Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG update

Joan Burton criticises Irish banks for pulling out of 'their agreed' 'deals on mortgages'

  

Tánaiste says reducing bankruptcy periods may send message to institutions of ‘playing games’ with customers in severe difficulties.

Tánaiste Joan Burton has criticised the banks for pulling out of deals with customers in mortgage difficulties.

Tánaiste Joan Burton has said a reduced bankruptcy period could send a message to banks who are pulling out of deals with customers in mortgage difficulty.

Ms Burton said she recently met personal insolvency practitioners who told her banks were creating an expectation that arrangements could be agreed but were then disappointing clients.

“If we reduce the bankruptcy period maybe that will send a message to the banking institutions, particularly those who are kind of playing a game of ‘now you see it, now you don’t’, suggesting to people that a deal is possible and then pulling out at the last minute.”

Labour TD Willie Penrose is preparing legislation to cut the bankruptcy period from three years to one year.

Speaking in Dublin this morning, Ms Burton said she had not had an opportunity to read Mr Penrose’s Bill. The bankruptcy period was reduced from 12 to three years at the end of 2013.

She said she wanted to see people staying in their family homes.

“We have an insolvency process vastly reduced in time from 12 years down to three, which is great. But at the same time what the personal insolvency practitioners were saying to me is that…some of the banks are not cutting deals,” she said.

The Tánaiste said people who had “got the courage” to attempt to strike a deal with the bank were often left in a worse situation when “at the last minute the deals are being pulled”.

Ms Burton said not every financial institution acted in this way.

She was speaking after addressing a business event to mark National Employment Week 2015 in the House of Lords, Bank of Ireland, College Green.

MEANWHILE:— 

Moves to reduce bankruptcy period to one year now proposed by Lab. TD.

   

A leading Labour TD is preparing special legislation to cut the bankruptcy period from three years to one year.

Former Junior Housing Minister Willie Penrose, who is also a barrister, says the law introduced in 2012, and the accompanying insolvency service, has not helped enough people struggling with debt.

His move follows comments in the Dáil last week by Tánaiste Joan Burton, who said the three-year bankruptcy duration – recently reduced from the long-standing 12-year term – will be revisited.

There has also been a strong call from mortgage debt campaigner David Hall for such a move.

Mr Hall said that the Government’s remedy, the Insolvency Act of 2012, simply has not given necessary relief to very many people.

“An alternative which is within the control of politicians is to reduce the current bankruptcy term to one year. This is an uncomplicated move and one that could happen within weeks and I would imagine a vote that could be 100pc supported by TDs and Senators,” Mr Hall told the Irish Independent.

Mr Hall, who was an independent candidate in a by-election in Dublin West in 2014, said that the introduction of the Insolvency Service of Ireland in September 2013 had failed to help the hundreds of thousands of people “smothered by debt.”

The debt relief campaigner said the statistics on debt showed how few people had been helped.

* There are 117,000 family home mortgages in arrears, each with an average of four unsecured debts such as credit cards and credit unions.

* Over 38,000 buy-to-let mortgages are in arrears.

* The Insolvency Service has a €7.5m budget and 95 staff – but only helped secure 1,000 “deals” in 2014.

* 448 of these “deals” were people going bankrupt and 251 were debt relief notices with debts under €20,000.

* Just 199 involved property but most were buy-to-let properties.

* Just a handful were family homes and 97 covered unsecured debts.

The debt-relief campaigner argued that given this record it was time to try again.

He acknowledged that other law changes aimed at reducing the banks’ de facto veto on “writing down” debt could run into constitutional difficulties – but this law change would change bank attitudes.

“Banks have an obsessive compulsive disorder around writing down or writing off debt. They must have their minds focused,” he said.

“Banks only understand one language and a one-year bankruptcy is urgently needed to focus banks and all creditors’ minds,” Mr Hall added.

Labour TD Willie Penrose said he will discuss his draft law with party colleagues next week.

He said along with the reduction of the bankruptcy period from three years to one year, the current “follow-on period”, which also allows creditors recoup debt, would be cut from five years to three.

“Apart from anything else the current situation where it is three years’ bankruptcy and one year north of the border is rather silly and impractical,” Mr Penrose said.

Last Thursday the Tánaiste said the Government will consider this change.

Tea could also can reduce your risk of diabetes type 2?

    

Tea consumption is also associated along with certain cancers, and with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, according to recent new research.

The review authored by Dr Catherine Hood from the Tea Advisory Panel looked at 12 studies and of these 11 showed a positive effect of tea consumption on reducing the risk of diabetes.

Dr Hood commented: “In the Chinese Singapore Study among 36 908 participants age 45-74 years, consumption of more than one cup of tea daily reduced the risk of diabetes by 14%.

“The Dutch arm of the big European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) which was followed up for 10 years found a bigger reduction in risk of diabetes. In this study total daily consumption of three cups of tea, three cups of coffee or a combination of tea and coffee reduced the risk of type 2 diabetes by approximately 42%.”

She continued: “The BMJ published a study evaluating the relationship between black tea consumption and key health indicators across the world. Health indicators covered were respiratory diseases, infectious diseases, cancer, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes at a global level.  This study found a significant linear correlation between high black tea consumption and low diabetes prevalence in the world. ”

Dr Tim Bond from TAP added: “Overall these studies indicate a very promising association between tea consumption and diabetes which if confirmed in further studies indicates further health benefits for tea beyond the well-established cardiovascular benefit.

Diabetes is affecting increasing numbers of the population and potentially could cost 17 per cent of the health care budget.  Drinking 3-4 cups of tea each day has benefits for the heart and could also have benefits for glucose metabolism, inflammatory markers and reducing the risk of diabetes.”

Knock planes are diverted as heavy snowfalls hits the west of Ireland

 

About 500 passengers on incoming flights from Britain ended up in Shannon today (Monday) because of heavy snowfall at Ireland West Airport Knock.

Morning flights from London Stansted, Liverpool, East Midlands and Luton were all diverted.

Affected passengers were all bussed from Shannon back to Knock.

A major operation to clear the runways continued at Knock all morning. As a result planes to carry outbound passengers to UK destinations were able to land and take off in the afternoon.

Photos of Sligo and Leitrim that are pure WB Yeats like poetry

   

“On a recent hike with Northwest Adventure Tours, we come across this mound; it looked like a glacial slide had pushed it down and left a nice viewing point to stand upon.”

The desolate landscapes of Sligo and Leitrim aren’t just a fitting subject for poetry, as Colin Gillen’s photographs above show.

Gillen is a professional photographer living on the Sligo coast, and he spends his days shooting what he calls “the amazing, light-filled playground of a landscape that is Yeats Country”.

W.B. Yeats was a regular visitor to Sligo and Leitrim, with local features like Ben Bulben, Glencar and Inishfree familiar to many through his poetry.

But words aren’t the only way to celebrate unforgettable landscapes.

 A good photo, as we all know, is worth 1,000 of them.

By day working for local and national media, Gillen is also a keen musician with a reputation as one of Ireland’s top music photographers.

But it’s his stunning eye for Sligo and Leitrim that caught our attention.

  From the tiny human forms caught in magnificent landscapes (or monster waves) to simple, almost painterly shots of bohareens and lakes, his photos like Lissadell House draw you into the waters and the wild country of Sligo inviting you to explore Yeats Country all over again.

You can find out more about Colin and his photos on framelight.ie, on Facebook here, and about hiking and adventure guides in Sligo on northwestadventuretours.ie.

  For more on Yeats 2015, a programme of events celebrating the 150th anniversary of the poet’s birth, see yeats2015.com.

What would it be like to live on Mars?

   

The idea of living on Mars has been a staple of science fiction since the 19th century, when American astronomer Percival Lowell speculated that the channels on the Red Planet were really ancient canals built by intelligent extraterrestrials.

But if this sci-fi dream were to ever become reality, what would it be like to actually live on Mars?

NASA is now planning for a manned mission to Mars, which is slated for the 2030s.

It’s unknown where astronauts will land on Mars for that mission, but for a future Martian space colony, “you’d probably want a permanent base somewhere in the low northern latitudes,” Ashwin Vasavada, a deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, told Space.com.

Like Earth, Mars has seasons due to the planet’s tilt upon its axis, but it also has a secondary seasonal effect because of its highly elliptical orbit. The southern hemisphere is pointed away from the sun when the planet is farthest from it, resulting in far colder winters (and far hotter summers) than those in the northern hemisphere.

If you were to live in the northern hemisphere, you’d enjoy about seven months of spring, six months of summer, a little more than five months of fall and only about four months of winter. (A year on Mars is about 1.88 Earth years, and a day lasts a little more than 24 hours.)

The average temperature on Mars is minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 60 Celsius), but temps can range from minus 195 F (minus 126 C) in winter near the poles to 68 F (20 C) during summer near the equator. The temperatures can also change dramatically within a single week.

Mars’ temperature variations often result in powerful dust storms, which can sometimes shroud the entire planet after just a few days. Though these storms probably wouldn’t physically harm you, the dust could clog electronics and interfere with solar-powered instruments, Vasavada said.

At just 1 percent the density of Earth’s atmosphere, the Martian atmosphere is thick enough to burn up meteors smaller than marbles — meteors larger than that are relatively rare, so you’d be unlikely to get hit by them, Vasavada said. You also wouldn’t have to worry much about volcanic and tectonic activity while living on Mars.

“The No. 1 thing an astronaut would be worried about is the radiation from space,” Vasavada said. Unlike Earth, Mars doesn’t have a global magnetic field and thick atmosphere to protect its surface from radiation.

If you were to experience some unfortunate incident, a message sent home to Earth would take an average of 15 minutes to get there. While not terribly long, “it’s definitely annoying enough that it’d be hard to Skype with anybody,” Vasavada said.

In terms of weather, you might see an occasional wispy cloud or cold morning frost because Martian air contains low levels of moisture from the polar ice caps. But you wouldn’t find any storm clouds in the sky or raindrops hitting the ground.

With these clear skies, the Martian night is full of stars. Amateur astronomers would want to look out for Mars’ moons, Deimos and Phobos, which can come out at the same time. These satellites, both of which are far smaller than Earth’s moon, can also partially eclipse the sun during the day.

The daytime sky generally has an orange tint to it because of all the dust, Vasavada said. Sunrise and sunsets look similar to those on Earth during a very hazy day, except that the area around the sun is blue.

The surface of Mars offers up a few great opportunities for sightseeing. “If we were to completelycolonize Mars, there are certainly places that would become national parks,” Vasavada said.

For example, Olympus Mons is the tallest volcano in the solar system, reaching 16 miles (25 kilometers) above its surrounding plains. Valles Marineris, on the other hand, is a giant system of valleys about the distance from Los Angeles to New York. And you’d also probably want to visit the Viking landers and Mars’ tremendous polar ice caps, which sometimes get dry ice snowfall, Vasavada said.

But with a gravity that’s only 38 percent of Earth’s, getting around on Mars would be challenging at first. “Running and fast movements would probably take quite a bit of relearning,” Vasavada said. “But it’d be better than moving around on the moon.”    

Donie's Ireland news BLOG Friday

Irish women forcibly adopted in the 1950’s demand access to their files from the state

   

Tens of thousands of people were sent for adoption around the 1950s after their mothers were deemed too young or unfit

Two women who lived for years not knowing they had been forcibly adopted have called for official State records to be opened to try and trace their birth mothers.

Theresa Tinggal, 58, and Maria Dumbell, 42, are among tens of thousands of people sent for adoption around the 1950s after their mothers were deemed too young or unfit.

“I was handed over to my adoptive parents at two-days-old and then registered as their legal child,” Ms Tinggal said. “It came as a great shock therefore when I discovered that I wasn’t who I thought I was.”

The Government has delayed until next year, plans for new adoption legislation which would allow people access to files to trace biological parents.

The women claim the Health Service Executive (HSE) has told them they cannot release files linked to informal adoptions.

Ms Tinggal was brought up as Theresa Hiney. The nurse who helped deliver her kept records of her own and a box with 1,000 names, including her name, has been recovered by her relatives. “The state could have found my birth mother but they didn’t really bother,” she said.

A website – adoptedillegally-ireland.com – has been set up to try and bring together people affected by adoptions authorised by hospitals, churches, religious orders and doctors after judging a mother unfit.

Ms Dumbell found out she was adopted when she applied for a passport. She discovered her birth was never registered and she only got an Irish passport after threatening a human rights lawsuit in Europe. “The attitude of the Irish Government when I asked them for information was ‘Well, things were done illegally then and we don’t know who you are’,” she said.

Clare Daly TD, who supports the women’s cause, said the records exist. She added: “It is not good enough to talk about guaranteeing children’s rights in a new referendum if we continue to ignore children failed in the past. The right to identity is the most basic human right.”

A spokeswoman for the Children’s Minister Frances Fitzgerald said she had no difficulty in meeting the women. She said they had been urged to discuss their cases with the national specialist for adoption in the HSE before she would meet them. The minister has also been pursuing the new legislation with the Attorney General’s office.

Treasury Holdings to go into liquidation

   

Treasury holdings directors. Johnny Ronan (left) and Richard Barrett.

Treasury Holdings lawyers have today told the High Court that they will not be opposing an application by KBC Bank to wind up the group next week.

The move clears the way for liquidators to be appointed to the business, which was previously one of Ireland’s largest property operations.

It directly employs up to 45 people at its headquarters in Dublin.

At its height, Treasury Holdings was a multibillion euro property business with operations spanning as far as China.

But after the boom, it crashed with debts of around €2.7bn and it has spent much of the past year in a protracted legal battle with Nama.

Today, lawyers for Treasury Holdings told the High Court it will not be opposing a petition to wind up the business by KBC Bank on Tuesday next.

KBC says that it is owed more than €70m for the development of Spencer Dock in Dublin.

The move to liquidate the group is supported by Nama over concerns that assets of a Treasury subsidiary in Singapore were transferred to a company in the Channel Islands linked to Treasury director Richard Barrett. 

This will be raised on Tuesday as KBC’s lawyers say they have not received an adequate explanation for this overnight transaction.

Wind energy delivery worth ‘30,000 jobs and €18bn to Ireland’

   

Ireland should aim to supply the rest of Europe, especially Britain, with wind energy, which has the potential to create 30,000 jobs here, a leading figure in the industry urged yesterday.

Irish Wind Energy Association (IWEA) chief executive Kenneth Matthews also called for joined-up thinking between Government and enterprise to deliver the economic potential of wind energy. Upwards of 2,000 people now work in the fast-growing sector.

“For the first time, being at the edge of Europe gives us an advantage. Our ambition should be to provide Europe with wind energy,” Mr Matthews said.

Speaking at the launch of a new IWEA policy paper at a conference in Killarney, he said renewable energy exporting was a significant national opportunity that needed to be seized. He said the policy paper would help the Government ensure the framework was correct to realise this potential.

Mr Matthews said government policy to facilitate 4GW (gigawatts) of wind energy produced for the domestic market and 6GW for export could deliver up to 18,400 jobs by 2020.

He said renewable energy divisions are needed in the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Forfá: “If state agencies work in tandem with industry, they could attract turbine manufacturers to Ireland, as well as supplying turbines to projects here.

  “An Irish base could then be used as a launch-pad into the European onshore and sizeable UK offshore market. This cooperative approach could unlock an additional 9,000-12,000 jobs, bringing the true jobs total up to 30,400 by 2020.” 

The paper also calls on Government to develop a joint Irish-UK government policy. The UK needs 18GW of wind energy before 2020 and a policy should facilitate the achievement of at least 6GW of wind energy for export from Ireland. That would attract investment of more than €18bn into our economy, Mr Matthews said.

The paper also calls for a government-industry implementation group to bring together private and public stakeholders, agencies and private capital.

In a keynote address, Minister for Arts and Heritage Jimmy Deenihan welcomed the policy paper, saying it provided industry and the Government with a roadmap to maximising the benefits of wind energy.

Airtricity managing director Stephen Wheeler said the approach should be much more ambitious than it has been up to now: “The rest of Europe and, in particular, our closest neighbours the UK need renewable energy, Ireland, has the resources, the comparative advantage and the talent to deliver.”

Sligo widow sues over the contract killing of her husband

   

The widow of a Co Sligo man who was shot and killed in 1999 is suing four men for damages over her husband’s murder.

Margaret Madden, 58, a B&B owner at Lough Gara House in Monasteraden is suing the men for the loss of her husband and her own shock, pain and distress.

Terence Madden, 52, bled to death after being shot in both legs at close range on 28 January 1999.

Michael Doohan, a former member of the Defence Forces, and formerly of Ashbury Lawns, Ballinode, Co Sligo, Joseph Herron, formerly of Chapel street, Ballyshannon, Co Donegal, and Patrick McGrath, formerly of Cuilpruglish, Gurteen in Co Sligo, received life sentences at the Special Criminal Court in 2000 for their part in the murder.

A fourth man, Thomas Derrig, of Battlefield, Culfadda, Ballymote, Co Sligo, received a three year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to the possession a sawn-off shotgun.

The High Court heard that Doohan’s family and the Madden’s were neighbours and that both families ran B&B businesses.

The court was told that the murder arose from resentment felt by  Doohan towards Terence Madden over the erection of B&B signs.

Resentment had also built over another incident when Mr Madden arrived at Doohan’s father’s funeral in 1997 to sympathise with the family.

Irish Parents urged to check their children’s weight regularly ‘like their eyesight’

   

Children’s weight, like their eyesight, should be checked regularly, a nutrition expert has told the joint committee on health and children.

Safefood’s director of human health and nutrition, Dr Cliodhna Foley Nolan, said parents did not find it easy to accept that their child was overweight or obese.

“We need to ‘normalise’ the taking of weight and waistline measurements so it is not seen as criticism or an insult. It should be the same as getting their eyes checked.”

Dr Foley Nolan said Safefood-funded community and pre-school programmes were conditioning parents so they were health aware and, eventually, at a point were they were comfortable with having their children screened.

Senator John Crown asked if fear of causing eating disorders was making people shy away from the issue of addressing children’s weight.

Dr Foley Nolan said the fear about triggering eating disorders, especially in teenage girls, had been overstated. 

However, Safefood was ensuring that all information it provided on healthy eating was both constructive and positive. 

“We know that we are getting the message out there — that there is a better lifestyle choice but it is a slow burn,” she said. 

“That is why we need all the encouragement and support we can get from you [the committee], in terms of policies and funding.” 

Sen Crown, who is a doctor and practices cancer medicine, said obesity was one of the risk factors for a number of cancers. 

“And, surprisingly, if you have cancer, the chances that you do better in treatment is higher if you are not obese. 

“It could be argued that, after smoking, it is perhaps the second biggest risk factor that our population is facing right now in terms of cancer.” 

Sen Crown said there was no food that was dangerous when eaten in moderation, just as there was no food that was safe when eaten in excess. 

“Simply banning certain foods won’t work. 

“You have got to get the message across to people that it is the total volume and number of calories and the efficiency with which you absorb that food that makes the difference.” 

Meanwhile, an international conference in Dublin to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Food Safety Authority heard that counterfeit food was likely to become an increasing concern in the future. 

Chief executive of the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, Prof Alan Reilly, said the European regulatory agencies needed to be alert to emerging health risks, because of the free movement of foods across borders and the potential threat from food fraud. 

He warned that the food fraud could sometimes pose a very serious health risk: “Tragically, this was the case in the Czech Republic recently where alcoholic products were unscrupulously contaminated with methanol, resulting in a number of deaths.” 

He said there needed to be a high level of co-ordination among regulators and enforcement agencies. 

Curiosity rover pauses to get the scoop on Mars

     NASA’s intrepid Mars rover is pausing near fine-grained sand dunes to take soil samples that will be used to clean out any traces of Earth’s environment in the rover’s sample collection system.

Martian sandbox: An area dubbed “Rocknest” features fine-grained sands that will be scooped up by the Curiosity rover to test its sampling system and to clean out any lingering traces of Earth’s environment.

After creeping about 500 yards across the rocky floor of Gale Crater on the way to an intriguing intersection of different terrain types, the Mars Curiosity rover is pausing for a few weeks near fine-grained sand dunes to scoop up soil and run it through the vehicle’s sample acquisition system to clean out any lingering traces of Earth’s environment.

After three such “rinse and repeat” cycles, a scoop on the end of the rover’s robot arm will deposit small samples into a pair of sophisticated laboratory instruments, the Chemistry and Mineralogy experiment, or CheMin, and the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument, known as SAM. CheMin will use X-ray diffraction to identify the minerals in a sample while SAM will employ two spectrometers and a gas chromatograph to look for signs of organic compounds.

But first, all traces of Earth’s environment must be cleaned away to eliminate any chance of contaminating a Mars sample.

“Even though we make this hardware super squeaky clean when it’s delivered and assembled at the Jet Propulsion (Laboratory),…by virtue of its just being on Earth you get a kind of residual oily film that is impossible to avoid,” said Daniel Limonadi, a sampling system engineer at JPL. “And the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument is so sensitive we really have to scrub away this layer of oils that accumulates on Earth.”

Curiosity has rolled about 1,600 feet since landing August 6, heading toward an area known as Glenelg, where orbital photographs show three different types of terrain converging. Along the way, engineers have been testing and calibrating the rover’s instruments and subsystems, snapping pictures and collecting data.

Among the last items to be tested are a scoop on the end of the rover’s robot arm and an impact drill. Both devices are designed to deliver soil samples to inlets on the top of the rover’s body leading to the SAM and CheMin instruments.

Engineers have been looking for fine-grained sand to test the scoop system and to clean out its internal components. And they found what they were looking for at a site dubbed Rocknest, a football field shy of Glenelg. Rocknest measures about 8 feet by 16 feet and features dunelike deposits of sand as well as a variety of exposed rocks.

“What we’re doing at the site is we take the sand sample, this fine-grained material, and we effectively use it to rinse our mouth three times and then kind of spit out,” Limonadi said. “We will take a scoop, we will vibrate that sand on all the different surfaces to effectively sandblast those surfaces, then we dump that material out and we rinse and repeat three times to finish cleaning everything out…. Our Earth-based testing has found that to be supereffective at cleaning.”

The first scoop will be collected Saturday, and if all goes well, the cleaning process will be finished in the next week and a half, with part of the third sample being delivered to the CheMin instrument. A fourth sample then will be shared by both CheMin and SAM.

With the scoop tests complete, Curiosity will continue on to Glenelg where its impact drill will be put to the test for the first time, probably sometime in November. Though the scoop can collect soil samples from the surface, the drill will produce debris from the interior of targeted rocks, using the same delivery system employed by the scoop to reach the laboratory instruments.

“Getting these samples is kind of the keystone of the rover mission,” said Mike Watkins, a mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We’re being deliberately, incredibly careful. So not just taking (samples), but every time we take one, stop, open it up, take a look at it, make a video of us dropping it off. We’re taking a lot of extra steps here to make sure we understand exactly what’s going on, [things] we won’t have to do every time we do a scoop in the future.”