Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

An Irish Times exit poll shows Coalition are well short of overall majority

SIGNIFICANT RECOVERY FOR FIANNA FÁIL AND GAINS FOR SINN FÉIN AND SMALLER PARTIES, IPSOS MRBI SURVEY FINDS

   

THE COALITION PARTIES HAVE FALLEN FAR SHORT OF AN OVERALL MAJORITY IN THE NEXT DÁIL, ACCORDING TO AN EXIT POLL CONDUCTED FOR THE IRISH TIMES BY IPSOS, MRBI.

Fine Gael support has slumped from 36.1% in the last general election to only 26.1% a far worse result than the party anticipated at any stage of the campaign.

The poll indicates the Labour Party received just under 8% support, far behind the 19.5% it achieved at the 2011 general election.

The Coalition parties did not benefit from a swing in the final days of the campaign, according to the poll..

Fianna Fáil appears to have made a significant recovery since the last election and is could almost double its number of Dáil seats.

Support for Sinn Féin has increased since 2011. There are also big gains for Independents and smaller parties.

The poll indicates the parties’ vote shares to be: Fine Gael 26.1%; Labour 7.8%; Fianna Fáil 22.9%; Sinn Féin 14.9%; AAA-PBP 3.6%; Greens 3.5%; Social Democrats 2.8%; Renua 2.6%; and Independents 16.1%.

At the last general election in 2011, Fianna Fáil took 17% of the first preference vote and Sinn Féin 10%.

In Dublin, Fine Gael has emerged as the largest party with 25.7% of the vote, followed by Sinn Féin with 15.4%, according to the poll. Fianna Fáil is on 14.6%, Labour 9.4% and others received 34.9%.

The 2016 General Election Exit Poll was conducted exclusively on behalf of The Irish Times by Ipsos MRBI, among a national sample of 5,260 voters at 200 polling stations throughout all constituencies in the Republic of Ireland.

Voters were randomly selected to self-complete a mock ballot paper on exiting the polling station. The accuracy level is estimated to be approximately plus or minus 1.2%.

If the final result is close to the exit poll predictions, the Fine Gael/-Labour Coalition will be far short of the numbers required to form a majority government.

Prediction

The complexity of the single transferrable vote system makes it difficult to provide an accurate prediction of the number of seats which will be won by the various parties .

At the last election Fine Gael got a seat bonus of 10%. In the unlikely event of a similar seat bonus this time, it would end up with 56 seats. But a more likely seat bonus of 5% would give the party 50 seats. The new Dáil has 158 seats, eight fewer than in the last one.

It is even more difficult to predict the number of seats the Labour Party will win if it takes just under 8% of the vote. It is likely to be in the range of eight to 12.

One thing that could benefit the party is that the poll indicates very strong transfers from Fine Gael to Labour.

Fianna Fáil, on 23%, should come close to, or even surpass, its target of 40 seats, which would represent a remarkable achievement for party leader Micheál Martin.

Sinn Féin on 14.9% also looks like it could make reasonable gains. Even with no seat bonus, the party should be able to break into the 20s range.

At the dissolution of the last Dáil, Fine Gael had 67 seats, Labour 33, Fianna Fáil 21 and Sinn Féin 14.

Disappointment

The strong performance of smaller parties and Independents confirms the trend evidenced in The Irish Times polls going back over the past 18 months.

The poll results will come as a severe disappointment for both Government parties even though they are very close to the figures they have been getting inIrish Times polls for the past year or so.

The expectation in the Coalition parties was that they would gain support as the election got closer and voters weighed up the merits of stability versus change.

That message did not resonate with the voters and the outcome will generate uncertainty about who can form the next government.

The turnout in the election appears to be down on the 70% figure achieved in 2011. Party sources estimated it might be about 65%.

Turnout was described as “uneven” in the run-up to the polls closing, with politicians claiming many people were still undecided up to the last moment.

The counting of votes begins at 9am today, with the first counts expected to be announced in the late afternoon.

Property tax take should rise with house prices

THE EU SAYS

Bailout reforms deemed not enough to remedy all problems resulting from crash

    

The European Commission report said potential new entrants into the mortgage market were probably deterred by the still-high level of non-performing loans and issues with access to property collateral underlying home loans.

The European Commission has strongly criticised the Government’s decision to suspend property tax revaluations, as it underlines a litany of vulnerabilities in the recovering Irish economy.

In an 85-page report published at 10pm yesterday – just as polling closed in the general election – the EU executive also suggested the property tax could be extended to non-agricultural land.

After an election campaign dominated by debate on promised cuts on taxes on income, the commission’s report said the tax wedge on labour in Ireland – the amount taken in taxation – was second-lowest in the EU. Revenue from VAT was also low compared to other member states, it added.

Non-performing loans

Turning to high variable-rate mortgage charges, the report said potential new entrants into the mortgage market were probably deterred by the still-high level of non-performing loans and issues with access to property collateral underlying home loans.

The report on Ireland, which is a regular assessment published each February, said reforms undertaken in the bailout programme had not been sufficient to tackle all the legacy issues from the crash.

“These issues continue to represent vulnerabilities and imbalances that affect the economy, hinder Ireland’s investment potential and pose challenges to macroeconomic policymaking,” it said.

These observations were made even as the commission said Ireland’s “remarkable” economic rebound had broadened and gained momentum in the last two years.

In relation to the property tax, the commission said the yield remained below the EU average.

“A revaluation of self-assessed property values used to calculate local property tax liabilities was initially planned for 2016, but has been delayed by three years to November 2019,” it said.

“This decision represents a lost opportunity to broaden the tax base as residential property prices have increased substantially since the first self-assessment in 2013.”

An increase in the share of revenue from the property tax would reduce the cyclical sensitivity of government revenues and encourage more efficient allocation of land resources, the commission said.

Housing supply

“Extending the coverage to adjacent non-agricultural land would broaden the tax base and improve the efficiency of land use. The latter point may pertinent given current housing supply constraints,” it added.

On housing, the report said demand exceeds supply by a wide margin in major urban areas.

Vulnerabilities persist as Ireland’s debt-to-GDP ratio remained high, it said. While financial sector vulnerabilities were in decline, profitability remained weak. Capital positions were sound but challenges remain as banks adapt to new prudential rules.

“Non-performing loans fell further with the recovery but the ratio remains among the highest in the euro area.”

Unemployment had fallen below the EU average but long-term unemployment and the low work intensity of households remained a matter of concern, the commission said.

“Overall, the welfare system has worked well to contain the effects of the crisis on poverty and inequality, but barriers to inclusive growth remain.

“In particular, concerns persist about inactivity traps for certain households, the high proportion of people living in households with very low work intensity, child poverty and the lack of access to affordable, full time and quality childcare.”

Dunne’s Stores acquisition of meat businesses cleared by competition authority

    

TIPPERARY BUTCHER PAT WHLEAN (CENTRE PHOTO), OF JAMES WHELAN BUTCHERS IN CLONMEL.

The deal first notified to the Consumer & Competition authority in January has been cleared to go ahead.

Dunnes Stores acquisition of two meat wholesale businesses, Whelan Food & Meat Processors Ltd and Tipperary Sustainable Food Company Ltd, has been cleared by the Competition & Consumer Authority. The proposed deal was first notified to the competition authority just over a month ago.

The meat wholesale businesses that Dunnes has acquired are owned by well-known Tipperary butcher Pat Whelan. The transaction is only for the two wholesale businesses and not the chain of well-known butcher stores operated by Whelan.

Both businesses are located in Co Tipperary and described as operating in the retail sale of meat and related products. The deal is private, with no figures disclosed.

Fifth generation

Whelan Food & Meat Processors was established in 2001 with an address at Clonmel, Co Tipperary. The second business, Tipperary Sustainable Food Company Ltd, was set up in 2008 and also has an address in Clonmel.

The latest accounts filed for Tipperary Sustainable Food Company show the business made profits of more than €280,000 in 2014.

Pat Whelan, a director of both businesses, is a fifth-generation butcher who also operates a chain of high-end butcher stores in Rathcoole and Monkstown in Dublin, Kilmacanogue near Bray in Wicklow, and Clonmel in Co Tipperary. This chain of butcher stores is not part of the deal.

Whelan Butchers and its beef dripping product were winners of the supreme award for the best food product in the UK and Ireland at the 2015 Guild of Fine Food Awards in London.

Dunnes Stores primary supplier of meat is Martin Jennings Wholesale in Co Mayo.

Penguins on a treadmill: what can we learn from the study?

STUDY FINDS FAT PENGUINS FALL OVER MORE THAN SLIMMER PENGUINS. AND THEY CHEAT

    

A University of London study using a treadmill shows that fat King penguins fall over more often than slim ones but carrying a bit of extra weight comes with an important advantage when it comes to reproduction, the biomechanics researchers say.

Fat king penguins are unsteady on their feet while waddling compared to their slimmer counterparts, making them an easier catch for predators (or pesky scientists).

A UK research team discovered this by simply travelling to the subantarctic region of Antarctica, catching 10 male king penguins and putting them on a treadmill. Okay, it wasn’t quite as simple as that but it does mean we can watch penguins on a treadmill.

The team, led by Astrid Willener from the University of Roehampton, was studying the biomechanics of the waddle of the king penguin, which can grow up to 1m tall and up to 16kg, making it the second largest species of penguin behind the emperor.

They captured 10 males who were in courtship and weighed more than 12kg near the shoreline at the edge of a colony. The penguins, serial monogamists, have the longest breeding cycle of all the penguin species – 14 to 16 months – and produce just one chick per cycle. Anyone who has seen March of the Penguins knows that caring for a penguin egg requires enduring an intensely long fast, so it’s crucial that parents have enough fat to keep them going.

The captured penguins, who were kept beside the colony for two weeks, received two training sessions of 10 minutes to get used to walking on the treadmill. Then they were filmed at a speed of 1.4km/hr before and after a 14-day fast (fasting for periods of up to one month is normal for king penguins and researchers checked the critical body mass of the birds to be sure that they were not losing body mass too fast during the study).

The posture – leaning and waddling – of the penguins while walking was then determined by the researchers. To quantify the waddling, the amplitude of peak left and right leaning was calculated.

It wasn’t all simple though. Some of the penguins – the larger individuals – found ways to cheat the system.

“ Sometimes the penguins were lazy and ‘water-skied’ on the treadmill by leaning their back on the back wall of the treadmill. That is obviously not good for the data collection,” Willener told the Guardian.

In the end the researchers found that although the penguins waddled with more agility at a lower weight, they had nonetheless adapted well to be able to handle waddling while heavier, even if they were not as efficient and less stable.

And packing on the pounds did give the big guys an important advantage when it comes to reproduction, the study, which was in the online journal PLoS One, found.

“The weight gain is an adaptive mechanism for them to survive their fast while reproducing and taking care of the egg,” said Willener. “But it is a trade-off between putting on weight to fast longer, in case there is a delay in finding a penguin partner to mate with, and still being able to walk, because if they can’t walk steady, they fall and will be spotted and eaten alive by predators.” Luckily walking isn’t their primary travel mode.

Willener hopes the findings will help in efforts to better understand, and protect the species.

The scientists were careful to point out that the video of its chubby penguin has been sped up, so it appears to be running faster than it did in reality. And, they clarify, no penguins were pushed over during the process.

So, you get to watch penguins on a treadmill and relax in the knowledge that it’s not only humans who put on weight when they have got a new girlfriend.

A view of the Milky Way like you have never seen before

  

Here’s a view of the Milky Way galaxy like you’ve never seen before.

https://youtu.be/Ip3YHk0gu0I   This video takes a close look at a new image of the Milky Way released to mark the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy.

The Atacama Pathfinder Experiment telescope in Chile (APEX for short) captured this super-panoramic image of our home galaxy, mapping the full view of the galactic plane as seen from the Southern Hemisphere in unprecedented detail.

The 40-foot telescope views the sky in sub-millimeter wavelengths, which are between infrared light and radio waves and are invisible to the eye. That allows astronomers to observe the coldest regions of the universe, where gas and dust are only a few tens of degrees above absolute zero, as well as the regions where stars are born.

In the image, the APEX telescope’s observations appear in red, with some data from theEuropean Space Agency’s Planck satellite in fainter red. The blue parts of the image show shorter infrared light captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

The European Southern Observatory released the map to celebrate the completion of the APEX Telescope Large Area Survey of the Galaxy project. The image spans an area of sky 140 degrees long by 3 degrees wide — four times larger than the project’s first map.  

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.