property market.

Weak global economics compounded our problems given a dependence on international trade in goods and services. On top of that, emigration was in full swing, whipping out of our society young, educated citizens.

These conditions seem almost like a bad but distant dream in the middle of 2015. Exuberance abounds all round. Aside from headline economic data showing expansion, there is evidence of jobs growth, a recovery of residential and commercial property prices, and rising employment.

Public pay cuts have bottomed out and increases, particularly for lower- income workers, are likely as an election year looms. Moreover, confidence surveys point to increased levels of investment which, in turn, should sustain the development of the economy in a positive direction.

Against this backdrop, it would be easy to conclude we are a nation of geniuses at tackling economic crises. While major sacrifices were undoubtedly made in the domestic arena, it would be remiss to ignore the assistance provided by a number of sources.

The ECB, for example, through its quantitative easing programme, is showering monetary stimulus on Ireland through liquidity and ultra-low interest rates. This is like a river of money running through every crevice of the economy.

Companies are getting lower interest rates, the State is borrowing at record low interest rates and personal borrowers are experiencing a lower cost of money too.

A secondary effect of the ECB action is to depress the euro, a currency move that has uniquely helpful outcomes for Ireland. Against sterling and the dollar, in particular, the low euro is making Ireland more competitive at a time when imported inflation is subdued.

Another helpful hand to the economy is the ongoing growth in the UK and US. These are powerhouses for Ireland, given their deep trade connections, so positive economic momentum in these huge economies helps stimulate imports from Ireland and investment.

The latter point is especially pronounced among US multinational companies that appear to be making daily job announcements in this country.

None of these external stimulants should be taken for granted. All of them will ebb and flow over coming years. Central banks, on both sides of the Atlantic, will eventually curb quantitative easing and lift interest rates.

Economic growth in the UK and US will inevitably slow down. Exchange rates are structurally volatile and will swing around to levels unhelpful to Irish commerce.

Thinking through those future scenarios is an essential factor when policymakers and politicians plot the next moves in the Irish economy.

Staying competitive with labour and operating costs, driving the national debt to sustainable levels and keeping in check our enthusiasm about the nascent recovery are essential if a repeat of past excesses is to be avoided.

Getting such a thought process into the political system is extremely difficult in a parliamentary system anchored around proportional representation.

The temptation in government to accelerate decisions that support short-term popularity is large while opposition parties will inevitably promise actions that tap the momentum in Exchequer finances. It will be another test of our democracy and political leadership over the next year.

Tax revenue comes in €734m ahead of target

 

Exchequer returns €1.69bn better that same period in 2014

New exchequer figures released on Wednesday by the Department of Finance show increased revenues from each of the major tax heads, although excise and stamp duty returns last month came in below target.

Tax revenue in the first five months of the year came in €734 million ahead of target as the Government saw returns to the end of May rise to €17.29 billion, €1.69 billion better than in the same period in 2014.

Exchequer figures released on Wednesday by the Department of Finance show increased revenues from each of the major tax heads, although excise and stamp duty returns last month came in below target.

The figures show that the Government’s voted expenditure reached €17.03 billion in the period, €306 million less than forecast on budget day and €165 million less than in 2014.

Joan our Tánaiste wants people to tweet positive ideas to her?

    

The Tánaiste Joan Burton has launched a new online campaign to hear what voters want from the Government.

Ms Burton wants people to tweet using the hashtag #TalkToJoan.

She says she wants suggestions on where the Government should go from here, with unemployment now below 10%.

However, she says she is prepared for criticism, and she will only pay heed to constructive comments.

She said: “Well, we have, and I think most parties in Ireland experience the so-called keyboard warriors, and I think we are all used to reading an amount of that comment.

“I am really concentrating on people who have positive ideas.”

How to prevent mental health problems?

 

Begin at the beginning with infants and toddlers

A new report recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows a downward trajectory in severe mental health issues for children between the ages of 6 and 17. On the surface, this is good news. Yet on the flip side, the study also reveals a troubling pattern of young people without access to mental health treatments from which they can truly benefit.

Lost in the narrative completely are the youngest set of children specifically infants and toddlers. With preschool expulsion rates at more than three times the expulsion rate of students in kindergarten through 12th grade, it’s clear that the mental health needs of infants and toddlers can no longer be overlooked. It’s time we took a serious look at infant and early childhood mental health and strategies to prevent mental health problems before they start.

Consider the experience of one mum and her child care provider:

Christine arrived at her sons’ child care center feeling anxious. The child care director had asked Christine to meet with the center’s “social-emotional” consultant. The consultant, Mr. Lee, shared that her boys’ teacher wanted to build a good relationship with the boys and needed some help understanding how to do it. The teacher wanted them to be safe and happy and felt her efforts were just not working.

Mr. Lee explained that his job was to support everyone working together to figure out what the boys were trying say through their behavior. Mr. Lee asked Christine some difficult yet thoughtful questions about what her boys were going through and why they might be acting out. Christine was able to reflect on the fighting had they had recently seen and heard between herself and their dad. Christine, Mr. Lee and the boys’ teacher met every week to share thoughts and ideas for the boys. The teacher was able to spend some more one-on-one time with the boys, and Christine was able to talk with her sons about what they were seeing and hearing at home. Christine felt not only a sense of safety with this team who supported her and her children, but also hope – something that had not been there in a long time.

Christine’s sons might have been just another statistic in the preschool expulsion scenario. But thanks to targeted and proven models designed to address underlying issues that drive certain behaviors, she and her sons benefited from services and techniques designed specifically to meet their particular needs.

It is estimated that between 9.5 percent and 14.2 percent of children age birth to 5 experience an emotional or behavioral disturbance. This means that the many people who interact with young children on a daily basis play an important role to play in helping children feel safe, secure, and cared for. Most importantly, when children are struggling with social-emotional challenges, they can ensure that these issues are identified as early as possible – ideally within the first three years of life. Research demonstrates that early prevention and treatment of mental health disorders is much more beneficial and cost-effective early in life, rather than attempting to mitigate their effects on health and learning later in life.

So how do we bolster positive mental health in young children and ensure that challenges are detected early? The key is to integrate mental health prevention services into the settings where children spend their time — at home, child care or the doctor’s office. Here is how we can ensure this happens:

• Educate parents and caregivers about social and emotional development. Parents and caregivers know their own child best. They are often the first to notice if their young child’s behaviors, moods, or intensity are different than usual.
• When mental health concerns exist for young children, link parents to early intervention programs in the community that are adequately prepared to screen for and treat social-emotional difficulties in a two-generation, dyadic fashion. Engage parents as partners in the intervention effort since therapists may spend an hour with the child each week, but parents are there day-in and day-out.
• Screen parents for depression. Parents who are experiencing depression may be unable to provide their children with the responsive care they need to feel safe, secure, and loved. Supporting parents’ mental health is another way of supporting young children’s mental health.
• Help pediatricians support infant and early childhood mental health. A child’s pediatrician is often the first person a parent turns to when their child is physically sick and he or she should also be a key resource when a parent is worried about their young child’s mental health. Programs such as Healthy Steps help pediatricians be that resource.
• Ensure that child care providers are prepared to promote and support healthy social and emotional development. Second only to immediate family, child care is the setting in which early childhood development unfolds. It is critical that child care providers are knowledgeable regarding early childhood mental health so that they are able to support young children’s social and emotional development and address challenging behavior in a positive manner.
• Integrate mental health prevention strategies into other programs that serve young children and their families. Home visiting programs match at-risk parents and their children with trained providers such as nurses, social workers or paraprofessionals who met regularly with the families through home visits to provide support and education. Home visiting programs across the country are integrating mental health prevention strategies into their programs and linking children and families with needed services.
• Implement early child care mental health consultation and other promotion/prevention models. Project LAUNCH, a federal program that aims to promote the wellness of young children birth to 8 by addressing the physical, social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral aspects of their development, has sites throughout the country which demonstrate a variety of effective early child care mental health consultation and other promotion/prevention models.

Preventing mental health problems means starting in the earliest years of life to promote healthy social and emotional development. Children begin to learn important life skills in infancy, skills like communicating their needs, expressing and not being overwhelmed by their emotions, building self-confidence, making friends and getting along with others. The key to preventing mental health problems is to identify and address concerns as soon as possible, and to support those who surround young children.

There are ways to identify mental health problems in young children, and to effectively treat them. Parents, pediatricians, home visitors and child care providers can be the “first responders” to mental health concerns. Catching problems early, and intervening before they become more serious, will provide the best chance of helping all young children succeed and lead healthy, happy lives.

Scientists inch closer to precisely weighing Milky Way

    

Researchers in the US have determined the mass of the Milky Way to be 210 billion times the mass of the Sun with an uncertainty of only 20%.

The study used streams produced by certain stars and statistical tools applied by internet search engines to rank websites to measure the weigh our galaxy. The researchers at Columbia University decided to give the Milky Way a more precise physical checkup as our home galaxy’s precise weight is still unknown.

“Such measurements have been tried before with different streams, but the results were always quite ambiguous,” said study co-author professor Kathryn Johnston.

“Our new measurement breaks these ambiguities,” Johnston said.

The Milky Way consists of roughly 100 billion stars that form a huge stellar disk with a diameter of 100-200 thousand light years. The Sun is part of this structure, hence, when we look into the sky, we look right into a gigantic disk of stars.

The vast number of stars and the huge extent on the sky make it hard to measure fundamental quantities for the Milky Way, such as its weight. In this study, the researchers used stars outside this disk, which orbit around the Milky Way in a stream-like structure, to weigh the Milky Way to high precision.

The team demonstrates that such streams, produced by dissolving globular clusters, can be used to measure not only the weight of our Galaxy, but can also be exploited as yardsticks to determine the location of the Sun within the Milky Way.

“Globular clusters are compact groups of thousands to several millions of stars that were born together when the universe was still very young,” said lead researcher Andreas Kupper.

The researchers used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which scanned the sky of the Northern Hemisphere for about 10 years to create a comprehensive catalog of stars in the sky.

From the improved precision of Milky Way weight, the scientists hope to learn about the formation and composition of our home galaxy, and to understand how the Milky Way compares with other galaxies in the Universe.    

News Ireland daily BLOG update by Donie

NAMA chief says Ireland's property crash is now over

 

The property crash is now officially over in Ireland and that’s according to NAMA chairman Frank Daly.

House prices, which went on a freefall after the heady heights of the boom, are now rising steadily once again.

And now the head of the National Asset Management Agency, tasked with acquiring ‘bad’ property loans, says that we are back on track once again.

Frank Daly told a business breakfast briefing in Cork that the recovery is occurring quickly in Dublin in particular.

And he said that he expected the recovery will spread to places such as Cork and then to other parts of the country.

“We are going to see this steady trend of greater confidence returning to the Irish property market,” Mr Daly said.

He added that there will be strong demand for prime properties, and growth in the residential property market.

He also confirmed that NAMA would be funding the construction of up to 4,000 houses over the next few years.

However, he said that there would be no return to the reckless approach of speculating on property during the Celtic Tiger.

Meanwhile, the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) has pledged to create 10,000 jobs as demand for new housing in some urban areas rises.

BOOM: This year is the first time since the height of the property boom that there are reasons to be optimistic, Tom Parlon, CIF director general, says.

“We are expecting to see a strong increase in construction activity during the course of the coming year,” he said

The CIF said building work to the value of €11bn will be carried out in Ireland during the year – up more than one billion euro compared to last year.

“You can see a wide variety of reasons why we expect the industry to grow on a macro level in the next 12 months,” said Mr Parlon.

China buys into Irish recovery “investing in technology firms”

 

IRELAND FINDS NEW FUNDING SOURCE TO BOOST ITS ECONOMY

China has agreed to help fund Ireland’s fast-growing technology firms as the former Celtic Tiger strives to find new sources of financing to kick-start its economic recovery as it emerges from its debt crisis.

Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Friday the sovereign-wealth funds of China and Ireland together will provide $100 million for the purchase of stakes in Irish technology companies, adding that he hoped this would be the first of several such joint-initiatives by the two countries.

The agreement was reached after a memorandum of understanding was signed in March 2012 during a visit by Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny to China.Under the pact, China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign-wealth fund, and Ireland’s national pension fund will between them provide $100 million for a new China Ireland Technology Growth Capital Fund to invest in Irish technology firms. China-based WestSummit Capital and Atlantic Bridge in Dublin will together manage the fund to buy minority stakes in such companies.

In early 2012, China’s president Xi Jinping, who was then the country’s vice president, had traveled to Ireland for a three-day visit, which the Dublin government said at the time was an exceptional vote of confidence in Ireland’s economy.

Asked whether the Chinese government would consider buying Irish government bonds, Mr. Noonan said that he hoped that in time Chinese and other Asian funds would invest in Irish debt.

Ireland slid into a financial crisis when its property market collapsed six years ago, wrecking its banks. The country last month formally exited its 2010 bailout with the European Union and International Monetary Fund and now plans to fully fund itself via international bond markets.

The government says the country is on the mend, but it needs the economy to grow strongly in the coming years, if it is to reduce its high level of public debt, a legacy of the country’s crisis.

Excercise for a fraction of the time regularly gives better & faster results

  

Many of us have been following the example of Jennifer, Madonna and Gwyneth, sweating it out for hours in the gym, but Peta Bee says it takes just a matter of minutes each day to make a difference to your weight and shape.

Take a fresh look at your workout routine with new kid on the block,

Fast Exercise.

I have been writing about fitness, I have witnessed every conceivable workout drift in and out of popularity. Until now, there has been one constant, one underlying principle of the fitness industry that was never doubted: the more time you exercised, the better. 
Only people who dedicated themselves to lengthy workouts could expect their body fat to plummet, their muscles to become exquisitely defined.

Tracey Anderson, trainer to actresses Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Lopez, said she expects devotees of her method to exercise for 90 minutes a day.

Madonna set the benchmark higher, reportedly exercising for two hours a day with her trainer. If you wanted an athletic-looking body, then you needed to make an Olympian effort.

That was until the discovery of HIT, or high-intensity training, the concept that exercise need only last a fraction of the traditional time.

In recent years, countless studies by sports scientists have spurned the biggest workout trend of the last two decades.

Now, wherever you work-out, even the most diligent exercisers are asking not how much they should do, but how little exercise they can get away with.

There is a growing realisation — among coaches, personal trainers, gym owners, and anyone with a hint of an interest in fitness — that you can make huge differences to your weight and health in minutes per day. It was the scientific proof that it works that led BBC Horizon TV presenter, Dr Michael Mosley, and myself to write the book, Fast Exercise.

Two years ago, while filming an episode, Dr Mosley — a self-confessed sloth — had been concerned that his risk of diabetes was elevated due to a genetic vulnerability. Tests showed that, despite being relatively slim, his blood-glucose levels were borderline diabetic.

He began fasting two days a week (the principle behind the bestselling book, Fast Diet, which he wrote last year), but was also prescribed a HIT workout by Professor Jamie Timmons, now a researcher at Loughborough University.

This simple regime required Dr Mosley to perform 2 x 20-second flat-out sprints, with plenty of recovery, on an indoor bike three times a week. He was sceptical, but within weeks his weight had dropped, his fitness had improved, and his blood glucose levels were more favourable.

Dr Mosley was convinced that it worked, especially when he stopped HIT for a brief period, in 2012, and his blood glucose levels deteriorated back to their original, risky point.

The scientific evidence is compelling. Scientists have long known that pushing yourself outside your comfort zone, albeit for short periods, is key to fitness progression. Your body expends more calories powering along than it does ambling.

Back in 2005, studies at McMaster University, in Ontario, showed that 30-second bike sprints, for two minutes, led to the same muscle-cell adaptations as two hours of long, steady bike riding. Since then, dozens of research papers have concluded that a few minutes of strenuous activity are sufficient to improve various measures of fitness.

To date, most studies on short, high-intensity exercise have been small and carried out predominantly on young men.

However, Dr John Babraj, from the University of Abertay’s School of Social and Health Sciences, and author of The High Intensity Workout, has recently completed a paper on the effects of two of the 60-second workouts on a group of middle-aged people.

His results showed that, on average, people lost 1kg of fat over the two-month trial, even though the subjects were asked not to change their usual diet or activity habits.

Measures of blood-sugar control showed improvements almost matching those of younger people doing more of the same exercise, and the middle-aged subjects also had significantly better cardiovascular function, an important marker of heart disease, after eight weeks.

“This opens up the possibility of one-minute exercise sessions having real importance in older people’s lives,” Babraj says.

Unlike Dr Mosley, I am a lifelong exerciser. But my own fitness levels and enthusiasm for working out have also been transformed by HIT.

My induction to HIT started when I took up athletics at primary school — several times a week, I would sprint-jog my way around a track, a practice I have kept up with varying degrees of effort over the years.

Now, at 45, and a busy working mum, I no longer have the hours a day to dedicate to workouts that I did in my 20s and 30s.

Yes, I want to offset middle-age weight gain and look as good as I can. And I want a body that performs well. But I want it fast.

That is the greatest appeal of HIT to me. It works, in barely the time it takes to get changed into your gym clothes and lace up your trainers.

* Fast Exercise, by Dr Michael Mosley with Peta Bee, Short Books, €11.50.

Just skip the gym
You don’t need to join a gym to get fit. Indeed all of our Fast Fitness and Fast Strength workouts can be done at home or outdoors. There is also a selection of workout times to choose from. Most HIT studies have been done on indoor cycling — Michael’s favourite form of Fast Exercise, (although he’s also partial to stair running).
I prefer running, but the indoor rower and cross trainer, swimming, skipping or walking are all suitable. How long you spend working out is up to you, but choose from the selection of workouts below to get started.

    

Michael’s favourite. Here’s how he does it: 

• 1. Put the kettle on. Get on the exercise bike or rower and do a couple of minutes of gentle exercise to get going. 
•  2. After about two minutes start pedalling fast, cranking up the resistance to a level high enough to cause your thighs to burn after about 15 seconds of a 20 second ‘sprint’. 
•  3. Pedal at a gentle pace for a few more minutes. 
•  4. Repeat the 20 second ‘sprint’ 
•  5. Relax! It’s over. Finish with a couple of minutes gentle cycling.

At work:
You don’t need to wear sports gear to do HIT — you can do it in a suit. Find a staircase. Bound up the stairs and walk down. Repeat as many times as you can in three minutes. As you get fitter, work up to five minutes of stair bounding.

Two-minute sprinter:

From studies at Birmingham and Liverpool’s John Moore Universities, exercise scientists showed that three weekly sessions of two-minute workouts produced similar improvements to five weekly sessions of 40-60 minutes of traditional, steady paced activity.

To do this session, just perform four flat-out 30-second sprints on indoor /outdoor bikes or while running or rowing, interspersed with 4.5 minutes recovery. That’s it.

Four-minute pelter:
This is a bit different because you do it in one go. Norwegian researchers found that a single four-minute burst at a hard pace, three times a week, was enough to boost the health and fitness of previously sedentary middle aged men significantly. At the end of their 10-week trial the men had improved their aerobic capacity by 10% or more, lost a couple of pounds of fat, lowered their blood pressure and had better blood sugar control.

Three-minute skip:
Warm up, skip as fast as you can for 60 seconds, rest for two minutes and repeat twice more. Cool down.

80-second power walk:
Walk or jog for three minutes at a moderate pace. Then ‘sprint’ for 20 seconds (at a speed that makes your thighs burn after 15 seconds). Revert to moderate pace for 2 minutes and repeat three times. Cool down.

Choroideremia Blindness new gene therapy means I don’t trip over things any more

   

Researchers in Oxford England say they have improved the vision of patients that would otherwise have gone blind.

BBC News reported the start of the trial two years ago – the results of which have now been published in the Lancet.

The so-called gene therapy is for a rare form of blindness called Choroideremia, but the doctors say it could potentially be used to treat the more common form of age-related blindness which affects 300,000 people in the UK and millions across the world.

Jonathan Wyatt was on the verge of losing his sight when he received the treatment two years ago. He told BBC News how his vision has improved.

Mystery object spotted  on moon asks if this an alien structure or a secret human base?

  

A mystery object spotted on the surface of the moon has sent conspiracy theorists into overdrive.

The bizarre wedge-shaped structure with rows of seven light-like dots along its edge appears on the lunar surface.

It was discovered on the Google Moon viewer at coordinates 22042’38.46N and 142034’44.52E.

Speculation has exploded over the images of the anomaly that UFO websites have likened to an alien lunar base or spaceship.

There are also theories that it is an alien spaceship nestled under the dust of the moon or even a secret moon base occupied by humans.

The two-sided, triangular feature was uncovered by paranormal researcher WowForReeel and posted in a new video.

The finder claims to have spotted a similar mystery structure in Antarctica

‘Is is just a weird looking crater? or is it something else?,’ he asks.

‘It is really there, not faked and I have no clue what it is. I found nothing else like it in any of the other craters.’

According to website Tech and Gadget News: ‘The gigantic shape actually looks like the leading edge of an immense, triangular space ship, similar to, so far, super secret stealth aircraft technology, but is much larger than any airplane ever built on Earth.

‘To date, no other feature has ever been discovered which matches this shape on the moon, or any other planet observed by satellite or exploratory rover.

‘The anomaly is so huge, it’s possible it is some sort of moon base used as a facility for storing and launching alien UFO spacecraft.’

The same YouTube user also claims to have found a similar mystery structure on Earth, nestled under the ice in Antarctica.

‘It is also a triangular shape, measuring 125 by 90mtres.

‘It is unique in the area,’ he said.

Google Moon, which works in a similar way to Google Earth, was launched in 2009 on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing.   

Donie's news Ireland BLOG update Sunday

Bill Gates sees his faith in Irish recovery & likes it as bond investments soar

  

Microsoft founder Bill Gates

Microsoft billionaire’s Foundation enjoys Irish success

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates is cashing in after backing Ireland’s ability to bounce back from recession.

The world’s richest man is enjoying massive profits after his foundation bought Irish government bonds.

Reports that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has made a fortune on his bond holdings.

The bonds have rocketed in value as Ireland exits the EU/IMF bailout and met the terms imposed after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger.

The report adds that Gates regained his crown as the world’s richest man last week when the Bloomberg Billionaires index rated his wealth at $78.5bn, up $15.8bn in the last year.

The paper says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation owns nearly $20m worth of Irish bonds.

It outlines that at the end of December 2012, it held close to $7.8m worth of Irish 5.4 government bonds with a maturity of 2025, $6.03m worth of Irish 5 government bonds with a maturity of 2020, and $4.14m worth of Irish 4.5 bonds with a maturity of 2020.

The report says the bonds have been a spectacular investment, returning close to 10 per cent over the last year.

The Bloomberg World Bond Index for 2013 rated Irish bonds as the second-best performing government debt as they generated returns of close to 12 per cent for investors.

US investor Franklin Templeton, led by renowned trader, Michael Hasenstab, have also bet heavily on the Irish recovery.

The paper says the Gates investment in Irish government bonds is bigger than its holdings in gilts from other countries.

The foundation lists a $14.5m holding in British government bonds, over $12m in French bonds, $4m in Swedish government bonds and $12.7m in New Zealand government bonds.

Gates has also seen shareholdings in seven Irish public companies soar with those shareholdings are now worth over €23m.

The Gates Foundation owns 61.6 million shares in Bank of Ireland, worth around €18.5m as well as shares in bookmaker firm Paddy Power.

Gates was also a bondholder in Anglo Irish Bank, Irish Nationwide Building Society, Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks, according to filings obtained by the Sunday Independent.

The documents showed that the Gates Foundation trust held almost €27m worth of bonds in Irish banks at the tail end of 2006. This included 7.29 million bonds in Anglo Irish and associated entities, which it valued at nearly €8.15m.

The Gates Foundation trust held Irish bank bonds worth €16m at the end of 2007 but latest filings reveal that it no longer holds any bonds in Irish banks.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is the largest private endowment fund in the world, with about €28bn in asset earmarked for good causes.

Bad old days and transparency is not water under the bridge for Ireland yet?

  

Reform and accountability have dominated the nation’s attention recently. We’ve had the Central Remedial Clinic scandal, the City of Culture fracas, the debate about civil service accountability — and now Irish Water’s disclosure that it spent almost €50m on consultants alone in its first year of operation and hired some of these consultants into their organisation.

These stories paint pictures of the kind of behaviour most of us hoped, if not quite believed, were behind us as a country.

Some of the commentary, in particular contrasting Irish Water’s consultant spending with possible cuts in disability allowances, for example, has been exaggerated.

The usual political games are being played following the revelation of just how much this company has cost, and it is clear the public needs to be told what the consultants were doing, and judge whether the money was well spent. But the money has been spent. It’s gone.

Unless the Public Accounts Committee or another body finds otherwise, we must assume these contracts were awarded following a tendering process, and after they are satisfied, oversight of the money has been provided by the executives of the company in a transparent manner, then, essentially, that’s that.

We do need a sense of scale here. Irish Water is a massive endeavour, on the order of €2bn or so.

Set against this scale, €50m, about one-40th of the total company, is not that significant.

The task Irish Water is set is to agglomerate the functions of 34 local authorities very, very slowly over time into one water management company. Reform is clearly not on many people’s agendas in this process.

As reported in December 2013 by Colm McCarthy, local authorities will not have to transfer all of the functions to Irish Water until 2025.

The charges for water start at the end of 2014, however. That pace of reform is clearly not what most people voted for in 2011.

Post-bailout Ireland just might be coming to terms with some of the damaging institutions and practices that led us into the property bubble and collapse, but that doesn’t mean we know what to with them.

The Irish love of quango formation hasn’t stopped since the first days of the Celtic Tiger.

Quangos present a problem for economists. Quangos are free to increase their costs essentially at will, and so have very little drive for efficiency. Because they occupy near monopoly status — remember the threatened ESBstrike on December 16? — quangos can always push increased costs on to the consumer.

And when it comes to water, that consumer would be, well, you.

‘Reform’ is not a policy, nor is it a set of steps to take us from the status quo toward something better.

Using a phrase like “we need reform of institution X” really amounts in practice to saying little more than “we have no idea how to change institution X, but we don’t like how it is working right now. Someone should really do something.”

We elected the Government to reform the Irish policy landscape. With 2014 the only year in which real reform can happen, an articulation of that reform needs to take place now.

Any delay will show the public, and that important subset of the public, the electorate, that the Government is not serious. Electoral carnage will result.

Irish Water should answer its critics. But those critics need to be resourced to discover wrongdoing where it exists, with the powers to directly penalise those who excel only at passing costs on to the taxpayer.

Meanwhile, assessing value for money for the €50m expenditure will be a job to be done by, yes, you guessed it, more consultants!

The Irish republic was to blame for bombs carnage in 1974

SAYS IAN PAISLEY

 

Ian Paisley has effectively accused the then Irish government of provoking the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which claimed the lives of 33 people.

The 87-year-old former Democratic Unionist Party leader declared: “They brought that on themselves” as he revisited the standout moments of his political career for a new documentary on his life.

He said he had been very much shocked by the bombings, which are still the subject of controversy. However, he then continued: “But I mean who brought that on them? — themselves.

“It was their own political leaders, who they had endorsed in their attitude to Northern Ireland. At that time the attitude of the southern government was ridiculous.”

He also described the republican mortar bomb attack which almost killed British prime minister John Major and cabinet ministers in 1991 as “a cracker for the IRA”.

In a series of farewell interviews which were full of surprises, Rev Paisley also said that he had been angered by the events of Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972, when paratroopers shot civilians who, he said, had been protesting within the law. He had been further angered by attempts at a cover-up and was glad to hear the current British prime minister David Cameron eventually “telling the truth”.

In the 40 hours of interviews conducted by veteran Belfast broadcaster Eamonn Mallie, Mr Paisley also caused amazement by conceding that many of the grievances of the 1960s nationalist civil rights movement were justified.

FUNDAMENTALIST: This represents a stunning turnaround for a figure who took to the streets to confront the movement, which he at the time denounced as anti-British, anti-Protestant and as being mostly a front for the IRA.

But today he says the then unionist government was unfair and unjust in refusing to grant the central civil rights demand of one man, one vote. This was unfair, he said forcefully.

“The whole system was wrong,” he declared in his interviews. “It wasn’t one man, one vote. A fair government is that every man has the same power to vote for what he wants.”

He said the system “was not acceptable, not acceptable at all, it wasn’t justice at all”.

Dr Paisley continued: “Those that put their hands to that have to carry some of the blunt and blame for what has happened in our country.

“If you vote down democracy you’re responsible for bringing in anarchy. And they brought in anarchy and they set family against family and friend against friend. It was bad for everybody.”

He insisted, however, that none of this justified the violence of the Troubles, emphasising: “I don’t believe in killing and never have.”

Although he has moderated his views on some issues, he did not deviate from his strongly fundamentalist attitudes.

Mr Mallie put it to him that he had once accused the Queen Mother andPrincess Margaret, who had an audience with the Pope, of “committing spiritual fornication with the Antichrist.”

Dr Paisley responded: “That was the language of Luther and Calvin and Protestantism and I have no apology to make for being a Protestant.”

He stuck to his statement that he was anti-Catholic but said: “I love the poor dupes who are ground down under that system.”

He would not accept that any of his controversial statements over the years had been provocative or that they had made the Troubles worse.

Dr Paisley’s remarks came in the series of interviews to be broadcast by the BBC from next Monday.

In recent years, Dr Paisley has stepped down from the post of Northern Ireland’s first minister and from the leadership of the Free Presbyterian church which he headed for decades.

He is currently in hospital for tests but in the lengthy interviews he showed no sign of any mental deterioration.

Childhood abuse can slow recovery from depression

  

Recovering from depression may take longer if a person was physically abused as a child or had parents with addictions, the results of a new study indicate.

Canadian researchers followed the progress of over 1,100 depressed adults. The participants were followed up every year until remission occurred, for up to 12 years.

“Our findings indicated that most people bounce back. In fact, three-quarters of individuals were no longer depressed after two years,” the team from the University of Toronto said.
However, the study found that some people recovered at different rates and ‘early adversities had far-reaching consequences’.

“The average time to recovery from depression was nine months longer for adults who had been physically abused during their childhood and about five months longer for those whose parents had addiction problems,” the researchers explained.

They emphasised that while many studies have shown that childhood abuse and parental addictions can make people more vulnerable to depression, these findings ‘highlight that these factors also slow the recovery time among those who become depressed’.

Civilisation library set to open in Ireland

    

A new library on the history of civilisation is due to open this week.

One of Ireland’s most unusual libraries is set to open this week – with the world being asked to decide what should be in its collection.

The Library of the History of Civilisation is the brainchild of Frank Kennan, who lives in Roundwood House, a remarkable Palladian villa nestled in the foothills of the Slieve Bloom mountains in Co Laois.

After a year long odyssey trying to step outside the maelstrom of everyday news to discover where the human race was headed, he has come up with around 700 books he believes sums up our journey so far.

The collection was helped by a “shocking number of opinions” from guests who come to stay at the house – saved from ruin by the Irish Georgian Society and taken over by Frank and his wife Rosemary in the 1980s.

“There was no one came into the drawing room and said they were a philosopher, but there were an enormous number of philosophers,” he said.

But now he wants to take it beyond the drawing room, and is asking the wider world to help determine the permanent collection.

Finishing touches are being put on a purpose-built library in one of the old grain stores at the rear of the historic house which will house the books.

The library attempts to map out what French philosopher Voltaire described as the steps by which men passed from barbarism to civilisation, according to Frank.

But he says years of reading and thinking about civilisation and what it meant led him to less than obvious choices for the project.

“It’s easy to say Newton, Einstein, Dante, Shakespeare, these are books we would all agree on, and the Bible and the Koran,” he said.

“But I think in looking in books, I had a sudden realisation that actually everything is involved in civilisation.

“So books on spices show us spices affected our history, and so did salt and pepper – in terms of trade routes, and taxes, and revolutions.”

Frank said there would be little serious argument about the first 300 or 400 books in the collection, but the remainder will constantly change as civilisation itself changes.

Some will become less important and others will become more so.

“The library doesn’t match most people’s ideas of a library. Books don’t usually get thrown out of a library,” he said.

The quest has left him optimistic about civilisation, he says, despite the chance the human race could “wreck it” with the bomb or climate change.

“I’ve become more optimistic the more I read, the more I think about it,” he said.

“An awful lot of people spend their time thinking the world is getting worse, or we’re facing incredible dangers or we’re going in all sorts of directions and none of them mean much.

“But if you know we are on an upward path, it would stop us worrying, stop journalists writing about the terribleness of the world and talking utter rubbish about the good old days.”

The library is to open this week, and the public is being invited to visit or get in touch to offer their opinion on what should be in – and out – of the collection.

Homes evacuated in Guatemala as lava pours from a volcano

 

Lava flowing from the Pacaya volcano near Guatemala City has prompted the evacuation of people living nearest the crater, Guatemala authorities said today.

Alejandro Maldonado, director of the National Office for Disaster Reduction, said lava is flowing down one side of the volcano, but he did not say how many people have been evacuated. Local news media report the number is small so far. The volcano has also been closed to tourists.

The National Institute of Seismology, Volcanology, Meteorology and Hydrology says today’s lava flow in some areas is as large as 600 yards wide and 1.8 miles (3km) long.

The volcano just south of the capital city is also registering small explosions and emitting gas and ash.

Pacaya is one of Guatemala’s most active and picturesque volcanos.