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A WELL-KNOWN DUBLIN hotel has cancelled an upcoming conference focused on ending greyhound cruelty in Ireland after it was “inundated with crank and abusive calls”.
Event organisers say there are now looking for an alternative venue after Buswells Hotel cancelled their booking citing a “significant risk to the health and safety of the hotel”.
Greyhounds Around the Globe, an international conference on greyhound welfare, was due to take place on 30 November with a number of TDs lined up as speakers.
The greyhound industry has faced heavy criticism in recent months after an RTÉ investigation claimed in June that almost 6,000 greyhounds were killed for not racing fast enough in 2017.
GREY2K USA Worldwide and the Irish Council Against Blood Sports were told on Monday that their event had been cancelled as it was bringing the hotel into disrepute and injuring its reputation.
Carey Theil, a co-founder of GREY2K, said in the two decades of fighting for greyhounds, they have never faced this level of intimidation and harassment.
“It reflects poorly on the character of those involved in the Irish greyhound industry,” he said.
In correspondence seen by TheJournal.ie, a senior member of hotel staff cited the terms and conditions, signed by event organisers, which state that the hotel “may cancel this event should it have any reason to believe the booking may prejudice the reputation of the hotel”.
Having considered the event and possible disruption to both you as an organiser and the hotels day to day operations and the threat of protests from members of the public we have decided there is a real and significant risk to the health and safety of the hotel, its staff and event participants and on that basis we have no choice but to inform you that we are cancelling this event.
The hotel said it has been “inundated with crank and abusive calls” with members of staff being threatened, placing the establishment in “an extraordinary situation which cannot be justified”.
The hotel said it had no choice but to cancel the event as it must protect its staff from any intimidation.
Organisers believe that supporters of the greyhound racing industry are trying to “silence public debate through the use of intimidation, harassment, and threats of violence”.
‘National sport’
A spokesperson from the Irish Council Against Blood Sports said it was “appalling” that a hotel would be forced to cancel a conference on animal welfare over safety concerns.
“Whatever they’ve been saying over the phone, those people are absolute bullies,” the spokesperson said.
We will announce a new venue within days and will ensure that Greyhounds Around the Globe is a resounding success.
Confirmed speakers include animal protection advocates from Ireland, Britain, Scotland, Australia, Macau and the US along with TDs Ruth Coppinger, Paul Murphy, and Maureen O’Sullivan.
Fáilte Ireland and Tourism Ireland told the Irish Greyhound Board last week they would not be featuring greyhound racing in any tourism marketing campaigns in Ireland or abroad.
The decision was reached after concerns were raised by Minister for Sport Shane Ross following the RTÉ Investigates programme in June.
The Taoiseach told the Dáil yesterday, his understanding is that Minister Shane Ross asked Fáilte Ireland to consider the matter and that they made the decision for themselves.
A number of rural TDs criticised the suspension of promoting the sport in tourism marketing campaigns calling on the tourist boards to immediately reverse the decision.
The Irish Greyhound Board said it was shocked and disappointed by the suspension.
The IGB has argued that greyhound racing is a “national sport” and an industry in which people are entitled to participate and enjoy.
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I’m an Irish programmer, living abroad, and would like to work remotely for an Irish company. (It’s always a good excuse for visiting home every now and then.) Even with the skills shortage, it seems that no employer is interested.
I’m also in a similar position (living/working in the UK), I like to check in every now and then with job opportunities in Ireland and it’s always 3-5 years industry experience. It seems to be case (to me at least) that you have to move abroad to get your experience before you can come back and apply for these jobs.
I think everyone can agree (having myself being in a similar position) that there is NO SKILLS SHORTAGE.
It is a shortage of desired experience.
Every company requires 3-5 years it seems. None are interested in investing in staff to train/mentor them.
My advice would be similar to other posters for those with no experience: learn how to build a phone app, or try to improve a piece of software from the likes of Sourceforge.net Then put that at the top of your CV.
Exactly – nobody cares if you got 86% in second year in Software Systems – they just want to know what you can do.
I don’t blame companies for wanting experience though – why take on a 22 year old when you can take on a 32 year old? Not like in 30 years time you’ll regret that the older guy is retiring sooner than the younger guy, in the software industry :-P
In my own case I have six years of industry experience with Java, but no one is taking the bait.
Spot on. If you don’t have a github.com account with some interesting projects or contributions, don’t bother.
Software engineering is one of the few jobs that you can MAKE your own experience. As someone who hires developers, I’d sooner hire someone with an interesting github portfolio than someone with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.
It’s pretty easy to spot people interested in building cool things.
You’re a dying breed Dave. Outside of google very few companies are looking for software developers who are in any way creative. However, they are increasingly looking for staff who are multidisciplinary. Agile is pushing things that way… especially devops.
Software companies want experienced engineers so there is the catch how can you have a constant flow of graduates when they can’t get jobs becuase companies want experienced people.
The other flip side the money is crap starting off.
Money isn’t crap starting off – it’s in line with most other jobs of similar expertise. Companies wanting experienced people is a nuisance though, but I’m not sure how to resolve that.
Software is one of those fields though where you can gain expertise without experience. If your CV has a link to your website, your GitHub profile or some mobile app you’ve worked on they shouldn’t care how long you’ve been working at it.
If you’re passionate about software and have the skills to match, you have the ability to convey this to an employer :-)
Sofware developers are the highest paid graduates of any field. They are even paid more than intern doctors and graduate engineers. Of course those fields catch up fairly quickly.
Is there a list of these vacancies/job specifications?
There is no skills shortage. There is however a bias towards 25-35 year olds, with 5 years experience in a very specific and narrow skill set.
The employers (HR departments) have absolutely no comprehension that a programmer is a programmer, that’s the “skill”, the programming language is usually pretty irrelevant.
If you are over 45 years old, then the employers pretty much ignore you and your wealth of experience.
Irish companies have become very Americanised in the practice of promoting (very) young people to managerial positions, who are then biased towards hiring people their own age.
So what skills are we short of? If it’s technical that’s something to work towards for our universities and students, if it’s language of course it’s going to be easier for people of other nationalities.
So half are picked by Irish residents !
Very poor CV screening, interviewing and technical tests result in a lot of false negatives. I was recently made redundant, and have just been through the process. I picked up a job pretty quickly, but I am genuinely surprised by the lack of opportunities for some of the more junior guys, given that I would be happy to work with all of them again and they have access to great references from everyone at the company.
I constantly see companies that are doing web-development asking about program complexity and solving scalability problems that they more than likely don’t have. If they do have these problems, they are self inflicted by people reinventing the wheel rather than using something off the shelf. Another thing I noticed is the asking of questions assuming knowledge of specific tools. Web summit insisted on degrees from Universities only, with a clear bias towards Trinity college.
I personally would prefer to hire someone with less experience of these kind of things, and the simple ability to do simple things correctly and take direction. I don’t think I would have a problem hiring in the current environment.
Given that we are in the middle of a tech bubble, we should not spend too much time trying to correct these problems at the expense of the exchequer and let the companies who have the problem deal with these self inflicted problems themselves.
I’m an Irish IT graduate with over 10 yrs experience. I’ve taken time out to raise my child. I’ve been trying to get back to work for the last couple of years & companies are unwilling to even respond to my CV. I understand the concepts, am easily retrained & willing to work. It’s not a shortage of skills, I think it’s that companies want an exact set of skills & aren’t willing to re-train people. I know I’m not the only one in this position.
You’re right. as an employer, it’s not efficient to hire someone that will take weeks or months to retrain. The onus is on you to skill up. Not your employer. Ad I’ve stated before, in IT, it’s very VERY easy to upskill and create your own experience in the form of personal projects.
I’m still shocked at those who don’t understand this. Nobody owes you a job and being out of work for 10 years means you’re practically starting from scratch anyway. But that doesn’t matter, it’s very easy to start and build something yourself to modernise your skill set.
I’d sooner hire a 17 year old who just finished their leaving with a decent github profile then someone with 3 masters and no effort put into keeping themselves relevant.
Too few jobseekers actualky put themselves in the shoes of a potential employer.
have your say