Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Sunday

Alex White says it’s time to tell the IMF that ‘enough is enough’

 

Alex White says if he is elected the next leader of the Labour party there will be no more “adjustment” of €2 billion or anything close to it.

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”. That is the message Labour leader hopeful Alex White was conveying today at the Labour Party leadership hustings in Portlaoise.

The hustings:

The Minister for State at the Department of Health was scathing in his speech about the IMF saying that earlier this week “we were treated to another lecture in fiscal orthodoxy by our friends at the IMF in Washington”.

He added:

“We were told once again that we should take 2 billion out of our economy in the 2015 budget. In the rarified world of the IMF this counts as a ‘fiscal adjustment’. Those of us who live in this country know the reality behind those anodyne words.”

White said that a €2 billion “adjustment” means more cuts in public services, more taxes and charges for Irish people and more suffering and distress.

He told the crowd in no uncertain terms that if he is to be elected the next leader of the Labour Party, they will take no more “sanctimonious lectures” from the IMF.

“Let me be clear about this once again. If I am elected as leader of this Party there will be no more “adjustment” of €2 billion or anything close to it,” he said, adding:

Enough is enough.

“It would be better – much better – if the IMF were to give us some real assistance rather than sanctimonious lectures. And they could start with the excessive interest rates they are currently charging,” said White.

Speaking about the beating that Labour got in the local elections, White said the party suffered a “bruising” a few weeks ago.

He said the party should not assume that the numbers they lost in the local elections will return to them, stating that the “stark truth” is that they will only come back to Labour if they respond appropriately to the message the electorate gave them in May.

The message was stark, very stark. Quite simply they told us to: Change, or move off the stage.

He goes on to say that we need to change our message; we need to change the way we do things; we need to change the image we present to the electorate.That process of change will take time. It will not happen overnight.

But we have the opportunity to start that process of change when we elect a new leader on 4 July next.

Bank of Ireland returns to property development lending

 

BANK OF IRELAND’S RICHIE BOUCHER HAD SOME FARM TIME IN CORRIN MART LAST WEEK.

BANK of Ireland has plunged back into real estate development and construction lending, bulking up its property finance team and signing up to fund another multi-million build in Dublin city centre.

The Richie Boucher-led bank has agreed to partly fund US private equity firm Kennedy Wilson’s development of 164 homes at Clancy Quay in Dublin 8. Kennedy Wilson recently submitted planning proposals for the site, which sits on 5.2 acres on the south bank of the Liffey in an area where rents have rocketed over the past year. Approval is being sought for a mix of apartments and houses. The scheme already has 420 units but its completion was stalled by the credit crisis.

The bank lost billions on property lending when the global financial crisis hit in 2008, but has been persuaded back to the market after years of eschewing deals by spiralling demand for homes and commercial offices evident in Dublin, Galway and Cork.

Bank of Ireland has now funded at least six major property projects in the last 12 months, including the recent refinancing of €150m worth of short-term debt for the development of offices at Central Park. This is the first ever bank loan received by Green Reit, UK property guru Stephen Vernon’s real estate trust which owns 50pc of the Central Park site.

Other projects financed or part-financed by Bank of Ireland include the €22.5m construction of 192 student dorms at the former Montrose Hotel opposite UCD’s campus, the €16m redevelopment of the Burlington Hotel into a Hilton, and Kennedy Wilson’s acquisition of the 200-year-old Shelbourne Hotel through the acquisition of €111m loans connected to a consortium of developers led by Bernard McNamara.

The lender has also diverted staff from other activities to its property finance team in recent weeks, a spokesperson confirmed. The division is led by Paul McDonnell, who having held that role since 2006, has overseen lending to construction projects through both boom and bust.

Bank of Ireland is distinct from its peers in returning wholeheartedly to property lending. Permanent TSB and AIB have been far more cautious, sources said.

“Bank of Ireland is that little bit more aggressive, they got out of the traps first,” said Marie Hunt, head of research at CBRE. Barclays is also lending for construction purposes, she said.

But the norms for bank lending to property projects have changed, she added.

“They’re much more cautious than they were. The terms that were offered in the days of the Celtic Tiger are long gone. It’s now the norm to ask developers to provide 40pc of the money required.”

Bank of Ireland chief Richie Boucher confirmed that the high stake of equity it expects developers to contribute was an issue to construction lending when he appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation in April.

An influx of international banks and private equity fianciers also poses a challenge, Ms Hunt added.

“Domestic banks face more competition on property finance deals than ever before,” she said. “The likes of Deutsche Bank and Morgan Stanley are very keen to get involved in Irish property at the moment. But this also presents opportunities for Irish banks – we are seeing lots of consortiums coming together to lend. The overseas guys have the equity and the money but not the local expertise, so they’re looking for Irish partners.”

Thousands prosecuted over scrap metal theft in Ireland last year

 

Over 5,000 people have been prosecuted in 2013 over the theft of scrap metal – including from railway tracks and telecom masts – the government has claimed.

The Dail heard yesterday that lives are being put at risk by a spate of thefts from businesses.

Junior Minister Paschal Donohoe said it is important to recognise that gardai have brought charges against over 5,000 people involved in scrap metal theft in 2014.

He was speaking during a debate on a bill to regulate the scrap metal industry,

Labour TD for Dublin South East Kevin Humphreys said that the theft of scrap metal in Dublin had damaged the city’s reputation. He said the thefts had also done damage to peoples’ homes and had created the “possible loss of life”.

Independent TD Mattie McGrath, who proposed the bill, said thefts are causing havoc in rural communities.

Mr McGrath’s bill, a similar version of which was rejected in 2012, proposes stricter controls on the sale of precious metals but Mr McGrath’s bill was defeated following a vote in the Dail.

Football reduces women’s blood pressure

  

Despite Ireland’s failure to reach this year’s World Cup in Brazil, the tournament is still attracting a large TV audience. However, a new study has found that actually getting out and playing football may help lower blood pressure in women aged between 35 and 50.

According to the findings, women in this age group with mild high blood pressure who played recreational football over a 15-week period recorded a significant reduction in their blood pressure readings and their levels of body fat.

The women, none of whom had received training in football prior to this, played one hour sessions, three times a week, for 15 weeks.

“After 15 weeks of participation in recreational football, systolic and diastolic blood pressure had fallen by 12 and 6 millimetres of mercury (mmHg) and the women had lost 2.3 kg (5lbs) of fat on average. The football training produced an impressive reduction in blood pressure that was more than twice as big as with swimming performed over the same period as the football,” the researchers said.

The study also noted that the women enjoyed playing the game even if they had never played before.

“The players faithfully attended training, with an attendance rate of over 90%. In fact, through the project period they came to enjoy playing so much that they have now started up their own football club,” the researchers noted.

They pointed out that previous studies they have undertaken have found that football training reduces blood pressure in women aged between 20 and 45 with normal blood pressure, ‘but this is the first study that has looked at the effects of recreational football in women with high blood pressure’.

“As well as the impressive effects on blood pressure and body composition, we also saw a drop in cholesterol and a big improvement in physical fitness as a result of the 15 weeks of football training. In fact, the women were able to run more than twice as far in an endurance test and their heart rate was 14 beats per minute lower when working at moderate intensity,” the researchers said.

They concluded that recreational football ‘is an effective therapy for poor fitness and high blood pressure in 35‒50-year-old women’.

Emperor Penguin now adapting to the climate change

A STUDY SUGGESTS

  

Emperor penguins have shown to be not as attached to their nesting locations as previously thought, meaning that they could adapt much easier to their changing environment, which is being affected by rising global temperatures.

A new study by the University of Minnesota has observed penguins’ movements over the nesting period and found a new colony on the Antarctic Peninsula, which is believed to have relocated.

Researchers involved in the new study found six instances in just three years in which emperor penguins did not return to the same location to breed. They also report on one newly discovered colony on the Antarctic Peninsula that may represent the relocation of penguins.

University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering researcher and the study’s lead author Michelle LaRue shared her findings at the IDEACITY conference in Toronto on June 20. The study will also be published in an upcoming issue of Ecography, a professional journal publishing research in spatial ecology, macroecology and biogeography.

“Our research showing that colonies seem to appear and disappear throughout the years challenges behaviors we thought we understood about emperor penguins,” said LaRue. “If we assume that these birds come back to the same locations every year, without fail, these new colonies we see on satellite images wouldn’t make any sense.

These birds didn’t just appear out of thin air—they had to have come from somewhere else. This suggests that emperor penguins move among colonies. That means we need to revisit how we interpret population changes and the causes of those changes.”

Emperor penguins are a well-studied species and have recently been elevated to celebrity status with movies like “Happy Feet” and the documentary “March of the Penguins.”

The “March of the Penguins” colony is called Pointe Géologie and it’s been studied for more than 60 years. Researchers observe the colony every year and look, in particular, for birds that have been banded by researchers to return to the colony. In recent decades researchers have been concerned about how receding sea ice may affect the emperor penguins that breed on it.

Over five years in the late 1970s, the Southern Ocean warmed and at the same time the penguin colony at Pointe Géologie, declined by half (6,000 breeding pairs to 3,000 breeding pairs). The decline was thought to be due to decreased survival rates. In other words, researchers thought that the warming temperatures were negatively impacting the survival of the species.

High-resolution satellite imagery has changed all that because now researchers can see the entire coastline and all the sea ice. Because emperor penguins are the only species out on the sea ice, they can look at images and identify their presence through the telltale sign—their guano stain. Before satellite images, researchers thought Pointe Géologie was isolated and there was nowhere else for the penguins to go. The satellite images show that Pointe Géologie is not isolated at all. Plenty of colonies are within easy travel distance for an emperor penguin.

“It’s possible that birds have moved away from Pointe Géologie to these other spots and that means that maybe those banded birds didn’t die,” LaRue said. “If we want to accurately conserve the species, we really need to know the basics. We’ve just learned something unexpected, and we should rethink how we interpret colony fluctuations.” 

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Irish Parents having to take on extra debt to fund bill of €800 school costs

 

Irish parents will have take on extra debt to fund their children’s return to school.

They are fearful that their children will miss out unless they have all the books and other items recommended by the school.

It now costs €800 to kit out a child for their first year in secondary school, a new survey from children’s charity Barnardos shows.

This is roughly the same cost as last year, but parents are under huge pressure to fund back-to-school costs because their incomes have collapsed.

And the survey found that parents are angry that they are forced to go to expensive, specialised shops to buy uniforms instead of being able to buy them in better-value chain stores.

Crested jumpers are €45, more than three times the cost of a plain jumper in a department store, the survey found.

Getting a child equipped to go into junior infants is setting the average parent back €350. For a child going into fourth class in primary school, the cost is €400.

School books and uniforms continue to pose the highest cost to parents, although voluntary contributions and school transport costs also weigh heavily on parents’ budgets.

Barnardos’ boss Fergus Finlay said that prices had stabilised since last year, but at the same time parents’ incomes had reduced.

But the State’s Back-To-School Clothing and Footwear Allowance was virtually halved in the last Budget, putting huge pressure on unemployed parents.

Mr Finlay said: “There continues to be an expectation that parents can afford these costs, but the survey paints a different picture.

“It is a hugely stressful time for parents as many are forced into debt, forgo bills and take out loans in order to meet these costs. They are afraid their child’s education will suffer if they don’t have everything they need.”

Huge frustration among parents was uncovered in the survey over the inability to pass on books because of new editions being printed.

Parents are also annoyed about different books being chosen by teachers, and the use of expensive workbooks that can’t be recycled.

Barnardos said more than half of parents have access to a book rental scheme at primary level. Four out of 10 parents have a rental scheme in their children’s secondary school.

But the schemes need to be extended to all schools, Mr Finlay said.

Close to seven out of 10 parents with children in both primary and secondary level have been asked for a voluntary contribution. Many schools chase parents for the payment, Barnardos said.

 SCHOOLS WERE CALLED ON TO:

* Introduce more book rental schemes.

* Reduce the uniform items with the school crest on them or switch to a plain uniform.

* Eliminate the 23pc VAT applicable on e-textbooks so that it is on par with printed textbooks which are exempt from VAT.

Unless this happens Barnardos said the switch to digital learning was outside the reach of most parents.

IMF warns Irish Coalition Government not to let up on austerity

 

THE IMF HAS WARNED THE IRISH GOVERNMENT THAT THEY MUST IMPLEMENT THE FULL €3.1BN IN CUTS AND TAXES IN THE BUDGET.

The stern message comes as ministers continue to send out mixed messages on whether there will be any ease up in our austerity.

Peter Breuer, the IMF’s resident representative in Ireland, says the Coalition must stick to its plan of bringing in cuts and taxes worth a total of €5.1bn over the next two years.

This means sticking to the original plan of having a €3.1bn adjustment in October and €2bn for 2015.

And he warned the Coalition poorer than expected growth figures are a “wake up call” it cannot rely on exports to drive economic recovery - and more must be done to stimulate the domestic economy.

Mr Breuer’s intervention comes as Education Minister Ruairi Quinn accused the Troika of being “intrusive” in its insistence that the full cuts must be implemented.

But Fine Gael junior Finance Minister Brian Hayes said the Coalition should actually go further to create market confidence in Ireland.

Labour in particular have argued the €1bn benefits achieved through the promissory note deal should be used to ease the October Budget.

It also claims there is enough wriggle room to ease up on austerity but still stay on target to bring the deficit down to 5.1pc, with the ultimate target of getting it to 3pc the year after.

But, speaking at the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, Mr Breuer has urged the Government to “keep the momentum”.

“Why? To ensure that the benefits of all the efforts and sacrifices made are secured and put Ireland firmly on the path of sustained recovery.”

“We continue to support a total effort of €5.1bn during 2014-15 to maintain the credibility that has been built-up painstakingly over the last few years and help ensure durable market access.

“This scale of effort will also help reach the government’s 3pc of GDP target by 2015.”

His comments will be seen as a setback to members of the Coalition – particularly Social Protection Minister Joan Burton who wants to use the promissory note proceeds to ease up on cuts.

While Mr Breuer said economic growth has been disappointing, he said some economic indicators are positive, like the housing market and employmentfigures.

He said the challenge is to promote “sustained recovery amid ongoing fiscal consideration”.

Mr Breuer also said slower than expected growth this year “was a wake-up call” which made it clear “Ireland cannot rely on export led growth”.

“Overall, we are expecting modest positive growth this year as the external environment improves and the domestic economy stabilizes.

“Sustained recovery will increasingly require a job-creating revival of domestic demand,” he said but added a worldwide recovery is a “vital ingredient for domestic recovery”.

“Continued stabilization in employment and house prices would support incomes and net worth. A sense that the crisis is being overcome could allow some easing in precautionary savings.”

But he insisted fixing the banks remains the Government’s most important task, and he also said the IMF wants the loan and mortgage arrears crisis to be resolved by the end of next year – which he acknowledged will not be easy – to avoid a prolonged process that will delay economic recovery.

However, he added that the debt burden must be brought down to ensure market confidence in Ireland.

“Currently the state still spends €1bn every month more than it takes in while its debt burden is high at just over 120pc of GDP. Confidence that Ireland will reduce that debt burden over time is needed for durable market access.

“Since the outset of the program the IMF team has urged a focus on steady predictable budgetary adjustment as being least harmful for growth.

“To help protect the fragile economic recovery we have repeatedly urged that if growth is weaker than expected, that additional measures are not taken just to meet a particular target for the headline deficit as a share of GDP.”

But Mr Quinn said the Troika are being “intrusive” in their insistence and said they were “moving beyond” what is needed.

But Mr Hayes said: “I think we should stick to our targets and if anything we should try to be more ambitious. This would give a strong signal to the market that we are intent on correcting the public finances and bringing it under control.”

Asked if the public could shoulder a heavier burden, the junior Finance Minister suggested the domestic economy is strong.

40% of Irish households struggling to their bills  CSO figures tells us

    

82% of households have reduced their spending as a result of the economic downturn.

Figures from the CSO show that in the third quarter of the year, 66% of people cut back on going out to pubs and restaurants.

65% spent less on clothing and footwear, and just over half cut back on groceries compared to the previous 12 months.

14% of mortgage customers surveyed were unable to meet repayments on time at least once in the previous twelve months due to financial difficulties while more than 40% of households had experienced difficulties in keeping up with their bills and debts.

Ireland reviews its wind energy export rules

        

EU Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger (L) and Minister for Communications, Energy and Communications Pat Rabbitte address the media after attending an informal meeting of EU energy

 The Irish government expects to develop a policy framework by next year to give wind energy planners a sense of confidence, Energy Minister Pat Rabbitte said.

Rabbitte ordered work to start on a policy framework to guide an independent statutory agency, An Bord Pleanala, guidelines when it considers plans to export energy generated from wind projects.

Rabbitte said the framework would be developed over the next year. It will give local authorities, local leaders and potential project developments an opportunity to weigh in on national wind energy policies.

Ireland since 2003 has installed approximately 150 wind farms with a total electricity capacity of 1,738 megawatts. Irish companies are expected to develop plans to export energy to the United Kingdom.

Rabbitte said a national framework would be integrated with relative requirements in the European Union.

“By the end of this year we hope to make an agreement with the British side,” he said in a statement Wednesday. “By this time next year, we will be finalizing a planning framework that will give confidence and certainty to all stakeholders.”

Rabbitte in March said Ireland was falling behind in its efforts to meet a 2020 benchmark for 20 percent renewables on its grid.

Tracing germs through the aisles of Supermarkets

  

Left pic. Bacteria growing in a dish at a lab in Flagstaff, Ariz., studying grocery meat

Twice a month for a year, Lance Price, a microbiologist at George Washington University, sent his researchers out to buy every brand of chicken, turkey and pork on sale in each of the major grocery stores in Flagstaff, Ariz. As scientists pushed carts heaped with meat through the aisles, curious shoppers sometimes asked if they were on the Atkins diet.

In fact, Professor Price and his team are trying to answer worrisome questions about the spread of antibiotic resistant germs to people from animals raised on industrial farms. Specifically, they are trying to figure out how many people in one American city are getting urinary infections from meat from the grocery store.

Professor Price describes himself as something of a hoarder. His own freezer is packed with a hodgepodge of samples swabbed from people’s sinuses and inner ears, and even water from a hookah pipe. But the thousands of containers of broth from the meat collected in Flagstaff, where his nonprofit research institute is based, are all neatly packed into freezers there, marked with bar codes to identify them.

He is now using the power of genetic sequencing in an ambitious attempt to precisely match germs in the meat with those in women with urinary infections. One recent day, he was down on his hands and knees in his university office in Washington, studying a family tree of germs from some of the meat samples, a printout of more than 25 pages that unfurled like a roll of paper towels. Its lines and numbers offered early clues to Professor Price’s central question: How many women in Flagstaff get urinary infections from grocery store meat? He expects preliminary answers this fall.

Researchers have been warning for years that antibiotics — miracle drugs that changed the course of human health in the 20th century — are losing their power. Some warn that if the trend isn’t halted, there could be a return to the time before antibiotics when people died from ordinary infections and children did not survive strep throat. Currently, drug resistant bacteria cause about 100,000 deaths a year, but mostly among patients with weakened immune systems, children and the elderly.

There is broad consensus that overuse of antibiotics has caused growing resistance to the medicines. Many scientists say evidence is mounting that heavy use of antibiotics to promote faster growth in farm animals is a major culprit, creating a reservoir of drug resistant bugs that are finding their way into communities. More than 70 percent of all the antibiotics used in the United States are given to animals.

Agribusiness groups disagree and say the main problem is overuse of antibiotic treatments for people. Bugs rarely migrate from animals to people, and even when they do, the risk they pose to human health is negligible, the industry contends.

Scientists say genetic sequencing will bring greater certainty to the debate. They will be able to trace germs in people to their origins, be it from a farm animal or other patients in a hospital. Representative Louise Slaughter, a Democrat from New York who has pushed for legislation to control antibiotic use on farms, said such evidence would be the “smoking gun” that would settle the issue.

Professor Price is seeking to quantify how extensively drug-resistant bugs in animals are infecting people. He is trying to do that by analyzing the full genetic makeup of germs collected from both grocery store meat and people in Flagstaff last year. The plummeting cost of genomic sequencing has made his research possible.

He is comparing the genetic sequences of E. coli germs resistant to multiple antibiotics found in the meat samples to the ones that have caused urinary tract infections in people (mostly women).

Urinary infections were chosen because they are so common. American women get more than eight million of them a year. In rare cases the infections enter the bloodstream and are fatal.

Resistant bacteria in meat are believed to cause only a fraction of such infections, but even that would account for infections in several hundred thousand people annually. The E. coli germ that Professor Price has chosen can be deadly, and is made even more dangerous by its tendency to resist antibiotics.

The infection happens when meat containing the germ is eaten, grows in the gut, and then is introduced into the urethra. Dr. Price said the germ could cause infection in other ways, such as through a cut while slicing raw meat. The bugs are promiscuous, so once they get into people, they can mutate and travel more easily among people. A new strain of the antibiotic-resistant bug MRSA, for example, was first detected in people in Holland in 2003, and now represents 40 percent of the MRSA infections in humans in that country, according to Jan Kluytmans, a Dutch researcher.

That same strain was common in pigs on farms before it was found in people, scientists say. Dr. Price, 44, began his career testing anthrax for resistance to the Cipro antibiotic for biodefense research in the 1990s. His interest in public health led him to antibiotic resistance in the early 2000s. It seemed like a less theoretical threat.

First line antibiotics were no longer curing basic infections, and doctors were concerned. “I thought, ‘Wow this is so obviously crazy, I have to do something about this,’ ” he said. He has done his research on antibiotics at a nonprofit founded in 2002, the Translational Genomics Research Institute, in Phoenix. His lab in Flagstaff, an affiliate, is financed mostly by federal sources, including the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Department.

Dr. Price, trained in epidemiology and microbiology, has been sounding the alarm about antibiotic resistance for a number of years. He recently told a Congressional committee that evidence of the ill effects of antibiotics in farming was overwhelming.

He thinks the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to limit antibiotic use on farms have been weak. In 1977, the F.D.A. said it would begin to ban some agricultural uses of antibiotics. But the House and Senate appropriations committees — dominated by agricultural interests — passed resolutions against the ban, and the agency retreated. More recently, the agency has limited the use of two important classes of antibiotics in animals. But advocates say it needs to go further and ban use of all antibiotics for growth promotion. Sweden and Denmark have already done so.

Ms. Slaughter said aggressive lobbying by agribusiness interests has played a major role in blocking passage of legislation. According to her staff, of the 225 lobbying disclosure reports filed during the last Congress on a bill she wrote on antibiotic use, nearly nine out of ten were filed by organizations opposed to the legislation.

But the economics of food presents perhaps the biggest obstacle. On large industrial farms, animals are raised in close contact with one another and with big concentrations of bacteria-laden feces and urine. Antibiotics keep infections at bay but also create drug resistance. Those same farms raise large volumes of cheap meat that Americans have become accustomed to.

Governments have begun to acknowledge the danger. The United States recently promised $40 million to a major drug company, GlaxoSmithKline, to help it develop medications to combat antibiotic resistance. But Dr. Price says that new drugs are only a partial solution.

“A lot of people say, ‘let’s innovate our way out of this,’ ” he said. “But if we don’t get a handle on the way we abuse antibiotics, we are just delaying the inevitable.”

Bengal tiger numbers increase by 63.6% & leap to 198 in Nepal

  The number of wild royal Bengal tigers in Nepal has increased to 198, a 63.6 per cent rise in five years, a survey of the big Cats shows.

The findings are crucial for the protection of endangered tigers facing the threat of extinction from poachers, encroachment of habitat by villagers and loss of prey.

Conflicts between people and wild animals are frequent in Nepal, which has pledged to double the population of tigers by the year 2022 from an estimated 2010 level of 125.

“This is very encouraging,” said Maheshwar Dhakal, an ecologist with Nepal’s National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Department, adding that the Himalayan nation was on target to achieve its goal ahead of the deadline. “But the increased numbers have also added to our responsibilities and challenges for the conservation of tigers.”

Conservation experts credit the increase to effective policing of national parks, stronger anti-poaching drives and better management of tiger habitats in Nepal, where forests cover 29 per cent of the land.

However, as the number of tigers has increased over the years, so have incidents of conflict with villagers. Seven people were killed in attacks by tigers around national parks last year compared with four in 2011, park officials said. Villagers are also seeking better protection.

Donie's Ireland daily BLOG Wednesday

Ireland fifth worst country for wasting food  ‘Now a big global concern’

   

IRELAND IS EUROPE’S FIFTH-WORST OFFENDER WITH 280KG WASTED PER HEAD EACH YEAR

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Ireland produces one million tonnes of food waste each year
Up to 30 per cent of food produced for human consumption is wasted by being either lost out of the supply chain or wasted in various ways across the world food system.

The problem affects every step of the food chain from farmers being forced to discard ugly looking produce to supermarkets dumping short-dated stock.

Food waste has become one of the hottest global issues, not least because it exists alongside chronic levels of food poverty, even in first-world countries such as Ireland.

Research commissioned by the Department of Social Protection in 2010 indicated that 10 per cent of people in Ireland were living in food poverty, up from 7 per cent at the height of the boom. Other surveys suggest it may be as high as 15 per cent.
Million tonnes
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that Ireland produces one million tonnes of food waste each year, comprising 500,000 tonnes of agricultural waste or surplus, with the remaining 500,000 tonnes split evenly between commercial and household waste.

On a per capita basis, the average Irish person generates about 280kg of food waste each year, the fifth highest in Europe.

“There’s no one solution to this problem. There’s going to have to be a major rethink at all phases of the food chain,” said Odile Le Bolloch, head of the EPA’s Stop Food Waste programme.

She says throwing away uneaten food is an unnecessary waste of money especially in these straitened times.

Every kilogramme of food waste costs the economy €3, which adds up to €3 billion annually. The problem costs the average household between €700 and €1,000 per year.

Producing food that is not consumed also leads to unnecessary CO2 emissions, in addition to the lost economic value of the food produced.

Ugly fruit  

Ms Le Bolloch is sceptical of claims by supermarkets that consumers won’t buy unattractive looking fruit and vegetables, believing shoppers to be less fussy. Indeed, a recent poll in the UK found that 80 per cent of shoppers claimed not to be put off by irregularly shaped produce.

By ignoring sell-by dates and using their common sense, in other words their eyes and noses to vet food, consumers can significantly reduce their waste footprints, says Ms Le Bolloch.

One organisation trying to bridge the gap is the Bia Foodbank. The group wants to set up a national food recovery system that will store and maintain surplus produce resulting from overproduction or shipment delays, which can then be accessed by charities.

Charities and voluntary groups in the Republic currently spend €12 million on food support services every year.

The IMF wants Ireland to speed up home repossessions

    

THE IMF HAS CALLED FOR SPECIALIST JUDGES TO BE USED TO SPEED UP THE REPOSSESSION OF HOMES BY BANKS.

In its latest staff report, it said the overall number of repossessions in Ireland was very low, with just 0.3pc of those in arrears losing their homes compared to rates of 3pc to 5pc in Britain and the USA.

The IMF noted that the Government had committed to closing a loophole in the law which has effectively prevented most house repossessions for the past two years.

But it also called for changes to the courts process so that banks would be able to reposses houses faster.

“Banks report Circuit Court proceedings take a number of years due to adjournments and subsequent appeals. By comparison, the process is faster in the U.K. with many cases completed in one to two years,” it said,

The IMF staff report said that specialist judges could be used in the High Court and the Circuit Court to handle “a potentially larger volume of repossession cases in an expedited manner”.

The comments are likely to heap further pressure on Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his Government, who have repeatedly insisted that repossession of houses will only happen as a “last resort”.

The IMF is one of the three bodies funding Ireland’s bailout programme, which is due to expire at the end of this year. Its staff reports are prepared by its own officials, following discussions with the Government during their visit to Dublin.

The IMF has said that the views are those of the staff and do not “necessarily reflect” the views of the IMF Executive Board.

Glitch hits on-line banking yet again

  

Customers of the two major Irish banks were unable to access their accounts online yesterday.

People seeking to log on to their accounts at AIB and Permanent TSB were faced with notices from the banks warning them of technical problems.

Customers were unable to make money transfers or to pay bills.

AIB later issued a statement apologising for the problems and for the inconvenience caused to its customers.

The statement said that internet, mobile banking and iBB services were back up and running later.

A spokeswoman said the problem lasted “for a short period… over an hour” but was resolved.

The glitch that hit Permanent TSB knocked out online banking and the banks’ telephone services.

“It lasted for an hour but the problems were resolved and all services are back as normal,” said a spokesman.

The spokesman said all the network’s ATM cash machines were ‘fully functional’.

The bank also apologised for the inconvenience to its customers.

Big hopes for oil strike off west of Ireland coast

      

The ExxonMobil company just started its test drilling programme about 200km off the west coast of Ireland, and it’s no wonder then that the oil ‘minnows’ are hopping with anticipation.

John Teeling is never one to let the grass grow under his feet and the announcement yesterday by his Petrel Resources that it has just acquired additional data on its licence area in the Porcupine Basin came hot on the heels of ExxonMobil’s move.

The oil giant is forking out about $160m on its drilling programme in the Dunquin licence areas, in which another Irish oil firm, Providence Resources has a 16pc stake. That Dunquin prospect is only about 35km from where Petrel Resources is probing.

Needless to say, should ExxonMobil find commercial and extractable oil, expect shares in Petrel to rocket.

Likewise, should the oil major find nothing, you can expect a journey down south to follow. Last year Teeling sold his Kilbeggan whiskey business to US outfit Jim Beam for €72m.

The payday from striking oil or gas could be a multiple of that. But of course there is always the harsh reality: close to 200 wells have been drilled off Irish waters but only two of them have yielded commercially active operations – Kinsale and Corrib. The wait for riches could be long.

Cholesterol drugs may save sight for people with Macular degeneration 

   

Eye drops designed to lower cholesterol may be able to prevent one of the most common forms of blindness, according to US researchers.

They showed how high cholesterol levels could affect the immune system and lead to macular degeneration.

Tests on mice and humans, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, showed that immune cells became destructive when they were clogged with fats.

Others cautioned that the research was still at an early stage.

The macula is the sweet spot in the eye which is responsible for fine detail. It is essential for reading, driving and recognising people’s faces.

Macular degeneration is more common in old age. It starts in a “dry” form in which the light-sensing cells in the eye become damaged, but can progress into the far more threatening “wet” version, when newly formed blood vessels can rapidly cause blindness.

Fatty clues

Doctors at the Washington University School of Medicine investigated the role of macrophages, a part of the immune system, in the transition from the dry to the wet form of the disease.

One of the researchers, Dr Rajendra Apte, said the role of macrophages changed and they triggered the production of new blood vessels.

“Instead of being protective, they accelerate the disease, but we didn’t understand why they switched to become the bad cells,” he told the BBC.

Normally the cells can “eat” fatty deposits and send them back into the blood.

However, their research showed that older macrophages struggle. They could still eat the fats, but they could not expel them. So they became “bloated”, causing inflammation which in turn led to the creation of new blood vessels.

Dr Apte said: “Based on our findings, we need to investigate whether vision loss caused by macular degeneration could be prevented with cholesterol-lowering eye drops or other medications that might prevent the build-up of lipids beneath the retina.”

Clara Eaglen, from the charity RNIB for the visually impaired, said: “This new research is very interesting as it shows that cholesterol-lowering drugs could be used to prevent thousands of people losing their sight unnecessarily from conditions such as AMD [age-related macular degeneration] – the biggest cause of sight loss in the UK.

“The more aggressive of the two forms, wet AMD, can take your central vision in as little as three months if left untreated.

“Clearly this research is still at an early stage but it will be exciting to watch how it progresses and at some point cholesterol-lowering eye drops may become part of a growing army of treatments for sight-threatening eye conditions.”

Irish nano-scientist Prof John Boland awarded €2.5m ERC grant to pursue nanowire research

   

Irish nanoscientist awarded €2.5m ERC grant to pursue nanowire research

Prof John Boland, above director of the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN)

Prof John Boland, the director of the nanoscience institute CRANN, has been awarded €2.5m from the European Research Council (ERC), to continue pursuing research into how nanowire networks can lead to new smart materials, sensors, digital memory applications and potentially the next generation of computers.

Boland, who heads up CRANN, which is based at Trinity College Dublin, has secured the second only advanced ERC grant that’s ever been awarded for physical sciences research in Ireland.

The ERC funding is the maximum amount of funding that can be awarded to an individual.

Boland and his team at CRANN will use the funding to continue their research into nanowires, with the aim of creating computer networks that can mimic the functions of the human brain and improve on computer capabilities such as facial recognition.

Nanowires themselves are spaghetti-like structures that are made of materials such as copper or silicon. They are just a few atoms thick and can be engineered into tangled networks of nanowires. Researchers around the globe are investigating the potential for nanowires to be used in solar power generating technologies and to create next-generation computers.

NEXT-GENERATION OF COMPUTING

Boland said that he has discovered that exposing a random network of nanowires to stimuli such as electricity, light and chemicals generates chemical reaction at the junctions where the nanowires cross.

By controlling the stimuli, it could then be possible to harness these reactions to manipulate the connectivity within the network, according to Boland. He said this breakthrough could eventually allow computations that mimic the functions of the nerves in the human brain.

“The human brain is neurologically advanced and exploits connectivity that is controlled by electrical and chemical signals. My research will create nanowire networks that have the potential to mimic aspects of the neurological functions of the human brain, which may revolutionise the performance of current day computers,” he explained.