Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG.

Plans for new Dublin Airport runway ready for take-off

   

Plans for a €300m second runway at Dublin Airport have gained dramatic new impetus following the IAG takeover of Aer Lingus which includes plans to use Dublin airport to feed traffic from Europe to North America.

Over the next five years IAG plan to boost Aer Lingus feeder traffic through Dublin by an extra 2.4m passengers a year.

But even before the IAG bid for Aer Lingus emerged earlier this year the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) had reignited plans for a new runway on the 2,500 acre site at Collinstown.

New research released last week by the respected aviation website anna aero shows that Dublin is the fastest growing airport in Europe for long-haul traffic this year

Now plans for the construction of a second runway, which first emerged more than 30 years ago, look set to be fast tracked.

Planning permission for a new east-west runway, 1.6 kilometres to the north and parallel to the existing main runway was granted back in 2007 and remains valid for the next two years.

But air industry sources suggest a new planning application may have to be lodged because the original permission contained 31 restrictive conditions including a requirement that no flights operate from the second runway between 11pm and 7am.

The hour between 6am and 7am remains the airport’s busiest time and a ban on flights leaving a new second runway before 7am is considered impractical. Passenger numbers travelling through Dublin leapt by 8% to 21.7 million last year and are already 15% up on that figure in the first four months of 2015.

A DAA spokesperson said “We are currently examining the various options regarding the delivery of a second parallel runway at Dublin Airport, but have not yet made a final decision in relation to this issue.”

“A second parallel runway has been part of the overall development plan for Dublin Airport for several decades and we’re fortunate that land was earmarked for this project many years ago within the overall Dublin Airport campus.”

“The various options relating to its development will be carefully considered before the company makes a final decision on the best way forward and a second runway remains a central element of Dublin Airport’s long-term plans,” the DAA spokesman confirmed

Dublin Airport now has two flights per day to Dubai and Abu Dhabi with Emirates and Etihad both flying twice a day since last year.

Passenger numbers to the Middle East and North Africa doubled between 2011 and 2013.

The Commission for Aviation Regulation (CAR) has ruled that Dublin Airport will not be allowed to pass on any of the costs associated with the development of a second runway until passenger numbers pass 25 million in a 12 month period.

Between 2010 and 2014, Dublin Airport increased its transatlantic passenger numbers by 42% with seven new transatlantic services during the same period.

This summer, Dublin Airport will be the sixth largest airport in Europe for services to North America with 318 flights per week (159 weekly departures) between Dublin and 15 separate destinations in the United States and Canada.

Fianna Fáil want new law to allow Irish Central Bank to lower mortgage rates

  

Fianna Fáil has said legislation is needed to force banks to lower their variable mortgage rates.

It comes as Bank of Ireland yesterday announced that it is reducing its fixed-rate mortgages by 0.3%.

It has made no announcement on its variable rate however, which stands at 4.5%.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan recently met with financial institutions to ask that they reduce variable rates in line with falling ECB rates.

Fianna Fáil Finance Spokesperson Michael McGrath said that legislation might be the only way to deal with this problem.

“I firmly believe that legislation is going to be required in the Oireachtas to give the Central Bank power to intervene where a market failure has occurred – and one has occurred in the Irish mortgage market – and to put a cap on the level of rates that the banks are charging variable rate customers,” he said.

“This issue is simply not going to go away.

“The Minister met with the banks a couple of weeks ago and, judging by this reaction from Bank of Ireland, those meetings have simply failed.”

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE BANK OF MONEY:

Irish Central Bank spends €55,000 on biscuits last year 2014?

The Irish Central Bank spent €55,000 on biscuits last year?

   

It looks like bankers have a very sweet tooth judging by figures released of the Central Bank’s food bill for 2014.

The bill was published in The Sunday Business Post today and shows that €55,000 was spent on biscuits alone last year.

The total is part of a sweet deal for staff which sees their food, tea, coffee and refreshments subsidised to the tune of over €1 million.

Banks bosses said the treats are also snapped up at seminars and meetings as well as press conferences and briefings.

Kidney Health could be a better way to predict heart disease risk

 

Kidney function could be a better gauge of heart attack risk than cholesterol levels and blood pressure, according to a recently conducted study by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

According to a JHSPH news release, the researchers reviewed data collected from 637,000 patients in 24 studies who had no history of heart disease and found that results from common kidney function tests, which are used to assess levels creatine in the blood and the amount of albumin leaking out of the kidney into urine, improved the successful prediction rate of heart problems.

The amount of creatinine in the blood reflects how well the kidneys are filtering out waste.  Higher amounts of albumin indicate the presence of kidney damage.  In the study’s participants, the levels of creatinine and albuminuria predicted cardiovascular disease in general, particularly heart failure, heart attack and stroke.

Albuminuria was found to be the strongest predictor, outperforming cholesterol levels and blood pressure as a risk assessor for heart failure and death from heart attack or stroke. The study’s lead author Kunihiro Matsushita, MD, PhD, an assistant scientist at Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology, believes that the study’s findings show that health care providers can use data on kidney damage and kidney function to better understand a patient’s risk of cardiovascular disease.

Cholesterol levels and blood pressure tests are good indicators of cardiovascular risk, but they are not perfect.  This study tells us we could do even better with information that often times we are already collecting. People with chronic kidney disease are twice as likely to develop cardiovascular disease as those with healthy kidneys and roughly half of them die from it before they reach kidney failure

While the biological mechanisms linking kidney disease to cardiovascular disease aren’t well understood, Matsushita says that poorly functioning kidneys can lead to a fluid overload that may result in heart failure.

The results of the study were published in The Lancet’s journal Diabetes and Endocrinology on May 29. In other news about heart disease here at Immortal News, treating depression with antidepressants has been shown to lowers rates of death, coronary artery disease and stroke.

ICSA calls for standalone hen harrier compensation scheme

   

The ICSA has called for a standalone scheme to provide proper compensation for farmers with hen harrier designation

ICSA Rural Development Chairman Billy Gray said that while there is some provision for hen harrier designation in GLAS, this covers a maximum of 19ha and is unsuitable for many farmers with larger designated areas.

“ICSA is adamant that there should be no designation without compensation – farmers must be compensated fully and equally for every designated hectare of their land,” Gray said.

The ICSA Rural Development Chairman was speaking after a meeting in Templeglantine, Co. Limerick recently.

Gray also suggested that it was time to revisit the blanket ban on new afforestation on designated ground.

“The scientific basis for this ban is far from categorical. For example, it is now accepted that the first 12 years of a forestry plantation provide ideal cover for the hen harrier.

“As modern sitka spruce plantations can be brought to clearfell in as little as 25 years, and Christmas trees in a far shorter time.

It is clear that there is at the very minimum scope for staggered plantation mixed in with some open ground.

He said that this is especially pertinent to farmers with large designations in excess of 20ha.

The Rural Development Chairman said that while a more flexible approach to forestry would certainly be helpful, there is no getting away from the fact that there must be a stand-alone scheme covering every hectare of ground affected by hen harrier designation.

“Now that the Government is loosening the purse strings to provide substantial amounts of money for public sector pay rises, there is no good reason why a relatively small amount of money could not be set aside for such a scheme,”

Top gynaecologist warns women to have babies by age thirty.

To avoid the ‘devastation and regret’ of infertility

   

A new mother holding a sleeping newborn infant in hospital

A top UK fertility specialist has said that women who have children after thirty are placing a huge pressure on the British health system and warned them to start having children in their twenties.

Consultant gynaecologist Professor Geeta Nargund believes the UK faces a ‘fertility time-bomb’ as the average age a woman has her first child continues to rise.

The lead consultant for reproductive medicine at St George’s Hospital in London claims that fertility issues encountered by women who begin trying for a baby in their thirties place “costly and largely unnecessary burden on the NHS” as they opt for IVF and other means of conceiving.

In a letter to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan obtained by The Sunday Mail, Professor Nargund wrote: “I have witnessed all too often the shock and agony on the faces of women who realise they have left it too late to start a family.

“For so many, this news comes as a genuine surprise and the sense of devastation and regret can be overwhelming.

“And so often the cry will be “Why did no one warn me about this?”’

Professor Nargund believes that children should be given ‘age appropriate’ information from primary school to university to highlight the importance of having children when they are at an optimum age.

“Information is power and the best way to empower people to take control of their fertility is through education.”

“Ideally, if a woman is ready for a child, she should start trying by the time she is 30. She should consider having a child early because as a woman gets older, her fertility declines sharply.”

“As women get older, they experience more complex fertility problems, so treatment tends to be less successful and more expensive.

“On average, more [IVF] treatment cycles are required for a successful pregnancy. So educating people about fertility is very important for the public purse, because it will help us to get more babies within the same NHS budget.”

In the UK IVF is funded by the NHS. IVFs success rate remains at just one birth per four cycles of IVF which costs the health system £20,000 (€28,000). In 2013, the NHS funded over 25,500 cycles in England and Wales.

Professor Nargund had her first child at 29 and said: “My biological clock was absolutely on my mind.”

The doctor revealed that many women are badly misinformed about their fertility.

“Educated women are not necessarily educated about their fertility,” she said.

The average age Irish women have their first baby is 30.3.

We are drinking dinosaur pee every day we drink water:

    

Here’s Why

Do you drink water? If so, how would you react if we told you that all the water you’ve ever drunk and all the water you are ever going to drink in the future comes from the urine of a dinosaur?

The average American drinks four cups of water every day, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That is far short of the recommended eight glasses of water every day and is equivalent to around four cups of dinosaur pee.

Whether it is tap, filtered, bottled, sparkling or sourced from the Himalayan glaciers and sparkled with gold dust, you are just actually drinking the liquid wastes of an ancient beast, says science-centric YouTube channel Curious Minds.

A video explaining this theory says a very small percentage of all the water in the world is available for drinking purposes, but it is still a huge amount of water to provide for the needs of every human being that has ever walked on the surface of the Earth for the last 200,000 years.

Every year, around 121,000 cubic miles of water, or about the equivalent of 42 Superior Lakes, falls down on Earth and constantly flows through the rivers, lakes, ground reservoirs and everywhere else it passes through, including inside the guts of people and animals that drink it.

So what do dinosaurs have to do with all this? Unlike humans, who have been on Earth for a tiny fraction of the 186 million years that dinosaurs ruled this planet, the beasts were here far longer than we have ever been. In that long span of time, it is very likely that the dinosaurs have drunk all the water available back then, and all the water available now is simply water that has passed through a dinosaur’s kidneys making its way through the never-ending water cycle.

“Humans consume a lot of water, but our species hasn’t had the numbers or time to process a large portion of the Earth’s water. Dinosaurs on the other hand had a long time to drink water,” the video explains. “The Mesozoic era – the reign of the dinosaurs – lasted for 186 million years.

That gave them time to drink a lot of water. So while most molecules in your eight-ounce glass have never been drunk by another human, almost every single molecule has been drunk by a dinosaur.”

Charles Fisherman, author of “The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water,” says water molecules are extremely resilient, and it’s likely that all water molecules present now were the same water molecules available for billions of years.

“All the water on Earth has been through a dinosaur kidney,” Fishermantells Marketplace.org. “Every bottle of Evian you drink from is Tyrannosaurus Rex pee. All the water on Earth has been here for 4.5 billion years. It’s all toilet-to-tap at some level.”    

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG Thursday

The Department of Finance sets aside a spend of €9m on outside consultants?

 

The Department of Finance has set aside about €9m for outside consultants this year.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan said most consultancy fees go toward legal issues, including fighting cases taken against the department.

Some €700,000 has been pencilled in to pay experts to implement the Medium Term Economic Strategy, unveiled after the state left the bailout programme last year, the Oireachtas Sub Committee on Finance heard yesterday.

However, the estimated money to be spent overall by the department will be down this year on 2013.

Mr Noonan, pictured, told the Sub Committee that no money was being wasted and claimed the department could not be expected to have extensive expertise in-house.

“In a public service which is by its nature generalist, expertise is always required and expertise is brought in by getting consultancy. It’s cost-effective when it’s operated properly,” Mr Noonan said. “I would argue very strongly that there’s no waste of money in this respect in the Department of Finance.”

Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty said about €3.8m was actually spent in 2013. About €2m of the €3.3m in legal fees last year was recouped, the committee heard. The estimated spend last year was about €1m less than this year.

Mr Noonan said that having permanent in-house experts would be like running a hotel and “you’d have painters and electricians and plumbers on permanent staff in-house rather than hiring them in”.

A spokesman for the minster said the lion’s share of the money would go on banking services, which also includes legal fees.

United Nations pushes the Vatican to reveal extent of child abuse scandal

   

POPE FRANCIS TELLS WORSHIPPERS AT VATICAN MORN MASS PAYING DAMAGES WAS ONLY RIGHT

Pope Francis told worshipers at morning Mass in the Vatican that abuse scandals had ‘cost us a lot of money, but (paying damages) is only right’.

United Nations child protection experts pushed Vatican delegates today to reveal the scope of the decades-long sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic priests that Pope Francis called “the shame of the Church”.

The delegates, answering questions from an international rights panel for the first time since the scandals broke more than two decades ago, denied allegations of a Vatican cover-up and said it had set clear guidelines to protect children from predator priests.

But members of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, and abuse victims attending the session in Geneva, demanded far more transparency on crimes that have rocked the Church, from the United States to Europe and Australia.

“The best way to prevent abuses is to reveal old ones – openness instead of sweeping offences under the carpet,”Kirsten Sandberg, chairwoman of the 18-strong UN committee, told the Vatican delegation. “It seems to date your procedures are not very transparent.”

Ms Sandberg repeatedly pressed the officials to open up Vatican archives on cases of sexual abuse and pay compensation to young people raped or sodomised by priests.

“We will take your questions seriously but we are not in a position to answer now,” Vatican delegation head Archbishop Silvano Tomasi told her at the end of the day-long session.

The Vatican angered victim support groups last month by refusing to answer the committee’s written questions in advance, saying its inquiries were confidential and that responsibility for dealing with abusers lay with local bishops. Barbara Blaine, president of the US-based Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said the Vatican response fell far short of what victims wanted.

“What we want to see is the Vatican punish bishops who covered up sex crimes, and we want them to turn over information they have about crimes to police,” she said. “The Vatican attempted to relegate the issue to the past and claim it is a new era,” said Pam Spees, an attorney for the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

Victims accuse bishops of covering up crimes and switching priests to other parishes to avoid prosecution. Courts have ordered dioceses to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, bankrupting a string of them in the United States. Pope Francis told worshippers at morning Mass in the Vatican today that abuse scandals had “cost us a lot of money, but (paying damages) is only right.” He said bishops, priests and lay people were responsible for this “shame of the Church”.

In December, the pontiff ordered the formation of a team of experts to look into the sexual abuse of minors in the Church, in his first major step to tackle the issue. Vatican officials long played down the abuse scandal as a limited problem, but shocking revelations in the United States,Ireland and then several European countries have turned it into a crisis in recent years.

St Vincent’s Healthcare group claims it will turn dispute around with compliance on pay rules

  

Group chief executive to be paid exclusively from private funds in future

Noel Whelan, chairman of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group: said the group was now in a process aimed at resolving a dispute with the HSE over whether it actually was in compliance with Government pay policy.

The chairman of the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group Prof Noel Whelan has said the organisation is going to “swing around into compliance” with Government public service pay policy.

The group has come under fire over the payment of additional sums to senior executives over and above HSE-approved salaries for work carried out in its private hospital.

Prof Whelan said the group had received legal advice, including from Michael McDowell SC, which indicated that it was in compliance with pay policy as public money was not being used to make the additional payments to senior executives. However, he said the group was now in a process aimed at resolving a dispute with the HSE over whether it actually was in compliance with Government pay policy.

Prof Whelan told the Dáil Public Accounts Committee that he hoped this process would be completed by March 21st.

He told the committee yesterday that in future, the salary of its group chief executive would be paid entirely from funds generated from the private hospital and that the role of group chief executive and the chief executive of publicly funded St Vincent’s University Hospital would be separated and not occupied by the same person.

Just before Christmas, the St Vincent’s Healthcare Group said that its chief executive, Nicholas Jermyn, was receiving a package of more than €292,000 a year. It said this was made up of €136,282 from the public sector and €136,951 from the private sector, as well as a privately funded car allowance of €19,796.

The group’s director of finance, Cormac Maloney, earned €140,876, including a privately funded payment of €32,544. Director of nursing Mary Duff received €96,405, including a privately funded payment of €14,853.

Meanwhile, Minister for Health James Reilly said yesterday it was “unsustainable” for St Vincent’s Healthcare Group to have the same chief executive for both its public and private hospitals.

At an Oireachtas committee, Dr Reilly said the HSE was in the process of addressing issues such as top-up payments for staff and governance issues at the organisation.

“There is only one hospital where the CEO is both the CEO of a public and private hospital,” Dr Reilly told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children. “I believe that to be a conflict of interest and to be unsustainable.”

Mr Jermyn on a number of occasions yesterday declined to answer questions put to him by the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness on whether he would retain a salary of close to €300,000 if he relinquished his existing role in St Vincent’s University Hospital.

Mr Jermyn said the issue of the salary of the group chief executive was one for the board of the organisation. He said in the future he would not receive any remuneration from the public sector.

South & North Irish governments did not step back from Northern talks

SAYS THE TÁNAISTE eamon gilmore

 

THE ROLE OF the TWO GOVERNMENTS NORTH & SOUTH ON THIS OCCASION WAS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT, SAYS EAMON GILMORE

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore: “I described the failure to reach agreement as a step not taken rather than a step back. I still take that view.”

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has rejected claims that the Irish and British governments stood back from the Haass/O’Sullivan Northern Ireland talks on flags and emblems, parades and the past.

He insisted in the Dáil that “the Irish Government was directly involved in this process”. He told Sinn Féin’s Seán Crowe he had to remember “this process was initiated in Northern Ireland” by the First and Deputy First Ministers.

“It was always intended that these would be talks between the parties in Northern Ireland. The role of the two governments on this occasion was to provide support to that, which we did by keeping in regular contact,” Mr Gilmore said.

Mr Crowe had described the “optics” of the talks as wrong and highlighted suggestions by commentators that the two governments “were stepping back” from the talks.

Mr Gilmore said he had been in the North when the talks closed and was in close contact with Richard Haass and Meghan O’Sullivan.

Continuing support
He said the two governments were co-guarantors of the agreement and one of their responsibilities was to provide continuing support. Mr Gilmore added: “I described the failure to reach agreement as a step not taken rather than a step back. I still take that view.”

Discussions broke up without agreement on New Year’s Eve. Three of the five parties in the Northern Executive supported the proposals outlined by the two Americans who chaired the talks.

Fianna Fáil foreign affairs spokesman Brendan Smith said there had “never been a breakthrough in Northern Ireland without the direct hands-on involvement of the two sovereign governments”.

He noted the Tánaiste “seems to have given some urgency to this issue when it was concluding. I would have thought that when the Northern Executive decided to set up a panel of parties to address this issue, it would not have been opposed to the two sovereign governments taking a hands-on approach to dealing with the difficult issues.”

Mr Gilmore insisted “it is not true. . . that the Government became involved at the end of this process”. He said he and Ms Villiers met the First and Deputy First Ministers last year when the flags protest was in a very difficult situation.
Expressed concern
Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan expressed concern that release “licences are revoked without reasons being given, people are left on remand for three and four years and draconian conditions are proposed when releases are considered”. Such a situation “does not contribute to the process we are discussing”.

Mr Gilmore said the prisoner issue was not directly involved in the talks. He had raised it a number of times, but added “we have seen some very worrying activity in recent months”.

Theory behind V formation of birds flying is revealed

   Researchers have uncovered new evidence supporting the theory that birds fly in a V formation to conserve their energy.

Researchers have found new evidence to support the longstanding theory that birds fly in a V formation to conserve energy during long flights. In accordance with the current theories on aerodynamics, birds use the formation to minimize the consumption of energy during flight.

The current theory implies that birds use the lift provided by the lead birds in a V formation. Lead researcher Dr. Steven Portugal, a postdoctoral researcher at Royal Veterinary College in England, headed the recent study involving the rare and endangered northern bald ibis.

The current theory on birds flying in a V formation was put forward as early as 1989 in a study conducted by researchers from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany. The theory was further elaborated in a separate study published in 1994 by scientists from the Department of Zoology of the Aberdeen University in Scotland. Both studies came to a conclusion that birds use the V-formation to reduce the energy needed to traverse long distances in flight.

The most recent study, published in the online journal Nature, used technologies that were unavailable during the earlier studies to confirm the theories. GPS tracking units were attached to a group of northern bald ibises to collect data on their flights. Moreover, a microlight aircraft also followed the birds closely to gather video footage of the flying birds.

The data collected during the flights indicate that the birds have a way of knowing where to position themselves to take advantage of the additional lift provided by birds in the front of the formation.

“They’re seemingly very aware of where the other birds are in the flock and they put themselves in the best position possible,” says Dr. Portugal. “This can give a bit of a free ride for the bird that’s following. So the other bird wants to put its own wingtip in the upwash of the bird in front.”

An upwash is an upward flow of air that is created by a moving airfoil, in this case, a bird’s wing. The up-wash provides the additional lift that birds take advantage of using the V formation.

The new study provides solid proof regarding the veracity of the earlier studies. The data collected by Portugal and his team also provides important insights in ornithology and animal behavior.

Donie's Ireland daily news BLOG

Nuns say they will not pay compensation to the Magdalene laundries fund

FOUR CONGREGATIONS WILL NOT CONTRIBUTE TO FUND, WHICH COULD COST STATE UP TO €58 MILLION

     

The four religious congregations that ran the Magdalene laundries have told the Government they will not make any financial contribution to the multi-million-euro fund set up to recompense former residents.

The Mercy Sisters, the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Sisters of Charity and the Good Shepherd Sisters have informed Minister for Justice Alan Shatter in recent days that they will not pay into the fund, which could cost up to €58 million.

However, it is understood they have said they are willing to assist fully in all other aspects of the package recommended by MrJustice John Quirke in his recent report, including the assembly of records and looking after former residents who remain in their care.

A spokeswoman for Mr Shatter said he was “disappointed” with the decision of the four orders not to make a financial contribution.

He will brief his ministerial colleagues about the situation at the weekly Cabinet meeting this morning.

No comment
Three of the four orders contacted through a spokesman were not prepared to make any comment at this point in time.

The Government announced the scheme last month after Mr Justice Quirke had conducted an examination of the various options to compensate the women who lived in the laundries, many of whom are now elderly.

The minimum payment was €11,500 for women who spent three months or less in a laundry and the maximum approved was €100,000 for those who were residents for 10 years or more.

Groups representing the women argued that higher awards should have been made available to those who had been long-term residents.

There was no onus on any applicant to show they had suffered hardship, injury or abuse. Some 600 women are reckoned to be eligible. The scheme is expected to cost between €34.5 million and €58 million.

When the scheme was announced, Mr Shatter said taxpayers expected the four religious orders to share the burden and make a contribution to the scheme. He would not be drawn on the amount he expected them to contribute.

State apology
The scheme follows on from a full apology on behalf of the State made to the survivors by Taoiseach Enda Kenny in the Dáil this year, in which he said that nobody should have been subjected to the conditions they endured.

That apology came in the wake an investigation by former senator Martin McAleese into the running and conditions within the laundries which were in operation for the best part of a century.

The report also established that the State had played a significant role in the continued operation of the laundries.

Fewer Irish people saving now as austerity erodes our disposable income

 

PROPORTION OF PEOPLE NOT SAVING AT ALL INCREASES TO 46 PER CENT AS AUSTERITY BITES

Fewer Irish people are saving money because of the ongoing pressure on disposable income caused by austerity and recent hikes in Dirt tax.

According to the Nationwide UK (Ireland)/ESRI Savings Index, regular saving has declined across all age groups with only 32 per cent of people putting money aside regularly compared with 36 per cent a year ago.

The proportion of people who are not saving at all increased to 46 per cent in June from 43 per cent a year ago.

The overall index remained flat at 86 in June but was down 15 points on the same month last year on account of “increasing negativity about the amount being saved and the environment for saving”.

The report suggested negativity towards saving, however, was different for each age group.

People under 50 are concerned with the amounts they are currently saving, with 68 per cent saving less then they think they should and only 12 per cent happy with the amount they are saving, the report revealed.

In contrast, those over 50 are more concerned with the savings environment as 62 per cent believe that Government policy discourages saving, an increase from 53 per cent a year ago.

Managing director of Nationwide UK (Ireland) Brendan Synnott said: “In the past year sentiment towards saving has decreased considerably as people continue to manage their way through austerity.

“We are now seeing clearly diverging opinions being expressed by those aged under 50s compared to those aged over 50.”

“The younger consumer is clearly not satisfied with their ability to save, presumably due to their on-going day to day expenses and reduced disposable income.”

“The over 50s are the traditional saver in the economy and this group has seen the return on their savings reduced as Dirt tax has increased and savings rates for the most part have decreased.”

“Despite these immediate concerns around saving, the fact that 37 per cent of people would save any spare cash available is a positive indicator about the overall savings culture in Ireland. ”

Pension bonanza for retiring senior members of An Garda Siochana

Assistant Garda commissioner received golden handshake of over €200,000 last year

New figures show that one retiring assistant Garda commissioner received a golden handshake of over €200,000 last year as part of a pension arrangement.

According to figures released by the Department of Justice under the Freedom of Information Act, the State paid out €41.94 million in lump sums to retiring gardai of all ranks last year. This followed a lump sum pension pay-out of €46.81 million in 2011.

The pension lump sum payout last year is slightly more than the entire Garda overtime bill of €41.5 million in 2012.

The figures show that the only assistant commissioner to retire last year received a lump sum of €207,927 with five chief superintendents receiving pension lump sums of between €170,000 and €183,005.

The department confirmed that 81 retirees received lump sum payments of over €100,000 in 2012.

The statistics show that the top 25 recipients – made up of the assistant commissioner, five chief superintendents and 19 superintendents – last year shared a pension payout of €3.8 million.

The department also confirmed that there are five retired members of the force receiving annual pension payments in excess of €100,000 with a further two receiving annual payments of between €70,000 and €79,999.

The figures reveal that 30 retired members are in receipt of annual pension payouts of between €60,000 and €69,999, with 120 in receipt of pension payouts of €50,000 and €59,999 per annum.

The deptartment did not disclose the location details of the top 25 recipients “as it may lead to identification of the individuals concerned”.

Last year, 462 gardai retired receiving on average lump sum of €90,799 each.

Separate figures provided by Minister for Justice Alan Shatter show that last year one assistant commissioner retired along with five chief superintendents and 19 superintendents.

They were joined by 24 inspectors, 119 sergeants and 294 rank and file gardai.

The 462 gardai who retired last year followed 480 who retired in 2011. This followed 407 who retired in 2010; 776 in 2009 and 341 in 2008.

Since 2008, 143 members of the force with a rank of superintendent or higher have received the bumper pension lump sums after retiring from the force.

According to Mr Shatter in a written Dail response to Fine Gael TD Andrew Doyle, 95 superintendents have retired; 34 chief superintendents; 12 assistant commissioners; one deputy commissioner and one commissioner have retired during that time.

Fianna Fail justice spokesman Niall Collins said yesterday the large number of retirements from senior ranks from the force “has left a leadership vacuum in the force and it is demoralising for the force to see vacancies unfilled up along the chain of command”.

Mick Wallace TD calls for stronger oversight of the An Garda Síochána

  

INDEPENDENT TD MICK WALLACE HAS PROPOSED RADICAL CHANGES TO THE SYSTEM OF OVERSIGHT OF AN GARDA SÍOCHÁNA.

At a news conference, Mr Wallace claimed there is a serious lack of democratic accountability of the force.

  In the Dáil today, he proposed a bill aimed at strengthening the independence of the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission.

He it was motivated by any antipathy to the force, saying he had a good relationship with the force.

He insisted that the increased accountability would make for better policing, and that a return to what he called policing by consent would make for a better force.

Six in 10 cancer sufferers in Ireland beat the disease

 

SIX OUT OF 10 PEOPLE ARE NOW SURVIVING CANCER IN IRELAND THANKS TO ADVANCES IN EARLY DETECTION AND TREATMENT.

The Irish Cancer Society said that while cases are rising, more people are surviving cancer and going on to live a normal and healthy life.

Figures show that there are now 100,000 people living with cancer here, meaning there is a growing need to understand the “life-changing implications a cancer diagnosis brings,” the charity said.

The society is set to hold a free conference in Dublin for cancer survivors and their families, which will address the needs of cancer survivors across the country.

The two-day National Conference for Cancer Survivorship event will run on September 21 and 22 at the Aviva Stadium, with up to 800 cancer survivors attending.

Dublin to host cancer survivors Ireland event next September

  

UP TO 800 CANCER SURVIVORS AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE EXPECTED TO ATTEND A FREE TWO-DAY EVENT IN DUBLIN THIS SEPTEMBER.

The National Conference for Cancer Survivorship will take place on September 20 and 21 at the Aviva Stadium, with the theme ‘Living Well with Cancer’.

More than 60% of Irish people diagnosed with cancer in Ireland survive for five years or longer.

Although the number of cancer cases is increasing in Ireland, with around 100,000 people living with the disease, advances in early detection and treatment have led to more people going on to live a normal and healthy life.

Olwyn Ryan, Patients Support Services Manager at the Irish Cancer Society said: “The transition from cancer patient to cancer survivor can be difficult for those on a cancer journey.

“While many people adapt well, others experience problems in adjusting to life after a cancer diagnosis.

“Access to information and support to deal with issues such as fear of the cancer coming back, financial strain and long-term side-effects of treatment is vital.

“The aim of this unique conference is to identify the issues and support patients and those close to them need to make the necessary adjustments in order to live as well as they can following a diagnosis.

“Delegates will be offered the opportunity to engage with experts in the field of cancer with a particular emphasis on psycho-social adjustment and keeping well into the future.

“Bringing survivors together so that they may befriend, help and support each other is a powerful way of improving the lives of those living with cancer.”

The two-day programme includes practical information on treatment advances, dealing with fatigue, exercise and diet as well as dealing with the emotional and psychological effects of cancer.

There will also be separate tracks for healthcare professionals and affiliated support groups.

Tyrannosaur left a tooth behind in another dinosaur

 

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, even when you are the King of Dinosaurs. A dinosaur discovery points to the hunting strategy of Tyrannosaurus rex.

• Tyrannosaurus rex was a massive meat-eating dinosaur that lived 66 million years ago
• A T. rex tooth left lodged in the healed tail of a plant-eating hadrosaur dinosaur says it was a hunter

Even Tyrannosaurus rex missed a meal now and then, paleontologists report Monday, noting the discovery of a big tooth left in the tail of a plant-eating dinosaur.

Some 40 feet long at full size, T. rex was surely a fearsome beast, famed for its massive jaws, but how much of its diet consisted of captured prey as opposed to scavenged has remained unclear. But this discovery shows T. rex tried to take a bite out of a live hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur, and lost a tooth in the process, says the tooth discovery team led by Robert DePalma of the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, in Fort Lauderdale.

“We now have conclusive evidence that T. rex indeed engaged in predatory behavior,” they say in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. Looking at two healed tail bones of the roughly 66 million-year-old hadrosaur uncovered at the Hell Creek site in South Dakota, the team reports the discovery of a T. rex tooth — “indistinguishable,” from ones in the fossilized skulls of other T. rex specimens — lodged therein. This hadrosaur managed to escape from T. rex and keep a souvenir, a dagger-like tooth crown about 1.5 inches tall and 1 inch wide, the discovery team reports.

Modern predators, such as wolves and lions, lose their prey 45% to 62% of the time too, notes the study. So, T. rex can still hold its head high.

Past dinosaur discoveries such as crunched up hadrosaur bones found in the belly positions of T. rex fossils have already pointed to T. rex being a hunter, notes paleontologist Thomas Holtz of the University of Maryland, who was not part of the study team. “So this isn’t the One Key Specimen, but it *is* an important specimen in the argument,” he says, by e-mail.