Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Crisis cuts unfairly hurt people at the margins of Irish society, 

Says an UN committee?

 

Committee panel concerned at increase in numbers at-risk of or living in consistent poverty

Cuts imposed during the financial crisis disproportionately hurt the “disadvantaged and marginalised” and must be phased out, a United Nations committee has said.

Cuts imposed during the financial crisis disproportionately hurt the “disadvantaged and marginalised” and must be phased out, a United Nations committee has said.

The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR), which examined Ireland in Geneva earlier this month, published its concluding observations yesterday.

The Government was represented at the hearings in Geneva by a team of 21 senior civil servants led by Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Seán Sherlock. The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission led a group of 12 NGOs and members of civil society. It was the first time Ireland had appeared before the committee since 2002.

The committee said that notwithstanding the unprecedented economic crisis that faced Ireland, the response had been “disproportionately focused on instituting cuts to public expenditure in the areas of housing, social security, health care and education, without altering its tax regime”.

“The austerity measures, which continue to be applied, have had significant adverse impact on the entire population, particularly on disadvantaged and marginalised individuals and groups, in enjoying their economic, social and cultural rights.”

No discrimination

The committee said policies applied during the crisis “must be temporary, covering only the period of the crisis, and they must be necessary and proportionate. They must not result in discrimination and increased inequalities”.

It said austerity measures must be “gradually phased out”, while consideration should be given to reviewing the tax regime “with a view to increasing revenues to restore the precrisis levels of public services and social benefits”.

The committee said it was “concerned at the increase in the number of people living in consistent poverty or at-risk-of-poverty”, particularly children, single-parent families, older people, people with disabilities, Travellers and migrants.

It called on the State to integrate a human rights-based approach into all poverty reduction strategies.

Zero-hour contracts

It noted “disproportionately high rates of unemployment among Travellers, Roma, young people and persons with disabilities”, and called for legislation to strengthen collective bargaining and end low- and zero-hour contracts.

The committee made six recommendations on the housing crisis, including increasing rent supplement, strengthened rights for households in mortgage arrears and taking “all necessary measures to meet the critical needs” of the homeless.

On the situation of asylum seekers, the committee called for improved living conditions in direct provision centres “including through . . . making the private actors accountable for the actions and omissions and address the mental health issues of asylum seekers”.

It also called for an end to the right of schools to discriminate on the basis of religion in their admissions policies.

Irish nursing homes need better support to cope with growth in our ageing population

 

‘Serious issues surrounding the recruitment and retention of nurses are also threatening bed capacity in nursing homes’

‘The latest data shows a decrease in the number of nursing homes operating in Ireland, from 447 in 2010 to 437 in 2014. Despite this there has been a 9 per cent increase in private and voluntary nursing home bed numbers – 20,590 to 22,342.’

Today marks the beginning of Nursing Homes Week 2015, a campaign by Nursing Homes Ireland (NHI) featuring countrywide events and activities celebrating the positivity of nursing home care.

But the rate of increase in Ireland’s ageing population, similar to many countries worldwide, means that as a nation we need to develop a range of policies and services to address the challenges this presents.

An analysis of the demographics in Ireland confirms there is going to be increasing pressure in the area of residential care, but also on the wider health and social care system for older people.

The nursing home sector has a vital part to play. It employs approximately 25,000 people who contribute over €190 million annually to the Exchequer through taxation paid; and we forecast up to 10,000 jobs could be created over the next decade to support potential future growth and development.

However, the latest data shows a decrease in the number of nursing homes operating in Ireland, from 447 in 2010 to 437 in 2014. Despite this there has been a 9 per cent increase in private and voluntary nursing home bed numbers – 20,590 to 22,342.

The figures show that additional capacity is being added by existing providers. And approximately 42 per cent of private and voluntary nursing homes indicate that they are prepared to increase the number of beds in their facilities in the coming year.

However, the current arbitrary system for setting rates through the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) of “local market price” and “county averages” is illogical. If this policy continues, it may stymie current plans and the additional capacity required as well as further development in rural locations based on the current low level of NTPF fees.

The current and future arrangements for the funding and financing of nursing home care must take account of the more acute needs of our ageing population and the actual costs incurred by nursing homes in providing care to people. For example nursing homes that also care for dementia residents require a variable payment plan to match the needs of those residents, as recommended by the Oireachtas Health Committee (July 2014) and the Dementia Services Information and Design Centre (DSIDC – Jan 2015).

The provision of extra beds by existing providers challenges will significantly help future challenges to be met, as the existing operators have the necessary experience and a proven track record in what is a highly regulated market.

But the Department of Health and the Government must address the issue of a “fair price for care” if they wish the private and voluntary nursing home sector to provide those required additional bed numbers . The model of funding must provide a sustainable basis for the delivery of high quality nursing home care and also allow for on-going investment in service development.

Serious issues surrounding the recruitment and retention of nurses are also threatening bed capacity in nursing homes. The HSE Clinical Adaptation Programme must be extended beyond August 2015 to tackle the large number of nurses on the waiting list for placement. The Department of Health must also ensure adequate resourcing of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland to ensure the board can address the current delays in registration of nurses. In this respect there is an urgency for engagement with stakeholders to deliver a workforce plan for the entire health service (public, private and voluntary) that will place the increasing demand for gerontological nursing at its centre.

NHI reiterates its long-standing call for the Department of Health to take the lead in bringing stakeholders around the table through a forum that would advise Government on planning and policy to meet the growing demand for nursing home care.

Private and voluntary nursing homes are uniquely positioned to tackle the challenges, having the necessary experience, knowledge and proven track record.

Department of Health strategy must ensure that the increasing numbers of our population that require nursing home care are able to access the care they need in a timely and cost effective manner.

Nursing Homes Week 2015 marks a key moment for the increasing number of older people requiring long-term residential care in Ireland. It provides an opportunity for the Department of Health to address the challenges relating to policy and funding in respect of long-term care. But we need the State to plan with us for the decades ahead now, not when the crisis has deepened.

HIQA concerned for safety and quality of children’s services in Ireland

     

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has expressed concerns about inconsistencies in the safety and quality of children’s services in Ireland.

The authority today published an overview of its regulatory activity for children’s services during 2014.

HIQA said national and local management systems may not be adequate in providing assurance on consistently safe, good quality services.

As a result, the authority will commence a national review of governance of the Child and Family Agency in 2015.

However, it also found that during 2014 there was some evidence of improving services and good practice in children’s social care.

Commenting on the report, Fred McBride, Tusla Chief Operations Officer said that when Tusla took responsibility for child protection services in January 2014, significant challenges were identified, particularly in relation to inconsistencies in service provision across the country.

“Tusla is committed to ensuring that all children receive the same high standard of service regardless of geography and to building on the many examples of good practice highlighted in HIQA’s Annual Report,” said Mr McBride.

“Tusla has already conducted a detailed review of its governance structures and has consulted staff and stakeholders in relation to this. The process has identified a number of quality issues which will be addressed in a revised Tusla governance structure which is currently being finalised,” he said.

“The Agency anticipates that this will lead to more robust governance and improve Tusla’s capacity to deliver high quality services. Tusla expects that any review conducted by HIQA would be cognisant of these developments.”

No grant for those homeowners who identify their own septic tank problems

   

Only if a septic tank fails an inspection are local authorities allowed to provide up to €4,000 in financial aid.

Homeowners who identify major issues with their septic tanks are barred from availing of a grants scheme to fix the problem and protect water sources.

Only if the tank fails an inspection are local authorities allowed to provide up to €4,000 in financial aid, the Department of the Environment has confirmed.

This is despite some 500,000 septic tanks being dotted across the country, many of which are in high-risk areas and linked to pollution.

This is because they are not being emptied or properly maintained, but in many cases they also require replacement or structural repairs.

New figures show that just 65 grants have been paid in 2014 and 2015, totalling €206,000.

Most have been paid to homeowners in Meath, where 13 have been awarded; followed by seven each in Roscommon and Sligo and six each in Limerick and Clare.

Households with incomes of up to €50,000 can claim 80% of the costs of carrying out works, to a maximum of €4,000.

For incomes between €50,001 and €75,000, 50% can be claimed up to €2,500.

However, there has been sharp criticism of excluding households which identify a problem on their own initiative.

Fianna Fáil environment spokesman Barry Cowen said if the Government was serious about protecting water sources, it would be extended to all households. “In Offaly, where our water sources are underground, a bad septic tank is a major contributor to pollution,” he said.

“The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to carry the can, one would assume, but they would not have the manpower or people on the ground to ensure standards are adhered to.”

Some 497,281 septic tanks and other on-site wastewater treatment systems are located across the country. To date, some 454,464 systems have been registered, a 91.3% compliance rate.

Households which failed to register their tanks by February 2013 are not eligible for the grant payment.

The Department of the Environment defended the decision to exclude registered, but not inspected, tanks.

It said the scheme was introduced to assist in repair costs for domestic wastewater treatment systems that were deemed, following inspection, as requiring repairs.

Two men try to surf on a whale shark,

Say anger conservationists

    

A video showing two men attempting to surf on the back of a rare whale shark has sparked the ire of conservationists who say the men should be prosecuted for their actions.

The video shows the men standing on the enormous shark while being towed by a speedboat, SkyNews reports. People on the boat can be heard laughing and egging them on.

Marine activists have called the men out for their “stupidity and arrogance.”

One wildlife group, Marine Connection, posted the clip in the hopes that the men can be identified and “brought to justice,” SkyNews reports.

Classified by the IUCN Red List as vulnerable, whale sharks (Rhyncodon typhus) can be easily stressed. Interaction with humans can affect their natural behavior, especially since they must move constantly in order to maintain their oxygen supply. They also must maintain a protective layer on their skin, so as IFLScience puts it, “standing on a whale shark is a pretty dumb move.”

Sadly, these magnificent and gentle sharks are harassed and hunted by humans even though their populations are in decline, the IUCN reports.

As part of a three-year investigation conducted by WildLifeRisk, a non-governmental organization, evidence showed that one factory in southeastern China is slaughtering about 600 of these 21-ton (19-tonne) fish each year, National Geographic reports.

It’s an illegal practice — whale sharks are protected under Chinese and international law, and for good reason. One single whale shark is worth about $30,000. The meat is sold for food, the fins are sold to restaurants to make shark fin soup, and the beautifully patterned skin is sold to manufacturers for bags. Oil from these sharks is sold to companies that produce fish oil supplements.

Sadly, this factory is also allegedly killing and processing other shark species that are protected under international law, including basking sharks and great whites.

“If they’re in fact processing 600 a year, that’s pretty horrifying,” says Robert Hueter, director of the Center for Shark Research at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. National Geographic notes that the worldwide population of whale sharks is estimated to be in the thousands.

Hueter recounted another instance in which whale sharks were being killed. A legal fishery in Taiwan slaughtered approximately 800 whale sharks between 1995 and 2008. Fortunately that fishery closed due to international pressure six years ago.

Whale, basking, and great white sharks are protected under CITES Appendix II, which means they aren’t currently threatened with extinction, but “they may become so unless trade is closely controlled,” the CITES website reports, per National Geographic.

While countries that have signed the treaty, which includes China, have to show that the export of species listed in Appendix II is done sustainably and legally, it’s obvious that some individuals slip under the wire.

“What bothers me about this report is that this is an undercover operation going on in China,” Hueter says. “So if there’s one of these [factories], the chances that there’s more than one are pretty good, I’m guessing.”

Whale sharks are very widely distributed and occur in all tropical and warm temperate seas, with the Mediterranean being the only exception, the Florida Museum of Natural History reports. They are found throughout the Atlantic Ocean, ranging from New York through the Caribbean to Central Brazil and from Senegal to the Gulf of Guinea. They are also found in the Indian Ocean, ranging throughout most of the region, including the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. In the Pacific Ocean, whale sharks are found from Japan to Australia, off the coast of Hawaii, and from California to Chile.

Despite their size, whale sharks are peaceful, feeding mostly on microscopic plankton and nektonic (larger free-swimming) prey crustaceans, schooling fishes, and tuna and squid every now and then. They are also fond of phytoplankton (microscopic plants) and macroalgae (larger plants).

These impressive sharks are the largest fish living today, and it’s thought they can reach a maximum size of of 20 meters (65 feet). The smallest free-living juveniles are 55cm (21.7 inches) long. These fish may not attain sexual maturity until they are more than 9 meters long. And, while no one is completely certain, it’s thought that these fish may live as long as 60 years, the museum reports.

Scientists had long wondered whether whale sharks were oviparous (in which case the female shark would expel egg cases from her body that would hatch on the sea floor), or if they are ovoviviparous, with the egg cases hatching inside the mother’s uteri, meaning that she would give birth to live young. This question was finally answered in 1995, when an 11-meter female whale shark was harpooned off the eastern coast of Taiwan and 300 fetal sharks were taken from her two uteri. So, this means that whale sharks are live bearers.

Whale sharks are usually considered harmless to humans, but they have on occasion butted sportfishing boats, most likely because they were being harassed. They face risks of being struck accidentally by boats when basking or feeding on the surface, the museum reports.

It’s believed that the video showing the two men standing on the shark’s back was filmed in Venezuela, Marine Connection notes, largely because of the type of Spanish people on the boat are speaking, Sky News reports. Not only that, but the footage was posted on a Facebook account in Venezuela earlier this month, and was deleted later on.

“Wildlife harassment is never a laughing matter,” the group noted.

“What a sad reflection on their attitude to wildlife when, instead of considering themselves fortunate to see this majestic creature in the wild, they choose to participate in a stupid stunt like this.”

It is to be hoped that if enough people watch the video, the would-be shark surfers will be found.     

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Irish home-owners to be hit with water charge based on the size of their house

  

Irish homeowners face the controversial prospect of paying for their water based on the size of their home, rather than their estimated usage.

People with bigger houses face paying a higher temporary water charge than those with smaller homes from next year.

The Irish Independent has now learnt an “assessed charge” – which will have to be paid until water meters are installed – is likely to be based on the physical size of a home, rather than the number of people in it.

Sources involved in establishing the water tax say this is because it will be “impossible to police” the number of people living in a home, and it said “it is moving the way of property type”.

The charge could be as much as €400 a year, but “nobody will pay a flat rate”, one source said. Information on properties – and the initial tax to be paid – could be gleaned from databases that exist from the €100 household charge and the property tax, once it has been fully established from this summer.

Irish Water, the new body set up to collect the charges, will have access to records held by the Revenue Commissioners and the Local Government Management Agency.

However, the exact cost of the assessed charge and water metering will be decided independently by the Commission for Energy Regulation.

The bailout agreement with the troika compels the Government to bring in water charges next year. But the process of installing the meters only gets under way this summer, and will not be complete for three years.

To meet the terms of the bailout, the Government will have to bring in the assessed charge – but sources say this will almost certainly be pushed back until after the local elections, not scheduled to take place until mid-2014.

“It is a matter for the Government to decide the date it will be introduced,” one source said.

It is hoped as many as 500,000 meters will be installed by the summer of 2014.

The Irish Independent has also learnt a “lead-in time” for metering is being considered.

Under this proposal, being discussed in the Department of the Environment, homeowners will be able to monitor their water usage on a meter for a few months before paying the metered charge.

“That way, people could see what they’d be paying, and might be shocked by their bills,” a source said.

Irish Water will also be allowed access to the Department of Social Protection records, and it is understood certain welfare recipients, as well as people with acute medical needs, will not pay the full amount of the charge.

And it is now thought apartment blocks complexes will have one meter installed which will measure the usage of all occupants in the complexes and then the charges will be divided up by apartment.

Over 64% of Irish properties have registered their septic tanks

   

About 64% of Irish properties have registered their septic tanks.

With the deadline for registering looming the vast majority of the county’s estimated 6,922 septic tanks have been registered and the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, Phil Hogan, expects even more to finalise their registration by February 1, 2013.

72% of Co Leitrim residents living in properties served by a septic tank have registered their waste disposal systems. Neighbouring counties have returned similarly high registration rates with compliance running at 73.3 percent in Co Cavan; 70.3 percent in Co Sligo and 67 percent in Co Longford. However, Co Donegal has returned quite low registration rates like the household tax with just 49.3 percent an estimated 32,359 households served by septic tanks paying the charge.

Co Kerry has the highest rate of compliance with 90.6 percent of properties registering their septic tanks while Dublin city has the lowest with just 88 of homeowners (that’s just 4.7%) actually registering for the charge.

Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Agriculture Éamon Ó Cuív has called for an extension of the registration deadline.

“The Minister has imposed a deadline of February 1 st for septic tank registration. In my view it is completely unfair of the Minister to force the hand of septic tank owners in this way while so much confusion remains about the legislation and the inspection standards in particular. I and my party have appealed to Minister Hogan extend the registration deadline to end of April so that the new inspection standards can be published and scrutinised in full.”

Deputy Ó Cuív welcomed the fact the Government had made the grant aid available but said the €4,000 cap was disappointing in light of the actual costs of upgrading systems.

Ireland’s live register in December 2012 at 430,100; Jobless rate still at 14.6%

  

Irish Economy: The standardised unemployment rate (SUR) in January 2013 was 14.6%, unchanged from December 2012, the CSO said today. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate from the most recent Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) was 14.8% in the third quarter of 2012. On a seasonally adjusted basis the Live Register total recorded a monthly decrease of 900 in January 2013, bringing the seasonally adjusted total to 430,100.

In unadjusted terms there were 429,396 people signing on the Live Register in January 2013. This represents an annual decrease of 10,193 (-2.3%).

Other features include: On a seasonally adjusted basis the Live Register showed a monthly decrease of 1,500 males in January 2013, while females increased by 600 over the same period. The number of male claimants decreased by 10,266 (-3.6%) to 273,627 over the year and female claimants increased slightly by 73 to 155,769. This compares with a decrease of 8,110 (-2.8%) to 283,893 for males and an increase of 5,022 (+3.3%) to 155,696 for females in the year to January 2012.

The CSO says Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment. It includes part-time workers (those who work up to three days a week), seasonal and casual workers entitled to Jobseeker’s Benefit or Allowance. Unemployment is measured by the Quarterly National Household Survey and the latest estimated number of persons unemployed as of the third quarter of 2012 was 324,500.

Live Register duration of continuous registration: The number of long term claimants (12 months or more continuous unemployment) on the Live Register in January 2013 was 189,857.  The number of male long term claimants increased by 922 (+0.7%) in the year to January 2013, while the comparable increase for females was 5,086 (+10.0%) giving an overall annual increase of 6,008 (+3.3%) in the number of long term claimants.

In January 55.8% (239,539) of all claimants on the Live Register were short term claimants. The comparable figure for January 2012 was 58.2% (255,740). The annual fall of 16,201 (-6.3%) in the number of short term claimants consisted of a decrease of 11,188 (-7.4%) in the number of male short term claimants and a decrease of 5,013 (-4.8%) in female short term claimants.

Live Register casual and part-time workers: There were 87,924 casual and part-time workers on the Live Register in January, which represents 20.5% of the total Live Register. This compares with 19.8% one year earlier when there were 87,029 casual and part-time workers on the Live Register. In the year to January 2013 the number of casual and part-time workers increased by 895 (+1.0%), with the number of males increasing by 1,573 (+3.4%) and the number of females decreasing by 678 (-1.7%).

Live Register age groups: In the year to January 2013 the number of persons aged 25 and over on the Live Register decreased by 3,212 (-0.9%), and the number of persons aged under 25 decreased by 6,981 (-9.3%). Annual decreases in persons aged under 25 have occurred in all months since July 2010. The percentage of persons aged under 25 on the Live Register now stands at 15.9% for January 2013, down from 17.1% in January 2012 and 18.6% in January 2011.

Live Register new registrants: There were 37,516 new registrants on the Live Register in January 2013, consisting of 18,781 JB (job benefit)  claims, 16,811 JA 9job allowance) claims and 1,924 ‘Other Registrants’. Males accounted for 54.9% (20,579) and females 45.1% (16,937) of all new registrants. On average 5,145 male and 4,234 female new registrants joined the Live Register each week of the month. The difference between the number of new registrants on the Live Register and the change in the total number on the Live Register is accounted for by closed claims and movements between schemes.

Irish food and drink mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity up 32% last year

 

Irish food companies must continue to invest in ensuring a robust and safe supply chain, new report urges

The value of mergers and acquisitions in the Irish food and beverage sector rose by 32% to a total of €726m last year, a new report shows.

The report, from Grant Thornton, said that US companies are increasingly interested in investing in high quality Irish food and drink companies with strong brands and authentic products.

US acquisitions of Irish businesses last year included Hain Celestial’s €10m deal for Cork based Cully & Sully, while whiskey giant Beam completed its purchase of Cooley Distillery in January 2012.

Irish firms were also major investors in the US last year, with Kerry Group, Glanbia, Greencore and C&C all announcing major deals. The report noted that C&C’s €235m acquisition of the Vermont Hard Cider company was the biggest Irish deal in the US last year.

Grant Thornton also said that Asia is becoming a growing market for Irish food products, with exports up 25% on last year. ”Cash-rich Asian companies are potential investors in Irish food businesses whose operations may be thriving, but where balance sheets are stretched by ill-judged property investments made in the boom,” commented Ciara Jackson, head of food at Grant Thornton.

Today’s report says that Irish food companies must continue to invest in ensuring a robust and safe supply chain in order to protect the reputation of an industry that has contributed billions in exports last year.

Ms Jackson said the recent horse meat controversy is a cause of concern, adding that the reputation of Irish produce has its foundation in high standards of regulation and food safety, and the country’s natural green environment.

”It is vital that the industry collaborates to create a resilient supply chain that can minimise costs whilst ensuring Irish produce maintains its international standing,” she added.

If you want to shed weight, Could an earlier lunchtime help?

  

Want to lose weight? Eating lunch earlier rather than later may help you out.

Dieters who ate early lunches tended to lose more weight than those who had their midday meal on the later side, according to a Spanish study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The finding doesn’t prove that bumping up your lunch hour will help you shed that extra weight, but it is possible that eating times play a role in how the body regulates its weight, researchers said.

“We should now seriously start to consider the timing of food – not just what we eat, but also when we eat,” said study co-author Frank Scheer, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.

His group’s research included 420 people attending nutrition clinics in southeast Spain. Along with going to regular group therapy sessions with nutrition and exercise counseling, dieters measured, weighed and recorded their food and reported on their daily physical activity.

Study participants were on a so-called Mediterranean diet, in which about 40 percent of each day’s calories are consumed at lunch. About half of the people said they ate lunch before 3:00 p.m. and half after.

Over 20 weeks of counseling, early and late lunchers ate a similar amount of food, based on their food journals, and burned a similar amount of calories through daily activities.

However, early eaters lost an average of 10 kilograms ( 22 lbs) – just over 11 percent of their starting weight – while late eaters dropped 7.7 kg (17 lb), or nine percent of their initial weight.

What time dieters ate breakfast or dinner wasn’t linked to their ultimate weight loss.

One limitation of the study is that the researchers didn’t randomly assign people to eat early or late, so it’s possible there were other underlying differences between dieters with different mealtimes. Certain gene variants that have been linked to obesity were more common in late lunchers, for example.

People who eat later may have extra food in their stomach when they go to sleep, which could mean more of it isn’t burned and ends up being stored as fat, said Yunsheng Ma, a nutrition researcher from the University of MassachusettsMedical School in Worcester.

How often people eat during the day and whether they bring food from home or eat out may also contribute to weight loss, added Ma, who wasn’t involved in the new research.

He said any implications of late eating could be exacerbated among people in the United States.

“The pattern of consumption of meals is very different in the U.S.,” Ma told Reuters Health. Many people skip breakfast or lunch, then end up overdoing it on calories at dinner.

Scheer said that in the United States, where dinner is typically the biggest meal, researchers would expect people who eat later dinners to have more trouble losing weight based on his team’s findings.

Regardless of exact mealtimes, Ma said it’s important for people to spread their calories out through the day.

“Have a good breakfast and a good lunch, and at dinner, people should eat lightly,” he said

Your cuddly pussy cat is deadlier than you think

   

A domestic cat with a European rabbit. Domestic and feral cats are significant predators of a wide range of prey species, including rabbits.

For all the adorable images of cats that play the piano, flush the toilet, mew melodiously and find their way back home over hundreds of miles, scientists have identified a shocking new truth: cats are far deadlier than anyone realized.

In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat.

The estimated kill rates are two to four times higher than mortality figures previously bandied about, and position the domestic cat as one of the single greatest human-linked threats to wildlife in the nation. More birds and mammals die at the mouths of cats, the report said, than from automobile strikes, pesticides and poisons, collisions with skyscrapers and windmills and other so-called anthropogenic causes.

Peter Marra of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and an author of the report, said the mortality figures that emerge from the new model “are shockingly high.”

“When we ran the model, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Dr. Marra, who performed the analysis with a colleague, Scott R. Loss, and Tom Will of the Fish and Wildlife Service. “We were absolutely stunned by the results.” The study appeared Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

The findings are the first serious estimate of just how much wildlife America’s vast population of free-roaming domestic cats manages to kill each year.

“We’ve been discussing this problem of cats and wildlife for years and years, and now we finally have some good science to start nailing down the numbers,” said George H. Fenwick, the president and chief executive of the American Bird Conservancy. “This is a great leap forward over the quality of research we had before.”

In devising their mathematical model, the researchers systematically sifted through the existing scientific literature on cat-wildlife interactions, eliminated studies in which the sample size was too small or the results too extreme, and then extracted and standardized the findings from the 21 most rigorous studies. The results admittedly come with wide ranges and uncertainties.

Nevertheless, the new report is likely to fuel the sometimes vitriolic debate between environmentalists who see free-roaming domestic cats as an invasive species — superpredators whose numbers are growing globally even as the songbirds and many other animals the cats prey on are in decline — and animal welfare advocates who are appalled by the millions of unwanted cats (and dogs) euthanized in animal shelters each year.

All concur that pet cats should not be allowed to prowl around the neighborhood at will, any more than should a pet dog, horse or potbellied pig, and that cat owners who insist their felines “deserve” a bit of freedom are being irresponsible and ultimately not very cat friendly. Through recent projects like Kitty Cams at the University of Georgia, in which cameras are attached to the collars of indoor-outdoor pet cats to track their activities, not only have cats been filmed preying on cardinals, frogs and field mice, they have also been shown lapping up antifreeze and sewer sludge, dodging under moving cars and sparring violently with much bigger dogs.

“We’ve put a lot of effort into trying to educate people that they should not let their cats outside, that it’s bad for the cats and can shorten the cats’ lives,” said Danielle Bays, the manager of the community cat programs at the Washington Humane Society.

Yet the new study estimates that free-roaming pets account for only about 29 percent of the birds and 11 percent of the mammals killed by domestic cats each year, and the real problem arises over how to manage the 80 million or so stray or feral cats that commit the bulk of the wildlife slaughter.

The Washington Humane Society and many other animal welfare organizations support the use of increasingly popular trap-neuter-return programs, in which unowned cats are caught, vaccinated, spayed and, if no home can be found for them, returned to the outdoor colony from which they came. Proponents see this approach as a humane alternative to large-scale euthanasia, and they insist that a colony of neutered cats can’t reproduce and thus will eventually disappear.

Conservationists say that, far from diminishing the population of unowned cats, trap and release programs may be making it worse, by encouraging people to abandon their pets to outdoor colonies that volunteers often keep lovingly fed.

“The number of free roaming cats is definitively growing,” Dr. Fenwick of the bird conservancy said. “It’s estimated that there are now more than 500 T.N.R. colonies in Austin alone.”

They are colonies of subsidized predators, he said, able to survive in far greater concentrations than do wild carnivores by dint of their people-pleasing appeal. “They’re not like coyotes, having to make their way in the world,” he said.

Yet even fed cats are profoundly tuned to the hunt, and when they see something flutter, they can’t help but move in for the kill. Dr. Fenwick argues that far more effort should be put into animal adoption. “For the great majority of healthy cats,” he said, “homes can be found.” Any outdoor colonies that remain should be enclosed, he said. “Cats don’t need to wander hundred of miles to be happy,” he said.