Irish Revenue to use GPS technology to calculate property tax
They will see how far properties are from key amenities
The tax man is to use GPS style technology to help work out how much each Irish household owe on property tax.
The Revenue Commissioners is preparing to send letters to every home in Ireland telling them how much tax is due.
Among the tools being used to help calculate how much is owed Revenue is to use Geo directory which has been developed by An Post and Ordinance Survey.
It identifies how far properties are from key amenities like transport links, health, education, retail and emergency services.
CENSUS RESULTS TO BE INCLUDED
Revenue is also geographically linking its data with publicly available sources such as the the 2011 census results from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
It is also using a Deprivation Index developed by Pobal.
Its estimated the average household in Dublin will face a bill of around €405, while rural households are expected to pay around €249.
Speaking in the Dail last week, Richard Boyd-Barrett challenged the Taoiseach Enda Kenny on amendments to the tax.
The average age of Irish emigrants jumps to 32
Thirty two year Old’s are now the most common age bracket applying for visas to places like Australia and Canada.
The average age of people looking to emigrate from Ireland has risen from 29 to 32 years.
The latest data also confirms that significantly more men than women are emigrating.
Migration agent VisaFirst.com said the numbers of people leaving is increasing year on year.
Applications for second year Australian visas rose by 36pc in 2012, showing that emigrants want to stay in the country.
The number of applications for Canadian work permits was 16pc greater last year than in 2011, while permanent residency applications more than doubled.
The ratio of men to women remains at 60:40, while the average age of visa applicants has risen from 29 to 32 years, figures from the company’s Irish database show.
Edwina Shanahan of VisaFirst.com said: “The increase in the average age is interesting as it’s quite a big jump. The difficult work environment in Ireland is a primary driver here.
“It’s not just affecting the young and newly qualified — it’s taking its toll of people of all ages and all levels of expertise.”
She added: “The age jump may also have something to do with the fact that spousal applications are also on the rise.
“The number of spousal applications for Australia doubled last year. More and more families are seeing emigration as a better, if not their only, financially viable option.”
The figures from 2012 highlight the growing level of interest from trades and professions including teachers, welders, solicitors, mechanics and IT workers, according to VisaFirst.com.
There has also been a noted increase in applications from articulated truck drivers because they are now in such high demand in Canada, it added.
Ms Shanahan said: “The interest from people in various occupations often changes depending on the demand for those occupations in certain countries.
“In addition, a fall in interest might simply reflect the fact that a sizeable portion of these people have already left the country — for example, while we saw large numbers of architects leaving in 2011 and 2010 — this figure has dropped almost 80pc in 12 months.
Over 4,000 protest at front-line workers rally in Dublin
More than 4,000 front-line workers attended a rally in Tallaght to protest at Government plans to cut an extra €1bn from the State payroll bill over the next three years.
Government negotiators at the talks to extend the Croke Park deal have rejected claims by the 24-7 Frontline Alliance that they have targeted frontline workers disproportionately for cuts in earnings.
The alliance represents 70,000 nurses, prison officers and Gardai,
Seamus Murphy of the Psychiatric Nurses’ Association received a standing ovation, saying “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
He also responded to the possibility of the Government introducing legislation to cut pay by saying: “They need to be careful. Do you remember what happened to the last crowd that cut our pay?”
He told the crowds that “in 1913 we had a lockout, in 2013 we have a sellout”.
He said this was the start of a campaign which would only end when the Taoiseach understood that they were not giving any more pay-cuts.
He said they could not be afraid of the consequence of actions when the cause was just and fair.
He received a standing ovation as the crowd chanted “no more cuts”.
John Clinton of the Prison Officers Association warned against punishing those who had already made a massive contribution.
“They’ll be trouble ahead, trouble that can be avoided if a just and equitable solution can be found which will not further punish those who have already made a massive contribution,” he said.
Sean McEniff wants media to stop ‘hounding’ him over Traveller row
Donegal County Council’s longest serving elected member, Sean McEniff, has called on the media to stop hounding him about an issue which, he says, is something he firmly believes in.
The Bundoran councillor recently became embroiled in controversy when he stated that Travellers should live in an “isolated community” and be kept together.
He said yesterday that he was fed up being hounded by the media. His comments came after a weekend protest in Dublin outside a hotel of which he is part-owner.
Read the full story, and the reaction of other councillors, in today’s Donegal Democrat and Donegal People’s Press.
Man turns dog’s best friend as heroic first-aider brings Hector back to life
A Coast Guard volunteer has been hailed as a hero for saving the life of a dog after performing CPR on it.
Hector, a three-year-old collie, stopped breathing after a ball lodged in its throat. But Gary Creighton carried out CPR on the family pet and brought him back to life.
“If it wasn’t for Gary and the Skerries Coast Guard, there is no doubt that Hector would be dead,” said Colette Connolly, Hector’s owner.
Every morning Colette and her two dogs – Hector (3) and Libby (2) – go for an early-morning run on the south beach at Rush in north county Dublin. “We were playing ball and it bounded high and as he jumped up to catch it he twisted and landed badly on his back legs. The ball went way down the back of his throat.”
The ball is made for dogs and would not usually get stuck in the animal’s throat.
“I could feel it in his throat with my hand and I started trying to push it back up his throat. He was getting short of breath and collapsed on to the sand. I was trying to stay calm and must have spent eight minutes trying to push the ball back up out of his throat.”
Colette was about to give up. “Then I looked up and saw a white jeep. I ran at it like a mad woman waving my arms and it stopped.”
It was a Skerries Coast Guard 4×4 and driver Gary Creighton went straight into life-saving mode.
Gary, who is a fully trained ‘cardiac first responder’ and an officer in the Order of Malta in Balbriggan said: “I just thought okay, what would I do to relieve choking in a person – he was a pretty big dog so I started doing chest compressions.”
As he did them, Colette kept trying to push the ball up the dog’s throat and then they saw it appear at the top of his throat and Gary pulled it out.
“His heart started to beat and he began breathing. I just threw my arms around Gary. He was like an angel coming from heaven to our rescue.”
Vanessa Gaffney, officer in charge with Skerries Coast Guard, said it was the first time in living memory an animal was rescued using advanced first aid.
The Skerries Coast Guard is run by volunteers and covers 30 miles of coastline from Malahide in Co Dublin to Laytown in Co Meath.
Arctic now on thin ice as melting picks up speed
The first of a three-part series examines what science is telling us about the weather – it’s not comforting
Nicholas Stern, the author of the influential 2006 review of the economics of climate change, now says he “underestimated the risks”. Had he known how bad things were going to get, “I think I would have been a bit more blunt [and] much more strong about the risks of a four- or five-degree rise” in average global temperatures.
Interviewed by the Observer newspaper at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, where the focus of most participants was on more short-term concerns, Lord Stern said: “This is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one? These risks for many people are existential.”
Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank’s president, issued an equally strong warning about the risk of conflicts over natural resources if global temperatures went up by four degrees Celsius. “There will be water and food fights everywhere,” he said, and then pledged to make tackling climate change a priority of his five-year term.
Extreme weather
This was in the wake of a series of “extreme weather events” over the past year including Superstorm Sandy, which caused billions of dollars in damage to New York City and New Jersey as well as serious drought in the US and Russia, devastating floods in the Philippines and scorching temperatures and fires in Australia.
But the “canary in the coalmine” is summer sea ice in the Arctic, which has been declining each year and hit a record low of 3.4 million sq km last September – 770,000sq km below the previous minimum of 4.17 million sq km in 2007.
This Arctic warming may be at the root of climate change in the northern hemisphere.
Disappearing ice: The rate of sea ice decline is much faster than anticipated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its Fourth Assessment, in 2007, mentioned that “in some projections, Arctic late-summer sea ice disappears almost entirely by the latter part of the 21st century”. Now, it could be gone by 2020 or 2030.
Columnist George Monbiot blamed governments: “Having abandoned any pretence of responding to the environmental crisis during the Earth Summit in June, now they stare stupidly as the ice on which we stand dissolves . . . Their one unequivocal response to the melting has been to facilitate the capture of the oil and fish it exposes.”
Last month, a draft of the latest US National Climate Assessment, compiled by 240 scientists, warned that 13 US airports could be inundated by rising sea levels and that billions of dollars will be needed to repair roads, pipelines, sewerage systems, buildings and airports in Alaska due to damage caused by melting permafrost.
The draft’s bluntness “reflects the increasing confidence we have in the science and day-to-day realities of climate change,” one of its authors, Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Centre at Texas Tech University, told the Guardian. “This is no longer a future issue. It’s an issue that is staring us in the face today.”
A new study Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of A Hot Planet, published last September, found that nearly 400,000 premature deaths per year could be attributed to climate change, which is already costing more than $1.2 trillion (€887.3 billion) annually, equivalent to 1.6 per cent of global GDP.
By 2030, the combined cost of climate change and air pollution would double, with poorer developing countries – those least responsible for global greenhouse gas emissions – likely to suffer most. But richer nations would also be hit, with GDP in the US falling 2 per cent while the cost to China alone would be $1.2 trillion annually.
No benign shift: Any notion the northern hemisphere would benefit from global warming has been undermined by the US and Russian droughts. “Many hazards come with climate change,” said Kevin Trenberth, of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research. “It’s not a matter of a benign shift to a longer growing season for northern nations.”
Meanwhile the IPCC is working on its Fifth Assessment, due for publication next year. An early draft was leaked online by an American climate change sceptic called Alec Rawls, who claimed it had conceded that cosmic rays may influence the climate system – an alleged admission that deniers immediately hailed as “game-changing”.
In fact, the draft says it is “virtually certain that [a net energy uptake of the Earth system] is caused by human activities, primarily by the increase in carbon dioxide concentrations”.
