News Ireland daily BLOG by Donie

‘There is no going back on water charges for Ireland’ says the EU

    

Micheal Martin, and Enda Kenny.

THERE IS NO GOING BACK ON WATER CHARGES, THE EU COMMISSION HAS SAID IN ITS CLEAREST STATEMENT ON THE CONTROVERSY TO DATE.

Ireland is breaking EU law if the Dáil seeks to abandon charging as is expected after a nine-month consultation period agreed in the Programme for Government.

In reply to a Parliamentary Question from MEP Marian Harkin, the European Commission said Ireland  “made a clear commitment to set up water charges” and there  is no provision “whereby it can revert to any previous practice”.

The statement is the clearest yet on water charges and suggests that Ireland could be left open to significant EU fines unless a billing system is implemented.

The Commission said that Ireland is signed up to Article 9(4) of the Framework Directive which sets down “strict conditions”.

It says that a member state wishing to avail for flexibility under this provision needed to take a decision on what constituted an “established practice”.

“On the contrary, in the said plans, Ireland made a clear commitment to set up water charges to comply with the provisions of Article 9(1).

“Ireland subsequently applied water charges and the Commission considers that the Directive does not provide for a situation whereby it can revert to any previous practice,” the Commission said.

The statement is likely to reignite the war of words over water charges.

Fianna Fáil has claimed that it has legal advice which says that Ireland can legally scrap water charges.

However, Fine Gael continues to say that water charges cannot be reversed and recently Taoiseach Enda Kenny said that despite all the protests people will eventually end up paying for domestic water.

Legislation that allows for the suspension of water charges for nine months is to be debated in the Dáil later this month.

It will allow for the setting up of a Commission which will make recommendations on the future of water charges.

European Union must reprise role of ‘social champion’

SAYS TÁNAISTE FITZGERALD

  

FRANCES FITZGERALD WARNS OF SETBACK IF UK WITHDRAWS FROM EUROPEAN ARREST WARRANT OR EUROPOL.

The Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said membership of the EU “led to real changes for women through removal of the working ban for married women and the equal pay directive”.

The European Union must change its focus and be identified again with making people’s lives better, the Tánaiste has told the Dáil.

Frances Fitzgerald said the EU began as a peace project by promoting economic co-operation and it became a “social champion”.

Citing benefits to Ireland, she said membership of the EU “led to real changes for women through removal of the working ban for married women and the equal pay directive”.

During the day-long debate on the UK decision to leave, Ms Fitzgerald said in recent years the union “is seen by too many people as a restricting rather than an enabling force, focused on economic theory rather than social progression. That must change and now is the time to begin.”

She said “the European Union must again be identified with making people’s lives better”.

Echoing Taoiseach Enda Kenny’s view earlier in the debate that it was the Government’s priority to maintain the common travel area between the United Kingdom and Ireland, Ms Fitzgerald said it was also “clear that the UK share our view that it should be preserved”.

SECURITY

The Tánaiste, who is Minister for Justice, said she had spoken on Monday to the UK minister of state for security and immigration. This was “a first step in this process and we agreed to have ongoing contact and further detailed discussions while maintaining our excellent relationship on security issues”.

She said a border normally had significant implications for the movement of people. But “ours will be geographically isolated from the rest of the European Union and in particular it will be outside the Schengen area so the integrity of the border controls of the Schengen area will not be affected in any way”.

Ms Fitzgerald also warned it would be a setback if the UK withdrew from the European Arrest Warrant process or from Europol, the body set up for co-operation among police services across Europe.

The Tánaiste said the arrest warrant system had replaced the traditional extradition process and had proved very successful. Europol had enhanced police co-operation between the member states and “now is a standard part of many investigations with several thousand queries a year going to and from the Garda Síochána and Europol”.

Controlling immune response ‘could ease dying’

     

CONTROLLING THE IMMUNE RESPONSE OF PEOPLE DYING FROM CANCER MIGHT HELP SAVE THEM FROM PAIN, FATIGUE AND LOSS OF APPETITE, ACCORDING TO RESEARCHERS.

Experts hope by using existing drugs to control symptoms, people in their last few weeks of life can have a more comfortable time before they die.

Edinburgh University worked with the European Palliative Care Research Centre.

They studied the progression of cancer in more than 2,500 patients in Europe.

They used blood tests to assess inflammation levels in patients with many different types of cancer, including lung, breast, and bowel cancer.

Reduce inflammation

They found a person’s level of inflammation appeared to have a direct effect on the way they felt – causing pain, fatigue, loss of appetite and nausea.

The researchers believe this may be the first time such symptoms have been shown to develop as a result of the body’s immune response to cancer, and not simply as a consequence of tumours spreading.

Lead researcher Dr Barry Laird, of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre at Edinburgh University, said: “This study challenges the assumption that certain symptoms are an inevitable consequence of advanced cancer, and there is nothing doctors can do to make patients feel better.

“If we can understand what causes symptoms such as pain, fatigue and nausea, we can begin to tackle them.

“We already have drugs that target and reduce inflammation, so using these drugs specifically to treat symptoms may make a real difference to people living with cancer.”

He said clinical trials were now under way to test this.

The research was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Almost a quarter of Irish men admit they’ve probably driven while over legal alcohol limit

  

SURVEY SHOWS THAT DRINK DRIVING EXPERIENCES ARE MORE PREVALENT AMONG MEN.

64% of Irish people say they know somebody who has knowingly driven a car when above the legal alcohol limit in the past five years, a new study has shown.

1,015 adults were interviewed during the Red C survey for Newstalk. It looked at attitudes towards drink driving here in Ireland, as well as personal experiences of drink driving.

More than one in four people stated that they may have been a passenger in a car driven by someone who was over the limit.

Meanwhile, 15% think they themselves may have driven while over the legal limit – a number that rises to 24% among men.

The study also shows that drink driving is perceived to be more of a problem in rural areas than urban ones – with 77% agreeing that people in rural areas are more likely to drive when over the limit.

Meanwhile, more than a quarter of respondents said they believed that the legal drink driving limit is too low.

Tune in to the Pat Kenny Show today and tomorrow for more about Irish attitudes towards drink driving.

Great news for children’s parties and doctors as new helium source discovered

   

DON’T PANIC PARTY-GOERS BECAUSE SCIENTISTS WON’T BE RESTRICTING HELIUM BALLOONS JUST YET AS A NEW DISCOVERY COULD SOLVE A SHORTAGE OF THE GAS.

Reserves of the gas have been running out and doctors a year ago were calling for a ban on its use in party balloons, branding it frivolous.

But scientists have found new helium sources in Tanzania, which could be critical to the role helium plays not only in fun, but in life-threatening medicine.

HELIUM DOES NOT JUST MAKE VOICES GO SQUEAKY, IT’S EXTREMELY LOW BOILING POINT MEANS IT IS USED FOR SUPER-COOLING AND IS CRITICAL IN MRI SCANNERS, NUCLEAR POWER AND LEAK DETECTION.

Until now helium has been found accidentally during drilling for oil and gas.

But a team from Oxford and Durham Universities, working with the Norwegian firm Helium One, applied the expertise used in oil and gas exploration to find how helium was generated underground and where it accumulated.

Their research showed that volcanic activity provides the intense heat necessary to release the gas from ancient, helium-bearing rocks.

Within the Tanzanian East African Rift Valley, volcanoes have released helium from deep rocks and trapped it in shallower gas fields.

Professor Chris Ballentine, of the department of earth sciences at the University of Oxford, said it was estimated there was probably 54 billion cubic feet (BCf) in just one part of the Rift Valley – enough to fill more than 1.2 million medical MRI scanners.

Global consumption was around 8 BCf a year and the US Federal Helium Reserve, the world’s largest supplier, currently held around 24 BCf.

Prof Ballentine said: “This is a game-changer for the future security of society’s helium needs and similar finds in the future may not be far away.”

Professor Jon Gluyas, of the department of earth sciences at Durham University, who collaborated on the project, said the price of helium had gone up 500% in 15 years.

The inert gas escapes gravity and leaks into outer space.

Prof Gluyas said: “We have to keep finding more, it’s not renewable or replaceable.”

Curiosity sees hint of Earth-like atmosphere on ancient Mars planet

    

NASA’S CURIOSITY TOOK THIS SELFIE WHILE CONDUCTING SCIENCE AT THE “WINDJANA” SITE ON MARS, IN APRIL AND MAY OF 2014. ITS INVESTIGATIONS TURNED UP EVIDENCE OF AN OXYGEN-RICH ATMOSPHERE IN MARS’ DISTANT PAST. 

Monday, June 27, 2016, 5:51 PM – Did Mars once have an atmosphere rich in oxygen, more akin to what we have here on Earth? That’s what the latest find from NASA’s Curiosity rover is pointing to, but if so, where did this oxygen come from?

As NASA’s 1-ton, nuclear-powered robotic rover trundles across the rocky Martian terrain, it pauses at times to conduct some science – scoop some sand, drill down into rocks or shoot things with a high-powered laser – which has yielded up some truly remarkable discoveries.

One of these discoveries found that Gale Crater, where Curiosity is roving, once held a large lake of fresh water, with just the right conditions that it would actually be drinkable for us.

Now, according to the latest news from NASA, scientists working with data from one of the rover’s science “pauses” have found manganese oxide minerals – a type of mineral that only forms in one of two ways:

1) In the presence of liquid water and high concentrations of oxygen, or

2) From microbial life.

“Now we’re seeing manganese oxides on Mars,” Nina Lanza, a planetary scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said in a NASA statement. “And we’re wondering how the heck these could have formed?”

“These high manganese materials can’t form without lots of liquid water and strongly oxidizing conditions,” Dr. Lanza explained. “Here on Earth, we had lots of water but no widespread deposits of manganese oxides until after the oxygen levels in our atmosphere rose.”

According to NASA, here on Earth, manganese oxide minerals are used as a kind of historical marker, since they only appear in the geological record after the atmosphere became oxygen-rich due to organisms using photosynthesis.

This isn’t even the first time that manganese deposits have been located on Mars. In 2014, “the jelly donut” rock that the Opportunity rover accidentally dislodged turned out to have manganese in it, and more recently, a combination of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Opportunity investigations found high concentrations of manganese on the ridge of Endeavor Crater, where Opportunity has been investigating.

Given that Endeavor Crater and Gale Crater are roughly on opposite sides of the planet from one another, this lends good support to the idea that these minerals are quite wide-spread.

Drill holes made by Curiosity on May 11, 2014. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The fact that there was oxygen on Mars in the past isn’t the truly remarkable find here. Given the iron oxide dust that gives Mars the nickname The Red Planet, oxygen had to be there in the past. Studies prior to this have even shown that the planet could have had abundant oxygen in its atmosphere long before Earth did.

According to Dr. Lanza, though, manganese oxide minerals require much higher concentrations of oxygen to form than are needed to oxidize iron – higher levels than were ever thought to have existed on Mars.

So, what could be the source of such high concentrations of oxygen?

Although it’s fun to speculate that the high oxygen levels, or even the minerals themselves, may have been produced by ancient Martian microbes, there’s probably a safer and simpler explanation.

Since Mars lacks a strong magnetic field now, even if it was stronger in the past, as it weakened, it would expose Mars’ surface to an increasing bombardment by high energy particles from the Sun and from space. Now, this bombardment apparently sterilizes the surface to some depth, but back in the ancient past, these particles would have plunged into the oceans, splitting apart water molecules into their component atoms.

Mars’ gravity wouldn’t have been strong enough to keep the hydrogen around. Even Earth’s gravity – at 2.5 times stronger than Mars’ – is not particularly good at that, with hydrogen only found in the far upper reaches of our atmosphere. The free oxygen, on the other hand, was heavy enough to be bound to Mars longer, thus being around to produce both the iron oxide dust and these manganese oxide minerals.

One thing to note is an important point made by Dr. Lanza: “It’s hard to confirm whether this scenario for Martian atmospheric oxygen actually occurred. But it’s important to note that this idea represents a departure in our understanding for how planetary atmospheres might become oxygenated.”

This may be a new piece of the puzzle to add to our overall knowledge of how planets and their atmospheres form, or it may actually be a step towards the discovery that life actually existed on the Red Planet at some point in its past.

The next step, according to the Los Alamos National Laboratory, is for the researchers to see if there is any discernible difference between manganese oxides produced through biological processes and those that arise from simple geological processes.    

Donie's daily news BLOG Wednesday update

Ireland now likely to exit troika bailout without any back-stop assistance

   

(right pic.) Michael Noonan attends this morning’s meeting of EU finance ministers alongside his Dutch counterpart, and Eurogroup president, Jeroen Dijsselbloem.

MICHAEL NOONAN MINISTER SAYS DECISION ON EXIT STRATEGY REMAINS ‘FINELY BALANCED’

Minister for Finance Michael Noonan held his final meeting with senior figures from the EU and IMF yesterday in the Netherlands

Sources in Brussels now expect Ireland to exit the bailout without a backstop in place. Officials believe that if Ireland deploys a one-year credit line, it will confront the same issue of market confidence when that credit line expires in a year’s time.With market conditions currently favourable, and Irish bond yields hovering at 3.5 per cent, it is seen as preferable for Ireland to return to fully fledged market financing now rather than at a later juncture.A final decision on a request for a precautionary credit line may be made as early as next week, amid increasing signs that Brussels is prepared to back Ireland if it decides to exit its EU-IMF programme unaided.Minister for Finance Michael Noonan held his final meeting with senior figures from the EU and IMF yesterday in the Netherlands, where he met the head of the group of euro zone finance ministers, Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem. It follows meetings with the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF over the last two weeks.

Hour-long meetingBoth finance ministers described the hour-long meeting at the Dutch finance ministry as “constructive.” While Mr Noonan said yesterday evening the decision on an exit strategy remained “finely balanced”.

Unlike three years ago, at the time of the Irish bailout when contagion across peripheral countries was a primary concern, the decoupling of Irish government bond yields from the yields of other programme countries such asGreece and Portugal over the last year is assuaging concerns about contagion should Ireland’s return to full private funding spark market unrest.

The fact that a request to draw down a precautionary credit line from the euro zone rescue fund, the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), would need parliamentary approval from a number of countries, including Germany, is also weighing on the decision.

EU commissioner Olli Rehn said yesterday that while the decision on an exit strategy was “by and large for the Irish Government”, Ireland was well-funded.

“The Irish sovereign is now well-funded with quite significant cash reserves that serve as a buffer,” the commissioner for economic and monetary affairs said, adding that Ireland was seen as “an economic turnaround,” with growth returning and improvements in the unemployment rate.

Mr Rehn said last month that Ireland had a “very good chance” of exiting the bailout without a precautionary credit line. Mr Noonan took some analysts by surprise last month when he told the Fine Gael annual conference that Ireland may exit the bailout without a backstop mechanism.

Sentiment in WashingtonHe repeated the sentiment in Washington last week following a meeting at IMF headquarters. Since then Irish bond spreads have narrowed, suggesting the prospect of Ireland exiting unsupported may not trouble investors. While Ireland is the first country to exit a joint euro zone-IMF rescue package – a landmark for the euro zone – a number of countries have exited IMF programmes without the use of a precautionary credit line.

With the final troika visit to Dublin due to finish tomorrow, Mr Noonan may make a decision before next Thursday’s meeting of all 17 euro zone finance ministers, in Brussels. Any decision on a precautionary credit line will be first brought to Cabinet in Dublin before being discussed by the euro group of finance ministers.

Australian mystery woman has family connections in Tipperary

 

AND IS NOT A VICTIM OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING

The mystery girl found in O’Connell St. Dublin and identified by Gardai as an Australian adult has a previous conviction for deception in her native country.

The woman, Samantha Azzopardi, illegally tried to draw social welfare benefits payments and received a six month prison sentence, independent.ie has learned.

However, the sentence, handed down late last year, was suspended for 12 months.

The revelation comes as gardai continue to liaise with their Australian counterparts about the woman, who was taken into HSE care after being discovered in a distressed state outside the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street on October 10.

Initially officers believed she was aged 14 to 16. But they have now confirmed she is actually 25 years old.

The woman is believed to have up to 40 different aliases.

Samantha Azzopardi is to be assessed this afternoon by a psychiatrist.

Lawyers were at the High Court today where Mr Justice George Birmingham discharged the order that he had made allowing her to be detained under the Childcare Act.
But he put a stay on the discharge until tomorrow morning to allow other arrangements to be put in place.

The case is be mentioned in court tomorrow morning. It is hoped the assessment by a psychiatrist this afternoon will allow authorities to decide what steps to take next.

The court heard she is “vulnerable” and she is to remain in HSE care for at least another 24 hours as her “life could be at risk” if she is released.

Gardai revealed in court today that she been in Ireland for three weeks before she was found wandering around in a distressed state outside the GPO.

Ms Azzopardi  was initially believed to have been a teenager victim and could not communicate with gardai.

However, it has now emerged she has family connections in Tipperary and officers are satisfied that she is not a victim of human trafficking.

The Herald understands a man, who is not a relative, made contact with detectives yesterday afternoon.

“He was able to tell them who she was and supply details about her  family,” explained a source.

It is believed that Samantha (25) was living with relatives in Clonmel, Tipperary.

The massive breakthrough came just hours after gardai released a photograph of the young woman.

Sources said that the Australian citizen is thought to have travelled here via the United Kingdom.

“She does understand English and can articulate in writing English, but she won’t speak,” said a source close to the investigation.

“She is not talking. There is some written communication coming from her, but only bits and pieces.”

The woman had refused to allow herself to be photographed and the images of her issued yesterday are understood to have been taken without her knowledge.

A source close to the case said: “She is very disturbed. It would appear there is something very serious going on here.”

A garda spokesperson confirmed: “With the assistance of the public, the Gardai are now following a definite line of enquiry and will be liaising closely with the Australian Police and the HSE to finalise the matter.”

The Australian Federal Police are working with Gardai, and would not confirm any reports on her identity, DNA tests or aliases.

A spokesman for Australian Police said there are potential mental health issues so there are important privacy issues in place.

The identification of the 25-year-old woman followed an unprecedented move by gardai to publish a photograph of a person in State care.

More than 2,000 hours of garda time has been devoted to trying to identify the woman and there have been more than 100 separate lines of inquiry by officers.

INVESTIGATORS

In all, 15 possible names were given to investigators but none of the names were correct when they were checked out.

There are reports in Australia this morning that a member of the girl’s family has now made contact with the gardai.

When she was found in a distressed state near the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street on October 10, the woman was wearing clothes from Irish department stores and had braces fitted.

While in State care, she rarely spoke but did sketch pictures of being taken on an aircraft. She gave officers no indication of her origins.

Babies feel their parents stress & anxiety

 

Stress, depression and money problems endured by thousands of Irish families can affect babies as young as nine months old and harm their development.

A major study to be published today on how 11,000 five-year-old children are developing has found that parental stress can result in less sensitivity towards children, meaning parents are less likely to respond to their needs and help them in times of distress.

The Growing Up in Ireland ‘Parenting and Infant Development’ study from the ESRI and TCD says stressed parents could be hampering their children’s development, resulting in problems developing motor and social skills.

And while household income has no bearing on how the average nine-month-old develops, financial pressures coupled with a lack of supports can have a negative outcome.

Co-author of the report, Dr Elizabeth Nixon, said being tuned into the needs of the child and being able to read signals was an “important skill”, but that stress levels impacted on the ability to read these signals. “What this analysis does is highlight some of the processes which feed into how infants are doing,” she said.

“We’re identifying things like parental stress and depression and their effect on parenting.

“These findings show that, even from a very young age, the sensitivity that parents show when interacting with their babies is important for their development.

“Parenting is a challenging task. The reality is it may have nothing to do with what the parent is doing, the child may be, by their nature, more difficult. It’s about the parents learning about how their baby is and appreciating them as individuals. What works for one baby, may not work for another.”

The study was based on interviews with the parents of over 11,000 nine-month-old children. The children and their families have been interviewed twice since.

Researchers looked at a range of development milestones including motor skills, such as crawling and grasping items, social skills such as co-operating with parents when getting dressed and communication skills including vocalising sounds and making associations between words and objects.

The study found that premature babies took longer to develop than those born at full-term, but notes that most children would catch up. The age of the child at birth – if they were premature – had three times more influence on outcomes than parenting.

IT ALSO FOUND:

* Mothers in one-parent households have higher levels of stress.

* There was no difference between one and two-parent households, as measured by infants’ personal, social, motor or problem-solving skills.

* Stress among mothers was commonly associated with fussy and irritable children, resulting in the parent being less likely to be sensitive to their needs, which in turn caused more irritability.

* Mothers tended to become stressed about money, but not fathers. Women also became stressed about a lack of support from family and friends.

* Fathers stressed about the relationship with their partners, which impacted on parenting.

“The most important predictor for fathers’ stress was the quality of the relationship,” Dr Nixon said.

“It points to the important role that mothers have to play in supporting fathers’ parenting. Mothers can play a role in supporting or undermining fathers’ parenting.”

While differences have emerged in how children from different economic backgrounds develop – for example those from lower-income families tended to have better communication skills, while those from more prosperous families had better social skills – the differences were “very small”.

“What matters is relationship and interactions between the family. Obviously, if families are in economic difficulty, it does have an impact but children can be protected.

“You don’t need money to have a good relationship and lots of positive, stimulating reactions,” she added.

Crumlin confirms support for new children’s hospital at St James’s campus site

 

Chief executive says support for St James’s campus location ‘remains unchanged’

The development of the national children’s hospital is earmarked for a site at the west end of St James’s Hospital in Dublin.

Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin has reiterated its “categorical” support for locating the new national children’s hospital at St James’s Hospital.Chief executive Lorcan Birthistle said the hospital informed the Government in April last year that its board unanimously supported the location of the new hospital on the St James’s campus and “this position remains unchanged”.Mr Birthistle was responding to recent media coverage of the issue, including a call by An Taisce to extend the campus of St James’s to include the Coombe Women’s Hospital and to relocate the project from St James’s to land adjacent to the Coombe.This would mean the hospital was co-located with a children’s hospital, in line with best international practice.Dr Orla Franklin, a consultant paediatric cardiologist at Crumlin, has also expressed reservation about the failure to co-locate the children’s hospital with a maternity hospital, given the need for very sick newborns to receive immediate treatment in a children’s hospital.

Mr Birthistle said in a statement issued this morning: “We look forward to working with the Children’s Hospital Group Board and the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board in developing this very important project on the St James’s campus.”

UTV to launch a new Dublin-based TV channel

 

Station will have Irish rights to Corrie and Emmerdale in possible blow to TV3

More than 50 years after it became the first commercial television station in Ireland, UTV is launching a new Dublin-based television channel directly targeting viewers in the Republic.

A nightly hour-long news and current affairs programme placed “at the heart of the schedule” will report “from all corners of the country” when the channel goes on air from early 2015, UTV Media said today.

The company’s executives declined to give any further details of its in-house production plans earlier today, but the popularity of the channel with audiences will be underpinned by its signing of a content deal with ITV Studios that will give it the exclusive rights to show programmes such as Coronation Street and Emmerdale in the Irish market.

The advent of the channel, which is expected to create at least 100 jobs, is subject to the regulatory go-ahead. UTV Media said it had “dropped off” a Content Provision Contract, as required by Section 71 of the Broadcasting Act, to the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland this morning.

“We believe that shortly after Christmas we will find out whether or not we have been successful,” said Michael Wilson, managing director of UTV Television. The media group is committed to the Irish television market, he said. “We have been here since 1959. We intend to be here in 2059, and beyond.”

Its submission to the BAI says that “for clarity, the proposed new UTV Ireland Ltd service will be a separate channel to UTV Ltd”. However, group chief executive John McCann said the channel would “be known simply as UTV” on air.

“It’s a very straightforward, simple concept and that is to provide the ITV schedule customised to meet the needs and preferences of Irish viewers,” he said.

To make the new channel work, UTV Media believes it must be available on all platforms. The station is not currently available on the Saorview digital terrestrial television service operated by RTÉ NL and in the Republic it must be tuned in via the “other channels” section of Sky’s electronic programme guide. “We have not had any conversations with platform providers yet,” Mr Wilson said.

The UTV deal with ITV Studios means TV3 will be obliged to stop broadcasting schedule staples Coronation Street, Emmerdale and The Jeremy Kyle Show from early 2015. I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! will also be among the casualties, but it had already moved this to its second station, 3e.

TV3 chief executive David McRedmond played down the loss of the shows today, saying it was “almost inevitable” that its arrangement to broadcast the two soaps, which account for around 15 per cent of total viewing to TV3, would come to an end.

The rising price tags for the rights, despite a 20 per cent drop in their viewing figures over the past five years, had made the deal a loss-maker for TV3, he said. “Each year there was a ratcheting up in the price and it just became unaffordable.”

Two emus walk into a house in Galway without any permission

   

HELLO WHO ARE YOU? DO YOU KNOW WHO THIS GIANT BIRD/BIRD’S are?

SOME PEOPLE WOULD be happy if a leggy bird showed up unexpectedly at their home and refused to leave.

You’re kidding. But that is just weird.

But that was the problem facing a Galway householder who got something of a surprise when two giant birds which appear to be emus – both almost 2 metres high – turned up in her garden on Monday and were in no rush to go anywhere.

“Nobody knows a thing about where they came from. They just walked onto her land,” Imelda O’Brien of the Galway & Claddagh Swan Rescue told TheJournal.ie.

The woman living in the house in Knockdoe fed the two giant birds (pictured) when it became clear that they were looking for food and didn’t want to leave. She contacted the rescue centre in a bid to trace the owners.

“She was quite afraid of them,” said Imelda O’Brien. “Even though they’re extremely tame, they’re huge – I think you could almost even get up on their back, they’re so big”.

She speculated that the birds could have come from a pet farm or a wildlife park, but may have travelled a long distance.

Emus are the second-largest living bird in the world after ostriches and can run at speeds of up to 48 kilometres per hour for large distances.

The Galway &  Claddagh Swan Rescue has placed an appeal on its Facebook page for the owners to come forward. In the meantime, the birds have been taken into the care of Galway County Council which is keeping the animals in an open space until their owners can be found.