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GOOD MORNING. Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
After a massive protest in Dublin’s city centre, there was a slight shift in the government’s position this week on homes impacted by the mica scandal and the support required to help them fix their crumbling homes - but impacted homeowners are not feeling hopeful.
Homeowners are demanding that a government scheme be changed to cover 100% of the costs associated with fixing their homes, and in this morning’s lead story Michelle Hennessy hears from three affected families.
We built or house ourselves, we started in 2002 and everything was grand, perfect. Then it was that bad winter in 2010 we noticed a lot of cracking and we thought it was the plaster. The following year was bad as well, it seemed to be getting worse.
A group representing loyalist paramilitary organisations have called on the next DUP leader to collapse powersharing if necessary to “stop the constant flow of concessions to Sinn Fein”.
The Loyalist Communities Council – an umbrella group representing the views of the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando – have also said Irish government ministers and officials are “no longer welcome in Northern Ireland”.
It follows the decision of Edwin Poots to resign as DUP leader after internal party fury over his decision to nominate a first minister after Westminster pledged to introduce Irish language legislation.
The search for a missing 27-year-old Dublin man who was last seen hiking in Wyoming in the US over a week ago is set to be scaled back.
The Grand Teton National Park Service said the search for McLaughlin will shift tactics to a continuous, but limited mode “after days of extensive ground and aerial efforts.”
Canada has been removed from Ireland’s list of designated countries for mandatory hotel quarantine, with Mongolia to be added to the list by Tuesday.
Separately, hospitalisations have continued to decrease. As of last night, there were 44 patients with Covid-19 in hospitals, of whom 15 are in ICU.
The sole moderate candidate in Iran’s presidential election has conceded he lost to the country’s hard-line judiciary chief.
The move signalled the protege of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has won the vote he dominated after the disqualification of his strongest competition.
The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation has written to the HSE, calling for a meeting with the Health Executive’s Emergency Department Taskforce over unsafe levels of hospital overcrowding.
The INMO said that the number of admitted patients waiting for beds has continued to increase, despite the continued risk of Covid-19 transmissions. The union added that some hospitals are also approaching pre-pandemic levels of overcrowding.
Mother and Baby Home survivor, Terri Harrison, says that recalling the trauma she suffered when coerced into giving her son up for adoption, and her ongoing search for him, while giving evidence to the Commission was incredibly difficult.
Harrison was among the survivors to give testimony to the Investigation Committee of the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes.
She told Órla Ryan the way women and girls were treated in Ireland at the time was comparable to the women in Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin said that “nothing has been signed off” on, with regards to the proposed new National Maternity Hospital earmarked for Elm Park in Dublin on land that has been owned by the Sisters of Charity.
Martin said the new hospital location and its ownership has been a “long running saga” and that it has always been his view that any new hospital should be owned by the public.
In a statement last night, the Religious Sisters of Charity said it has “never at any point been contacted by Government or the State to discuss purchasing the site”.
How do we find solutions to the housing crisis? The Good Information Project hosted a panel of expert voices last night to discuss what solutions, if any, could help end the crisis.
Panellists were: Ali Grehan, Dublin City Architect, Aidan Regan, associate professor in UCD’s School of Politics and International Relations, Orla Hegarty, architect and assistant professor at UCD and Dr Lorcan Sirr, lecturer in housing at Dublin Institute of Technology and visiting professor of housing at the Universitat Rovira.
You can watch back the expert panel here.
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Take the uniformed Gardai out of offices and put civilians in to do office work . Good work ethics come from the top down ….
@Maureen Keogh-Smyth: How exactly would that stop a garda culture of lies indiscipline and borderline corruption?
You are funny cos its worked well in HSE 10:1 civilian to nurses. Lets replicate that and increase funding indefinitely.
If you want to replace someones job with a form and then someone that manages those form returns and then forwards that form to a supervisor of forms, who in turn produces a nice bar chart go ahead and then the person role moves away from there core role to be a reporting role. Many of the areas involved are under civilian control for decades.
Millions given to fight gangland, millions spent on new armed units, and yet innocent people get killed on the roads because of other irresponsible road users that Gardai are being paid to stop. Gardai demanded a pay raise in 2016 and threatened strike at a time when they knew falsification was taking place and had been for years. This just isn’t good enough.
@Rita Gleeson: Gardai did not demand a pay rise, they demanded pay restoration after the FEMPI deductions which saw their wages cut on a number of occasions, rank and file gardai would not have been aware of the scale of the breath test figures as they were only entering figures locally and would not have had access to the cumulative figures for the organisation, indeed from the reports management even when alerted by the medical bureau of the discrepancy between figures and equipment used in breathtaking, did not query this fact, it would appear from the article that the real problem lay in setting unrealistic targets against the resources available to the gardai, the fact that over 80% of rural checkpoints were undertaken by a single garda in breach of their own health and safety regulations points to this fact, the truth is garda numbers and resources were depleted but expectations on delivering an expanded service within an already challenged service is at the root of this debacle.
@Honeybee: threatened strike should be sacked no excuse.
@Honeybee: Whether they had access to the figures being falsified or not is irrelevant – it was still the Gardai that falsified them !! What’s your excuse for that ?
@Rita Gleeson: “Gardai demanded a pay raise in 2016 and threatened strike at a time when they knew falsification was taking place and had been for years.” your own words but now @Honeybee: Whether they had access to the figures being falsified or not is irrelevant, did you read the article ? I think the answer is in the heading” How and why under-pressure gardaí faked checkpoints”, there are no excuses, the fact of the matter which the report revealed was as the headline stated .”The obvious implication here is “that the numbers were previously unrealistic”, says the report, that being the case, how could the gardai deliver if even the Policing Authority recognise the miss match of demands and resources.
@TonyF: You obviously don’t read what I post Tony, I responded to what Rita said and what the Policing Authority said in their statement, this is a systemic failure in accountability in the gardai which should have been identified earlier in the summer of 2014 when garda records and the number of mouth pieces in storage were at odds as pointed out by the medical bureau of road safety, I respond to information , if you read my post , there is nothing incorrect in what I have stated, am I not entitled to an opinion ? , If it differs to yours or Rita’s , is that problematic to you ? by the way I have no connection to the gardai .
@Honeybee:
“he fact that over 80% of rural checkpoints were undertaken by a single garda in breach of their own health and safety regulations points to this fact”
Lets get something clear… Public Health Nurses in Ireland go into homes of drug users and mentally insane every day and don’t even get a smart phone as a method of communication.
If there is to be two cops in cars in rural roads to stop a car, grand…
That means Public Nurses are then much higher educated, riskier job and the have honest reporting… Why are they not paid way much more?
Look at the pay… They are about equal in basic pay but the garda gets overtime too.
Seriously, you couldn’t trust the Gardai to run the corner sweet shop.
It was an overtime scam, pure and simple, that’s the how and why of it.
@Dermot Lane: read the article, 3rd paragraph checkpoints were conducted during regular tours and 3rd last paragraph highly unlikely for personal gain. These checkpoints were scheduled on regular time and this article proves it.
@Paul: If they were down as carrying out these checkpoints in regular time ( some of which never even happened ) then they were claiming overtime for some other duties such as beating up water tax protesters. They couldn’t squeeze all those duties in to regular hours as those figures wouldn’t add up then. Ok boys, who’s turn is it to collect the coffee and doughnuts today? !!
Are Gardi involved in this falsification of breath test responsible for the deaths of innocent road users whos lives could have been saved if gardi would have done there jobs by removing potential killer drunk drivers off our roads.?
@Macus Mc Mahon: In a word, No.
@Eamonn Ó Maoldomhnaigh: in more than a word, directly responsible? No. Indirectly responsible? Quite possible.
@Macus Mc Mahon: there, their
@Mary Murphy: oh Jesus Mary(the annoying one) and Joseph!
@Mary Murphy: shockingly poor punctuation there Mary. Give the phone back to Mammy.
@Macus Mc Mahon: Right… so you’re trying to make out it’s the guards who are at fault for drunk driving deaths. Get a grip. Did you even read the article? They weren’t physically able to undertake the targets set by management because they were already overstretched and under resourced.
@Tom Tom: I think Macus posed a valid question and are Garda management not Gardaí themselves? In setting unrealistic targets were they responsible for putting the Gardaí on the checkpoints under unnecessary pressure which led them to miss catching some drink drivers?
@Joey Navinski: Of course it’s a valid question. After years of falling, the road fatality figures started to rise again when these chancers were busy faking road checkpoints and in some cases putting innocent drivers off the road and failing to catch the drunk drivers and the banned drivers etc.
@Dermot Lane: what innocent drivers were put off the road? You mean the ones who were given a summons instead of a ticket? The ones who committed a road traffic offence but were issued the wrong penalty is more accurate. No innocent ones, incorrectly processed ones yes.
@Tom Tom: Yes Tom, but why did they not threaten to go on strike over that problem then.?
@Eamonn Ó Maoldomhnaigh: in a word maybe
Gardai need to take money out of the equation at all levels of the organisation. Put in Civilians everywhere as bookkeepers, then Gardai might focus on the job they are supposed to be doing instead of controlling things like money and overtime.
Let’s just put a sticky plaster on all of this and bring even tougher alcohol limits in so we can screw the system up even worse.
Almost 2000 people a year are killed on British roads, you won’t get stopped in England on a motorway unless your doing excessive speeding like over 100 mph, never met a check point there in 3 years either, pure joke here the way it’s gone, traffic moving too slow is just as deadly as going too fast as people get impatient and take risks!
@Paul Friday Shannon:
What point are u trying to make?
Maybe it’s time to privatise this job, like the Clampers or the Speed Vans, if Gardai are not up to the job. The Gardai could work with them and do the arrests. No excuses can be made for dishonesty. We trust Gardai to make our roads safe, what about all the victims and their families ? I think they only people that don’t care about this are people who don’t want to get caught.
@Rita Gleeson: Or not set stupid limits that an underfunded and over stressed can not reach?
It’s no excuse for the individual but government has fostered an environment for this to occur
Garda are not responsible for deaths due to drunk driving unless they are the ones doing it and the hoolabaloo is necessary to let us know that something is been done about the codology that went on ,the same as the bank thing
What about all the self-breathalysing that may have taken place too ? ? – Apart from the 2 million elevated by increasing numbers on Pulse, we will never know the extent of the amounts done by self-breathalysing – there have only been two cases reported – doing it this way, Gardai can clock up thousands of readings this way undetected. Fact ! There could have been another million done this way. Time for change !!
We need some party to undertake a reform platform as part of their main aims ,and I can’t see any on the horizon,
Seems to me that if a certain amount of cars were stopped and no body had alcohol on them, Mr Plod would be obliged to say that a certain amount of people were over the limit any way. Now I may be missing out on something here, but in my opinion, the clown that instigated this rule should be hanging from a flagpole somewhere.
@Dermot Lane : Falsification and massaging figures can be used to give a good outward appearance of work being done when it wasn’t – that in turn can be used as an excuse to get more overtime – and at – that’s corruption !!
The only way there might have been fewer road deaths this year is because since this scandal broke on this, Gardai may have been actually put out to do what they were supposed to be doing all along and that might be the reason there was a reduction this year. Think about that. Also in the boom, there was lots of money and high powered cars, and people drank more too I’m sure. Since then we have had more road improvements and many people immigrated too don’t forget. It was not because they Gardai were doing their job.
@Rita Gleeson: And don’t forget the auld fiddleing of statistics as well Rita.
What about the self-breathalysing method !! Only 2 incidents of this reported. By self-breathalysing, millions more could have been clocked up un-detected doing it this way. The 2 million discovered were done by just elevating numbers on Pulse – we will never know the real extent -and Gardai will never admit it – they ony reason they admitted to these were because they were caught and had to admit to them. It’s definitely time for change !!!
I’ve been in Ireland 3 years and do a lot of driving in Kildare and Dublin. I’ve never been breath tested which to me seems crazy if you want to reduce drink driving and make people think twice about driving to a pub etc. Time it was taken seriously. Something’s wrong when such an important role of policing is treated so casually.
Keystone!
Lazy lazy lumps
@Honeybee: Whether they had access to the figures being falsified or not is irrelevant – it was still the Gardai that falsified them !! What’s your excuse for that ?
There seems to be a huge problem with personal responsibility and accountability in the police. I get increased/better training, I get pay restoration, I get poorly equipped, I get poorly supervised yeah all of that and probably more. But dishonesty? lying? corruption? caused by all the above?
@Austin Rock: Just like in private business, it comes from the top
Hi Austin – Couldn’t agree more ! These are the people we expect to be honest and they seem to have no concept at all about the importance of trying to save lives on our roads – any of our families can be affected at any time by dangerous road users – time for a new system to be put in place !!!!
Of Course Gardai are responsible for stopping drink drivers, who can and do can kill and injure fellow passengers, pedestrians and other road users by their irresponsible driving – Of Course Gardai are responsible for God’s sake. Wake up !
@Rita Gleeson:
Blame:
1) the actual drunk driver or
2) the Gardai who by pure coincidence might have been scheduled to do a checkpoint on the exact road at the exact time a drunk driver happened to be passing…..
Stop blaming the wrong people, only one person is to blame for collisions caused by drunk drivers, the drunk driver.
@Rita Gleeson: You are wrong, it is the fault of the drink driver.
@Paul: Paul you sound like a Garda – no more excuses. The Gardai falsified 2 million breathtests and maybe a million more – we will never know and they continue to give excuses for their dishonesty. Face facts the Gardai cannot be trusted to do this job – and people have been killed because the Gardai did not take those dangerous drivers and alocholics off the roads. End of !!
Garda honesty.
Garda integrity
Garda intelligence.
Garda reliability.
Garda accuracy
Garda statistics
Garda taking the proverbial.
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