Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Patrick Honohan says the troika deal terms were ‘unsatisfactory’

 

Outgoing Central Bank governor makes third appearance before inquiry.

Outgoing Central Bank of Ireland Governor Patrick Honohan.

The Central Bank found the terms of the trioka programme “unsatisfactory”, the Governor Patrick Honohan has said.

Prof Honohan told the banking inquiry the deal had “high interest rates and a lack of an insurance mechanism against tail risks in the banks”.

He said the programme was necessary and said without it the cutbacks would have been more severe.

Prof Honohan said: “Nevertheless, having set out these concerns, I advised the Government in writing that it should proceed on the basis of the programme, given that the alternative of struggling forward without access to market finance would have been more economically damaging.

“If the programme proved unable to deliver a sustainable debt path as seemed possible, even likely then it could be renegotiated. The spending and tax adjustments that would have been needed if programme funding was not available would be much more severe.”

The Central Bank Governor said the question of whether the guarantee was the best decision is the least important and yet the most over analysed.

He said: “What if an alternative path had been tried, following prior consultation with EU partners during an interval covered by ELA [emergency liquidity assistance] involving a more limited guarantee, excluding some or all existing senior bonds and subordinated debt, and in conjunction with an attempt to get agreement that Anglo and INBS [Irish Nationwide] bondholders would be bailed-out only on the basis of cost-sharing with EU partners? How much in net national economic terms might have thereby been saved?

“This is not a question susceptible of any precise quantification: could a cost-sharing deal have been successfully negotiated?”

Prof Honohan said the institutions were “very resistant to the losses” the Central Bank were suggesting.

He said officials wrote letters to the “very top” but the bank held its ground.

The governor said: “Rather than knowing something and not wanting to tell they were living in a state of denial.”

Mr Honohan said banks were still living in denial about the state of the losses in the institutions in 2010.

Mr Honohan told the inquiry he received a call out of the blue from the International Monetary Fund in May 2010 offering a precautionary line of credit.

The Governor said Ashoka Mody phoned him and suggested this method but the Department of Finance rejected it.

He said: “I said ‘try it, it might be a good idea. They [the Government] might not like it but try it’. It did not go anywhere.”

Professor Honohan said the European Central Bank would never have withdrawn funding from Ireland.

Asked if the European Central Bank could have, Prof Honohan said it could but it would not have done that.

Fianna Fáil Senator Marc MacSharry asked if that was a big gamble for the then Government to take. Mr Honohan said: “No.”

In his third appearance before the banking inquiry, Prof Honohan this morning said the focus on the night of the guarantee has been “excessive”.

He said nothing had changed his view that emergency liquidity would have bought the Government some time.

Prof Honohan said Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide should have been dealt by nationalisation.

He added: “It should not have included Subordinated debt nor existing senior term debt.”

The morning session focused on the period of Prof Honohan’s tenure from his appointment in September 2009 to October 2010. The afternoon session is focusing on developments in the period from November 2010 to December 2013.

He will be asked to give evidence on the appropriateness of the regulatory regime and other related matters.

Irish households paying twice as much for broadband as the average of the rest of EU

 

Study shows Ireland failing when it comes to digital skills.

In terms of integration of digital technology by businesses, Ireland came in 3rd place overall, up 1 place compared to 2014

Irish households are paying close to double the EU average for broadband access, according to a new report that shows Ireland is lagging behind its European counterparts when it comes to digital skills.

Ireland ranks 8th out of 28 Member States in the European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index, which was published on Friday. This places Ireland in the ’medium-performance’ category, meaning it performs slightly above the EU average. Last year, Ireland was ranked in 11th place in the index.

Irish businesses are ranked 2nd in the EU for use of social media and for e-commerce turnover and also in addition Irish SMEs rank 5th in the EU for selling online, and for use of E-invoices.

In terms of integration of digital technology by businesses, Ireland came in 3rd place overall, up 1 place compared to 2014. This is above the EU average but the report’s authors added that businesses in Ireland could better exploit the possibilities offered by electronic information sharing and RFID.

In other areas, Ireland underperforms when ranked against its neighbours. In terms of broadband value, for example, the country ranks in 23rd place with households paying significantly more than the EU average for access. Ireland also ranked poorly for digital skills, coming in 20th place with only 53% of people having the required skills to operate effectively online.

At 76%, Ireland exhibits a rate of internet use amongst its population similar to that of the EU average.

With regard to internet connectivity, Ireland ranked 16th among EU countries. According to the index, 96% of Irish households are now covered by fixed broadband – a type of high-speed Internet access where connections to service providers use radio signals rather than cables – and take-up of fixed broadband is at 62%, below the EU average of 70%. This places Ireland in 19th place in terms of fixed- broadband use. Mobile broadband take-up increased from 67% to 82% between 2014 and 2015.

Online news, music, video and games, video calls, social networking, banking and shopping consumption all saw increases over the last year. Music, video and games, rose 20 percentage points from 23% to 43%. Video-on-demand (VOD) declined by 2 percentage points from 70% to 68%. However, VOD use is still very high in Ireland compared to the EU average of 41 per cent, placing Ireland 5th out of 28 countries.

1G bps broadband speeds are coming to Ireland this September

   

Eircom is to go live with 1Gbps fibre next September, it emerged after Pure Telecom became the first operator to sign up for the wholesale service.

A €20m deal agreed between Eircom Wholesale and Pure Telecom will see Pure’s customers access 100Mbps broadband and also become the first to access Eircom’s 1Gbps fibre-to-the-home service when it launches in September.

The partnership means Pure Telecom customers can connect to Eircom Wholesale’s high-speed fibre broadband, which offers speeds of up to 100 Mbps to 1.2 million homes and businesses nationwide, a figure which represents approximately 50% of the total premises in Ireland.

This will rise to 70% by 2016, and 80% by 2020, by which time 35% of all premises will have broadband speeds of 1Gbps.

Pure Telecom’s customers will be amongst the first to access Eircom Wholesale’s 1Gbps ‘Fibre to the Home’ (FTTH) service when it launches later this year.

Fibre up the nation?

Paul Connell, director, Pure Telecom, Peter Clarke, director of sales, marketing, international and customer service, Eircom Wholesale and Alan McGonnell, director, Pure Telecom

“With 1,000Mbps (1Gbps) speeds launching in September, Pure’s customers will have access to the fastest broadband speeds available here, ensuring they remain at the cutting edge of broadband developments in Ireland,” Peter Clarke, director of sales, marketing and customer services at Eircom Wholesale said.

Eircom recently announced plans to extend access to high-speed fibre broadband in rural Ireland by extending its fibre network from 1.6 million homes and businesses to 1.9 million nationwide premises.

The additional 300,000 homes and businesses are spread across 1,070 communities in all 26 counties and include 300 communities not currently served with high-speed broadband.

Speeds of up to 1Gbps will be available to these additional 300,000 premises through the use of end-to-end fibre to the home technology.

“Our industry is changing,” said Paul Connell, director of Pure Telecom. “Our business customers need faster broadband so they can compete competitively both domestically and internationally.

“Furthermore, consumer demands are increasing. Smartphones, Netflix and social media are among the tools that are redefining the way people communicate and resetting needs and expectations, and not just for city dwellers.”

Ireland above EU average for gender equality

   

A new gender equality report out ranks Ireland at eighth in Europe when it comes to gender equality.

The European Institute for Gender Equality places Ireland 17 points behind Scandinavian countries, but 4 points ahead of the EU average.

We come eighth when it comes to gender quality in work; sixth in money; second in health and at 15 in power.

The Gender Equality Index provides a comprehensive measure of gender equality, tailored to fit the EU policy context. Following the importance of cohesion across EU Member States, the Gender Equality Index ensures that higher gender equality scores can only be obtained in societies where there are small gender gaps and high levels of achievement.

The present update includes scores for 2005, 2010 and 2012, for the first time allowing for an assessment of the progress made in the pursuit of gender equality in the European Union and individual Member States over time.

Moreover, the present update makes a first attempt at populating the satellite domain of violence by providing a composite indicator of direct violence against women, based on the data on violence against women collected by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights through the EU-wide Survey on Violence against Women.

The results of the Gender Equality Index show that there have been visible, albeit marginal, improvements between 2005 and 2012 in the domains covered by the Gender Equality Index. With an overall score of 52.9 out of 100 in 2012, the EU remains only halfway towards equality, having risen from 51.3 in 2005. Progress needs to increase its pace if the EU is to fulfil its ambitions and meet the Europe 2020 targets.

Lovebirds can rotate their heads at lightning fast speeds

    The rosy-faced lovebird (Agapornis roseicollis).

High-speed flight recordings of lovebirds making quick in flight turns reveal how these birds improve sight and shorten blur by rotating their head at speeds of up to 2,700 degrees per second, as fast as insects, enabled by fast neck muscles.

Lovebirds are any of the nine species of the parrot genus Agapornis (family Psittaculidae).

One species, the grey-headed lovebird (Agapornis canus), is native to Madagascar, and eight species are native to the African continent.

These birds were called lovebirds because of their monogamous pair bonding.

They are small, compact parrots around 5 – 6 inches (12.5 – 15 cm) in length 40 – 60 grams in weight.

According to a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE, during flight, turning lovebirds rotate their head at up to 2,700 degrees per second, faster than any other vertebrate recorded to date.

The authors of the study – Dr Daniel Kress and his colleagues from Stanford University discovered this super-fast behavior by filming the maneuver at 2,000 frames per second during a goal-directed task.

For flight recordings, they trained five rosy-faced lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis) to turn on a dime in a custom-built flight arena.

“The first step was to train the birds to fly between two perches. In the second step, one perch was removed and birds were trained to fly away, turn and return to the remaining perch. During the third step, the width of the perch was decreased to about 21 cm, after which the birds were ready for the experiment,” the scientists wrote in the paper.

Analysis of high-speed recordings revealed that rapidly turning lovebirds execute extremely fast head turns during turning maneuvers.

The birds time these head turns precisely when their wings are covering their eyes, this minimizes the time of obscured sight.

Consequently, they shorten phases of blurry and obscured sight into a fraction of the actual turning time, resulting in stable and clear vision during the rest of the maneuver.

“The lovebird’s rapid head turn probably enables them to make split second decisions during rapid turns,” the scientists said.

They also hope that the accuracy and speed of these visually guided flight-maneuvers may inspire camera rotation design in drone to improve imaging. 

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

FG and SF will fight to lead a new government as FF, Independents fade

  

Exclusive files reveal FF survival plan is all but in‘oblivion’.

Fine Gael and Sinn Fein have decisively moved ahead in the race to lead the next government, according to the latest Sunday Independent/Millward Brown opinion poll.

Both parties have benefited from a sharp drop in support for Independents and have now emerged as the clear front-runners to lead a new coalition.

The poll has also found that support for the formation of a new political party continues to fall and that coalitions led by either Enda Kenny’s Fine Gael or Gerry Adams’s Sinn Fein are most favoured.

In other findings, a majority (62%) believe same-sex marriage should be constitutionally recognised, but more than one-in-five (22%) are undecided.

And over half (56%), unchanged, are in favour of repealing the eighth amendment in relation to abortion, but uncertainty has increased among those opposed since December.

The poll also finds that two-in-five (40%) intend to pay water charges and 30% do not, while 10% say it depends; 10% don’t know and charges are not applicable for 10%.

There has been a dramatic fall in support for Independents/others (23%), down nine points since a comparable poll at the height of the water charges protests in December.

The poll was conducted nationwide among 1,019 voters between January 29 and February 9.

Fine Gael (25%), up three points, and Sinn Fein (26%), up five points, have benefited most from the fall in support for Independents/others and are now neck-and-neck to lead the next government.

The poll will come as a blow to Fianna Fail (19%), up one point, and still within the margin of error of its meltdown result in the last General Election.

Also, today, the Sunday Independent publishes an internal Fianna Fail document – the party’s blueprint for recovery – which was drawn up in the aftermath of the 2011 election.

It outlines a four-year plan to restore the party’s fortunes but on the evidence of today’s opinion poll the strategy has failed. “We’re facing oblivion,” a frontbench TD said yesterday.

The document identified six areas that the party needed to address, including “core values” and “policy development”.

It says Fianna Fail needs to “define what it stands for”; what its “vision” is; embark on a “renewal agenda” and “embrace change” to “become relevant”.

Gerry Adams: Fight for next election started when polls closed on Friday.

It also says the party needs to “create a real policy development process” and identify “key new areas of policy”.

Today’s poll is likely to lead to recriminations within the Fianna Fail parliamentary party and cause much soul-searching at senior level.

• There will also be renewed disquiet in Labour (6%), up one point, but a massive 13 points short of its General Election result.
• However, the poll finds satisfaction with the Government (23%), up four points, has recovered somewhat with dissatisfaction (68%), down three points.
• Government satisfaction is now at the level it was when the country emerged from the Troika bailout in January last year.
• Satisfaction with each party leader has improved but remains low: Enda Kenny (24%), up three points; Joan Burton (23%), up one point; Micheal Martin (29%), up five points and Gerry Adams (29%), up six points.
• Support for the formation of a new political party (38%), down two points, is now 12 points lower than in December 2012.
• Shane Ross (16%) and Lucinda Creighton (13%) remain favourites to lead such a party, ahead of Michael Fitzmaurice (4%) and Stephen Donnelly (4%).

Asked their preferred coalition options after the election, those polled said Fine Gael/Labour (11%) and Sinn Fein/Independents (11%) ahead of Sinn Fein/another party (10%); Fine Gael/Fianna Fail (7%); Fianna Fail/ Independents (7%) and Fianna Fail/Sinn Fein (6%).

A clear majority (62%) want same-sex marriage to be recognised in the Constitution but 22% don’t know and 16% are against, a finding which indicates the referendum in May is not a foregone conclusion.

The poll also finds that 30% are “soft” yes and 33% are “soft” no.

Asked their views in relation to repealing the eighth amendment, 56% were in favour, unchanged since a comparable poll last December; 13% were against, down six points and 31% did not know, up six points.

Not enough effort to tackle the Irish hospital's overcrowding “says Leo Varadkar”

 

Situation in A&E ‘now considerably worse than this time last year or the year before’

The Minister said a number of measures had been put in place to tackle emergency department overcrowding since the start of the year.

Efforts to tackle overcrowding in hospital emergency departments have not been enough, Minister for HealthLeo Varadkar has said.

He said about 1,000 additional beds had been put into the system through the Fair Deal a nursing home places scheme, home packages and additional transitional care beds but this had not been sufficient to deal with the problem.

He said the situation in emergency departments was “now considerably worse than this time last year or the year before”.

Mr Varadkar said the health service would be “redoubling efforts” in the weeks ahead to deal with overcrowding. This would involve putting in place 175 additional community nursing unit beds and step- down beds.

Fair Deal waiting time

Asked about comments by Health Service Executive director general Tony O’Brien last week that the waiting time for access to a nursing home place under the Fair Deal scheme could stretch to 20 weeks by the end of the year as a result of budgetary constraints, Mr Varadkar said: “That will only happen if we do nothing, and we are not proposing to do nothing”.

The Minister said a number of measures had been put in place to tackle emergency department overcrowding since the start of the year.

In January, 500 transitional care beds were funded in private nursing homes and a further 250 beds had been funded this month to assist in the discharge of patients from acute hospitals, he said.

“A Flu virus “

A total of] 173 short-stay public beds are being opened across the country for a three- month period in response to potential additional admissions arising from the current flu virus.

“These include Cuan Ross in Dublin, with the first 10 opening next week; Fairview in Dublin; Farranlea Road in Cork; Galway; and Ballinasloe. [Some] 24 private nursing home beds will come on stream in Drogheda from next week.”

He said arrangements were in place in the HSE to recruit front-line staff where there was an urgent service requirement.

The day and night shift nursing numbers had increased in Beaumont Hospital, while 70 nursing posts had been agreed for the University of Limerick hospital group.

Rural areas of Ireland’s broadband black spots

   

Farmer John Bateman (middle photo above) from Meanus, Co Limerick can’t get broadband. 

Our cities have world-class internet speeds and distribution, but rural areas rank among the worst-served regions of Europe. Will the national broadband plan finally change that?

Rural electrification was one of the great infrastructural projects of 20th-century Ireland. Rural broadband – no longer a luxury but an economic necessity – is its 21st-century equivalent.

Since 2004 there have been four government initiatives to improve broadband, all of which have worked up to a point. But major problems remain. Broadband has got faster, and more places than ever are served, but 40 per cent of the population – and 96 per cent of the Republic, geographically – still lack commercial coverage.

The good news, according to the latest Akamai State of the Internet report, is that Ireland is now seventh in the world for average broadband speed, at 13.9 megabits per second (Mbps). The bad news is that Ireland has some of the most pronounced two-tier coverage in Europe. High speeds in urban areas have obscured poor coverage elsewhere.

Only 35 per cent of Irish premises have broadband speeds of 10Mbps or higher. More significantly, only 69 per cent of Irish homes have broadband that is faster than a very modest 4Mbps. Ireland ranks only 42nd in the world in the distribution of fast broadband. Commercial companies advertise broadband speeds of 240Mbps in cities and towns while rural areas subsist on speeds of 1-2Mbps no broadband at all. The digital divide has become a chasm.

Everybody with an interest in rural Ireland recognises the importance of broadband and the problems caused by its absence, which affect young and old. Rural primary schools have bought expensive electronic equipment, such as whiteboards, that are undermined by poor broadband.

“The current position is like having bought a powerful car but discovering it has been restricted to a crawl, as it has only one gear,” says Brendan McCabe, president of the Irish Primary Principals’ Network.

Age Action says its efforts to promote computer literacy among the elderly are being thwarted in rural areas because of poor broadband. The Irish Rural Network estimates that 10,000 jobs are lost in rural areas every year because of poor broadband service.

But good broadband can help struggling rural areas. Those involved in internationally traded goods and services, for example, can set up anywhere there is broadband. Broadband opens up a global market for rural tourism and for small artisan producers.

The World Bank has found that a 10 per cent increase in broadband penetration increases economic growth by 1.3 per cent over the long term.

30 Mbps for all

The Government has said that its national broadband plan, announced last year, will deal with this long-standing problem. By 2020, it says, all premises will have access to broadband of at least 30Mpbs, the minimum that the European Commission has set for a viable service.

Minister for Communications Alex White says the importance of rural broadband has been brought home to him many times. “A farmer said to me just a few weeks ago – and I agree with him – [that] there is no more important issue in rural Ireland in terms of economic infrastructure and the future prospects for rural Ireland. Broadband is going to make rural Ireland sustainable into the future.”

He acknowledges that people are frustrated by having to wait for broadband, but he asks for patience. “We want people to keep faith with it, because, when they get it, they are going to get it at a standard comparable to anywhere in the world,” he says. Monthly progress reports will be published between now and 2020.

White has already spoken to the European Investment Bank and the European Commission about finding the bulk of the estimated €500 million to fund the State end of the project. “I would see this as being funded from a variety of sources,” he says.

Eamonn Wallace of Ireland Offline, an internet lobby group, believes the problem of poor broadband is most acute along the western seaboard. He likens parts of Cos Galway, Mayo and Clare, and swathes of Co Cork, to a broadband wasteland. “The national broadband plan is the only hope for these places. It has to work.”

It is estimated that, by the end of 2016, commercial operators will cover 70 per cent of premises, leaving 750,000 without commercial broadband. It will then be up to the State to step in and provide broadband for the rest. To achieve that, the Government will first have to survey the problem down to the last house, in accordance with the rules governing state intervention.

Every advanced country has a problem with the digital divide, but Ireland’s problem is unique in Europe. Our population density, at 65 per square kilometre, is among the lowest in Europe; the way the population is dispersed compounds the problem.

About 30 per cent of the population live in rural areas not covered by commercial broadband – the average in Europe is between 15 and 20 per cent – but only 17 per cent of those people live within a kilometre of the centre of a village, which is to say close enough to connect easily to a high-speed network.

The Irish love of one-off housing and ribbon development has made bridging this digital divide a particular challenge.

The Department of Communications has said it will provide the network of fibre-optic cables to connect rural areas. Whichever operator or operators win the contract will then link rural homes to that network, bringing high-speed broadband the last step of the way to the public.

Eircom, which has confirmed that it will bid for the contract, believes the total cost of universal broadband will be less than €1 billion.

The buzzword around the national broadband plan has been “future-proofing”. Our expectations of and demand for broadband have shot up. Ten years ago most people had a dial-up service that worked at less than 1Mbps. UPC already offers a 240Mbps service in some areas; future-generation broadband may have speeds of 1Gpbs (1,000 megabits per second).

EU approval

A draft intervention strategy, outlining how the plan will be rolled out, is to be published in the middle of this year, after consultation with the public and commercial operators. Then plan will go to the European Commission, which has to be satisfied, first, that the State is not intervening where the commercial sector should be and, second, that the new service will be a big improvement on what is currently available.

The plan will go out to tender at the end of the year. Eircom, BT and, in a joint venture, ESB and Vodafone – some of the biggest telecoms operators in the State – have all expressed an interest in winning the State contract. (ESB and Vodafone would use the electricity network to offer broadband too.)

The project should start in mid 2016, and the first homes will see high-speed broadband shortly afterwards. Most homes are expected to be completed by 2018, and all by 2020.

Among the first to get broadband will be the 1,300 rural primary schools and the 600 business parks not currently served by commercial broadband.

This will be cold comfort to businesses, in particular, that find themselves on the wrong side of the digital chasm, but the department says there is no other way. “It will take time. You can’t build a railway or a road network overnight,” a spokeswoman says. “You could solve it on the cheap fairly quickly, but we’re there to fix it properly and for good. We must never have to intervene in the broadband plan again.”

Types of broadband: A bluffer’s guide?

There are two types of broadband: fixed-line and wireless. Fixed-line broadband involves providing a service through an existing telephone line – known as a digital subscriber line (DSL) – or through the cable network of an operator such as UPC using a copper coaxial cable.

The speed and quality of a DSL connection vary according to the distance to the telephone exchange. Some broadband can also be slowed down by the contention ratio – the number of houses sharing the line.

UPC and Eircom are delivering high-speed broadband via a technology called “fibre to the cabinet” (FTTC) . This is where a new fibre-optic cable is brought to a street cabinet and then to the home using a telephone line (Eircom) or a coaxial cable (UPC)

UPC offers speeds of up to 250Mbps (megabits per second), the fastest of any commercial provider. Vodafone, Digiweb and Sky use Eircom’s network to offer their customers fibre broadband.

Only Magnet brings fibre as far as your home. Eircom and, in a joint venture, ESB and Vodafone, plan to deliver fibre to the home over the coming years, giving speeds of up to 1,000Mbps (1Gbps). But as fibre is expensive to install, it is economical only in built-up areas.

– Wireless broadband – the most common form of broadband in rural areas outside towns and villages – connects a home or business to the internet using a radio link to the service provider. That link can be via your smartphone, via a wireless dongle or via a router that picks up the signal and transmits it around your house or business.

– Wireless can be used in places where it is too expensive to bring cable, but multiple users can slow down the speed. Wireless also needs a clear line of sight, so premises in a valley or behind a hill might not be able to use it.

– Mobile broadband is becoming the saviour of many rural areas. 3G (third-generation) and 4G (fourth-generation) broadband on smartphones can bring people wider access to fast broadband .

– 4G can deliver speeds of up to 50Mbps. Customers can access 4G through a wireless modem, allowing them to use their laptops. But with most contracts imposing data limits, it can result in big bills.

– Satellite broadband is usually used by people who can access no other service. It is expensive to set up, subject to severe data restrictions, and slower than other forms of broadband.

Ancient artifacts found at Tullaghoge Co Tyrone

    

An archaeological bid to discover more about the hilltop where Ulster chieftains were crowned 700 years ago has uncovered artefacts dating back more than 7,000 years.

Tullaghoge Fort in rural Co Tyrone was the place leaders of the dominant O’Neill clan came to be crowned from around the 14th Century to just before the arrival of the planters at the start of the 17th Century.

Targeted excavation work around the picturesque tree encircled earthen mound ahead of the planned development of new visitor facilities hoped to find and preserve buried artefacts from that period – but it ended up unearthing a lot more.

Archaeologists have revealed that flint tool fragments have been found dating back before 5000 BC to the Mesolithic period when hunter gatherer settlers inhabited Ireland.

Dr John O’Keeffe, principal inspector of historic monuments at the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), explained the significance of the surprise find.

“We were looking back 700 years and we got 7000, that would be a good way to put it,” said the expert.

“What we can now say is the hill where Tullaghoge stands was also being used and exploited by hunter gatherers – amongst the first people to settle on this island at all.”

Dr O’Keeffe said archaeologists had previously found evidence of prehistoric burial tombs at the present-day Mid Ulster Sports Arena in nearby Cookstown.

He said his teams were delighted to find evidence of settlements from the same era at Tullaghoge.

“I suppose when you think about it, it is not terribly far away from Lough Neagh and we tend to think of these hunter gatherer settlers following the river systems and then, depending on the season, either taking fish or coming on to land to take nuts, berries, seeds or to go after wild pig,” he said.

Dr O’Keeffe said the small pieces of flint would have been stuck to sticks using resin to make harpoons, spears or saws.

Around 400 school children helped experts from the NIEA and Queen’s University, Belfast during two separate excavations.

Evidence of cereal harvesting on the site between the 7th and 9th centuries AD were also discovered.

Dr O’Keeffe said the new finds merely added to the rich story of a site more usually associated with the Medieval era and the time when the O’Neills ruled Ulster.

The Tullaghoge place name is taken to mean ‘Hill of the young warrior’ or ‘Hill of Youth’, from the Gaelic Tulloch Oc.

“We think we have a better understanding of the site as it would have been when the O’Neills were there but now we have found this other layer of history that we didn’t expect to find,” said Dr O’Keeffe.

“That is quite an interesting thing to find.”