Donie's Ireland news update Thursday

Minister Ruairi Quinn insists that disability services at Cregg House Sligo will continue

      

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn has denied that government cuts will result in the loss of services to people with disabilities in the north-west.

It follows the announcement by the religious order the Daughters of Wisdom that they are to withdraw services at Cregg House in Sligo because of underfunding.

Cregg House provides care, education and support for more than 200 people with intellectual disabilities, but the order claims it cannot bridge the gap caused by a €1.3m cut to its HSE allocation.

The HSE said that it understands funding difficulties at the centre, but insists cutbacks are in line with those at other disability services in the region.

But Minister Ruairi Quinn told the Dáil this morning that the HSE will continue to provide the same services after the order withdraws.

“The Daughters of Wisdom know that the service will be continued and will be provided – it simply will not be provided by them,” he said.

“I would draw your attention to the fact that religious orders have in other aspects of social life in this country themselves chosen for different reasons to withdraw from the provision of service,” he said.

He said he could assure the people who depend on these services, that based on what had been told Minister of State Kathleen Lynch, that the services would continue.

The Minister was responding to queries from Fianna Fáil Spokesperson on Children Charlie McConalogue, who raised the matter during Leader’s Questions in the house.

“The way the Daughters of Wisdom and the 214 users and their families are being treated is a national scandal,” the Donegal North East deputy said.

“Why would there be a conscious decision to deplete funding being provided by the Daughters of Wisdom particularly when they have served the community for the last 60 years?”

“We all know that efficiencies are necessary and that more must be achieved with less resources,” Deputy McConalogue added.

“But the obvious underfunding of essential front line services the north-west by this Government is simply indefensible, and should be immediately reversed.”

Sister Jean Quinn of the Daughters of Wisdom said that the order had run the service for more than 60 years.

“It’s a very difficult morning for us and has been a very difficult few days,” she told Ocean FM

“We finally made our decision in our administrative office in England on Monday.

“The decision… is not made out of choice, but out of necessity.”

Meanwhile Sinn Féin TD for Sligo/North Leitrim Michael Colreavy expressed disappointment over the breakdown in talks between the management of Cregg House and the HSE.

“The HSE must now step up to the mark and take full responsibility for Cregg House,” Deputy Colreavey said.

“However, the handling of the Cregg House issue by the HSE has, so far, been a failure.

“The patients of Cregg House should be a priority and the high standard of service that has been provided by the Daughters of Wisdom must be continued by the HSE.”

Westlife’s Shane Filan’s company is declared bankrupt in The UK

The Boyband star has lost millions after the Ireland property crash

The singer, whose band have sold over 44 million records during their career, was declared insolvent earlier this week at Kingston County Court in Surrey after admitting that he could not pay his debts.

Despite a successful singing career, Filan’s property company, which is based in the Republic of Ireland, has endured a torrid time and went into receivership last month.

Filan has issued a statement, in which he says that filing for bankruptcy had been a difficult decision to take but he had “exhausted all other options”.

He went on to say: “Together with a team of financial and legal experts I have spent months exploring all possible alternatives to bankruptcy but to no avail. I have worked long and hard to try to reduce my debts, and I am devastated that it came to this conclusion.”

He continued: “I now intend to focus on the remaining dates of the Westlife tour and my commitments to the band before looking to rebuild a future for my wife, my three children and myself.”

Westlife announced that they were splitting up earlier this year and will end their 14-year career with a huge outdoor show at Ireland’s Croke Park on June 23.

AIB are to cut salaries of its top executives, & freeze staff pay until 2014

  

Allied Irish Bank is cutting the pay of its senior management and will introduce a pay freeze for all staff until 2014. Top executives at the bank are to get a 15% pay cut.

All other managers and executive staff will see their pay decrease by between 7.5% and 10%.

Staff in the defined benefit pension fund are being transferred to a defined contribution pension scheme.

The bank is also scrapping a number of perks for all staff including gym and club subscriptions and preferential rates on loans and deposits.

In an internal e-mail seen by Newstalk chief executive of AIB David Duffy said the cost to income ratio for the bank was unsustainable in the current economic environment.

“It is imperative that the cost base of the bank is sufficiently aligned with the overall operating performance to attract external investors” he said.

“A number of sacrifices have already been made by employees to help meet this cost imperative” he added.

It goes on to say that all members of the Executive Committee have agreed to a 15% reduction in total compensation from August 1st.

A reduction of up to 10% in salary and pay-related allowances will apply to those in Executive roles with a reduction of up to 7.5% in salary and pay-related allowances for those in Senior Manager.

It adds that all proposed reductions will be based on a benchmark exercise that will be completed in the final quarter of this year.

New cancer vaccine breakthrough using ‘cold virus’ Scientists claim

Scientists claim to have overcome a major hurdle in their work on finding a way to wipe out cancer with viruses.

    

Scientists suggest the reovirus, which usually causes mild colds or stomach upsets, has the power to shrink tumours.

They have created the viral vaccine that can be injected into the bloodstream, “hitching a ride” on blood cells and avoiding the immune system.

Previous research has focused on injecting the virus into tumours.

The reovirus treatment acts both like chemotherapy and a vaccine. It kills tumour cells while at the same time causing an anti – cancer immune response.

Dr Kevin Harrington, from the Institute of Cancer Research in London who co – led the study, said: ”Viral treatments like reovirus are showing real promise in patient trials.”

”This study gives us the very good news that it should be possible to deliver these treatments with a simple injection into the bloodstream.

It would have been a significant barrier to their widespread use if they could only have been injected into the tumour, but the finding that they can hitch a ride on blood cells will potentially make them relevant to a broad range of cancers.”

He added: ”We also confirmed that reovirus was specifically targeting cancer cells and leaving normal cells alone, which we hope should mean fewer sideeffects for patients.”

Scientists had feared that immune system antibodies in the blood would mop up the viral particles, preventing them from reaching their target.

Instead, the viruses evaded the immune system by hitching a ride on red blood cells. The discovery could pave the way to viral therapies one day becoming a standard form of cancer treatment.

Dr Julie Sharp, from the charity Cancer Research UK which part-funded the research, said: ”This promising study shows that reovirus can trick the body’s defences to reach and kill cancer cells and suggests that it could be given to patients using a simple injection.

”We look forward to seeing how this research develops and if this could one day become part of standard cancer treatment.”

The research involved a small group of 10 patients with bowel cancer tumours that had spread to the liver. Patients were given up to five doses of reovirus over a period of a few weeks before they were due to have surgery.

Blood tests shortly after the treatment showed the active virus associated with blood cells. Tissue removed during surgery revealed ”viral factories” in the tumour, but not normal liver tissue.

Reovirus is an extended family of viruses including rotavirus, which can cause stomach upsets.

The study was published in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Donie's all Ireland news update Thursday

Westlife star Shane Filan’s 

‘firm Shafin developments’ in receivership?

Shane Filan of Westlife & Sligo: being pursued by the Bank of Ireland for debt

    

At home Westlife singer Shane Filan’s and brother Finbar picture above, their property company Shafin Developments has gone into receivership.

Ulster Bank has appointed Patrick Horkan of KPMG as receiver and manager to the company which is jointly owned by the singer and his brother Finbarr.

Shafin Developments borrowed from Ulster Bank in 2006 in respect of property in Co Leitrim.

The company’s assets include four residential properties and a partly-developed site at Dromahair, Co Leitrim. The company also has an interest in a site at Carraroe, Co Sligo.

Shafin Developments, which Filan once referred to as a “nice little pension plan”, had run into serious financial difficulties, having accumulated losses of €3 million by the end of 2010 and bank debt of about €5 million.

Bank of Ireland is also pursuing the Filans for debt and was given permission by the High Court in April to fast-track the case.

According to reports, the 32-year-old singer and his wife Gillian have moved to England where he is in the process of entering Individual Voluntary Arrangement.

Westlife was toppled from this year’s the Sunday Times rich list due to the debts incurred by Filan through his ill-fated property speculation.

Last September, he sold his vintage Aston Martin in England for almost €400,000. Filan had bought the car for himself as a 30th birthday present.

Filan will tour with Westlife on the band’s farewell tour which begins this month, and reports indicate that his sights are now set on a solo career.

The human species on earth is still evolving, 

A study finds

      

Natural selection continues even with advent of agriculture and other major cultural shifts

Natural forces of evolution still continue to shape humanity despite the power we have to profoundly alter the world around us, researchers say.

Evolution occurs in response to outside forces that weed out whatever individuals are least fit to survive those pressures, allowing those better-fit individuals to survive and reproduce. However, since humans radically alter their environment’s, some researchers have questioned whether natural forces of selection continue to act upon our species. For instance, agriculture can generate surplus food that can insulate us from many ills of the world.

The findings, detailed online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add to accumulating evidence of our continued evolution. For instance, past research has suggested the human brain has been shrinking over the past 5,000 years. Another study of an island population in Quebec found a genetic push toward a younger age at first reproduction and larger families.

To explore this debate further, scientists examined church records of nearly 6,000 Finns born between 1760 and 1849, which detailed information on births, deaths, marriages and economic status. The data enabled the researchers to investigate human patterns of survival and reproduction and compare them with other species — genealogy is very popular in Finland, and the country has some of the best available data for such research.

“Studying evolution requires large sample sizes with individual-based data covering the entire life span of each born person,” said researcher Virpi Lummaa at the University of Sheffield in England.

The researchers investigated how agriculture might have affected four key aspects of human life — survival to adulthood, access to mates, mating success and fertility per mate. Their findings suggest that farmer and fisher Finns continued to evolve just like other species. For instance, variations in fertility and survival to adulthood match patterns seen in other organisms.

“We have shown advances have not challenged the fact that our species is still evolving, just like all the other species ‘in the wild,’” Lummaa said.

Intriguingly, “both the relatively wealthy individuals were exposed to very similar overall selection as the poor in our study,” said researcher Alexandre Courtiol, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. “Many people intuitively think that ‘wealth’ might somehow protect us from the influence of the environment.” Instead, both wealthy and poor seemed to experience similar levels of early survival and fertility.

As with most animal species, men and women are not equal when it comes to natural selection, the researchers found.

“Characteristics increasing the mating success of men are likely to evolve faster than those increasing the mating success of women,” Courtiol said. “This is because mating with more partners was shown to increase reproductive success more in men than in women.” In this case, men were more likely to remarry than women.

The fact that natural selection continues to occur in humans during the advent of agriculture and other major cultural shifts “means that biology and culture must have interacted and shaped each other to an extent underestimated so far,” Courtiol told LiveScience.

“Most scientists studying human evolution focus only on our hunter-gatherer way of life 10,000 years ago, but we show that, albeit interesting, this will not give you a complete picture of the story — we also need to focus on how people were living until very recently, and probably even today,” Courtiol added.

“Extending our research toward modern days would be particularly interesting to understand how the current environment continues to shape humans,” Courtiol said. “This could be potentially of importance from a medical point of view, to understand, for instance, how quickly our immunity can respond to new major epidemics. One major obstacle is that we need reliable data at the level of individuals — number of offspring, number of partners, birth and death date — across the lifetime of all born individuals, and such datasets are rare because even many famous longitudinal studies are biased towards certain types of people or do not cover all necessary life events.”

New drug to treat melanoma cancer is a big breakthrough

Has yet to be approved

           

A drug which has been hailed as a breakthrough treatment for melanoma may soon be approved for use in Ireland.

Ipilimumab is thought to be twice as effective as other drugs in treating skin cancer.

t has been cleared by the European Medicines Agency but a course of treatment will cost sufferers around €85,000.

The Taoiseach told the Dail today that it would be approved here as soon as an arrangement can be reached to reimburse those costs.

Just anticipating a mobile telephone call while your driving is enough to risk a car crash

Anticipating a mobile phone call or text is enough distraction to increase the risk of a crash, claim scientists.

    

It is well-known that using a mobile while driving can lead to car crashes, but new research has shown how even expecting a call or text can cause motorists to be driven to distraction.

With more and more younger drivers continuing to use their iPhone or BlackBerry while behind the wheel, regardless of the risk, researchers wanted to see if compulsive mobile use could contribute to car crashes.

University of Washington, US, researchers tested 384 students on a Cell Phone Overuse Scale (CPOS), a 24 item instrument that assesses four aspects of problematic mobile use – frequent anticipation of calls/messages, interference with normal activities, a strong emotional reaction to the mobile, and recognising problem use.

The students also took an online anonymous survey that included questions about driving history, previous crashes while operating a vehicle, and items assessing risk behaviours and psychological profile.

Results showed for each one point increase on the CPOS, there was an approximately one per cent increase in the number of previous motor vehicle crashes, and of the four dimensions of compulsive phone use, a higher level of call anticipation was significantly associated with previous crashes.

Dr Beth E Ebel, of the University of Washington, said: “Young drivers continue to use cell phones in the car, despite the known risk of crash.

“We were interested to explore how cell phone use contributes to distracted driving and to begin o understand the relationship between the driver and the phone.”

Jennifer M Whitehill, a PhD student at the University of Washington, said: “We know it is important to prevent young drivers from taking their hands off the wheel and eyes off the road to use a cell phone.

“This study suggests that thinking about future cell phone calls and messages may be an additional source of distraction that could contribute to crashes.”

The researchers presented their findings at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) meeting in Boston.

All Ireland news as told by Donie

New report reveals the State’s overpayment on medical cards

 

A study into the medical card scheme has found that the State could be losing more than €200m a year by paying the medical expenses of people who are ineligible for a card.

The mistake was highlighted in a PwC report for the HSE.

The Sunday Times has written that the report advises that ineligible cardholders be pursued through the courts for arrears.

Westlife Sligo singer Shane & his brother Finbar Filan faces fresh & new legal action

        

Westlife singer Shane Filan faces fresh legal action related to his forays into property development, according to the Sunday Times.

High Court proceedings were issued last week against Shane and Finbarr Filan,(Above right) trading as The Nalif Partnership, by the Sligo company Trio Foods.

Trio formerly had a depot on a site in Ballinode, Co Sligo, on which Filan and his brother had planned a €5 million mixed-use development.

Bank of Ireland is also pursuing the Filans for debt and was given permission by the High Court earlier this month to fast-track the case.

An eleventh-hour bid by Vodafone to acquire Cable Wireless Worldwide (CWW) is set to succeed with CWW poised to recommend Vodafone’s offer, according to the Sunday Telegraph.

The offer, for 40p to 45p a share, follows a lengthy flirtation that saw Vodafone at first deny interest in the beleaguered telecoms company to asking for the offer deadline to be extended three times.

Vodafone has until noon today to finally submit its bid or walk away from the deal. India’s Tata Communications dropped out of the race last Wednesday.

An overhaul of the board of investment company One51 is expected within the next few weeks, with a number of new appointments – including some high-profile business names – to follow, the Sunday Business Post states.

Several directors of the company are expected to retire shortly, according to the newspaper.

The shake-up follows the appointment of Alan Walsh as chief executive of One51 last year in the wake of the ousting of Philip Lynch.

The seven year itch? Now becomes three as Irish couples cut their ties in no time

       

Due to cutbacks in Ireland, the seven-year itch has been restricted to three years.

It seems couples have more to contend with other than a weak economy and poor job prospects, as new research shows that more people are splitting up after three years, not even making it close to the seven year itch.

According to a study by parenting website Netmums, couples are now four-and-a-half times more likely to split after three years and than the traditional seven years.

A significant 21 percent of couples who parted ways, said their relationship fell apart between two and four years. In contrast, a mere three percent broke up after seven years.

Normal everyday pressures such as raising kids while juggling careers were the main reasons why relationships failed.

Almost half of the 1,500 respondents said that bringing up children had put a strain on their relationship.

Siobhan Freegard (44) of Netmums said “Relationships are tough at the best of times but having children puts an extra strain on them.

“The problem with ‘fast forward’ relationships is if the foundations are not strong then children can quickly make a relationship very wobbly.

“The research shows we are then giving up too quickly — maybe because it seems there are more choices than there used to be

Irish Traveller gang in the frame for St Laurence O’Toole theft of heart

Police believe new market exists for religious relics

                 

Thieves, believed now to be an Irish Traveller gang, stole the preserved heart of St Laurence O’Toole, Dublin’s patron saint, from Christ Church Cathedral last month.

An Irish Traveller gang is believed to have master-minded the theft of St Laurence O’Toole’s preserved heart from a Dublin cathedral.

Dublin police now believe that criminals linked to international rhino horn trade were responsible for the theft from Christ Church cathedral.

The gang, members of the travelling community, have been linked to the international trade of rhino horns for the Chinese market according to the Sunday Independent newspaper.

A report states that the gang orchestrated the theft of the 890-year-old relic last month when two men prised open the cage that had protected the relic and had been in place since the Middle Ages.

The Dublin theft was preceded by robberies of a relic, said to be of St Brigid, and of a piece of the ‘true Cross’ from Holycross Abbey in Thurles which was later returned.

The Sunday Independent states that police are investigating possible with a gang ‘suspected’ of involvement in the highly lucrative theft of rhinoceros horn, which is sold in powdered form as a traditional medicine in China.

Officers believe the gang may have discovered a niche market for stolen relics.

Christ Church dean, the Very Rev Dermot Dunne, told the paper: “The theft of the St Laurence relic feels like part of the fabric of the cathedral has gone.

“It has evoked a lot of sympathy among the public who have expressed the hope that it would be returned safely.

“We are mystified as to who might have stolen the relic. I have done some research online and have found there is a market for class one relics, the remains of real saints.”

The report states that the market seems to exist in the Americas and the Far East.

Galway green technology company 

Cellulac wins a €2.8m grant

           

Cellulac has won a record EC grant to commercialise its technology that converts agricultural waste into lactic acid

Galway based green technology company Cellulac has won a €2.8 million grant from the European Commission to commercialise its biorefining technology, which converts agricultural waste into lactic acid.

There is a growing €4 billion market for lactic acid, which is used in a number of sectors, including food and beverages, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and biodegradable plastics. It is found in products include shampoos and skin creams as well as food additives, with demand for the product exceeding supply in markets such as China.

Cellulac had been identified as a high-potential start-up by Enterprise Ireland, which supported it in its bid for the grant.

The EU grant gives Cellulac the opportunity to source funding from other State, institutional and private investors, which it will then use to develop mass production capability. The company is scouting locations in Ireland and Europe for a plant. Cellulac will create 14 jobs as a result of the grant.