An Irish woman’s social, political and domestic commentary
A good result for Mr G, but I’m a bit confused…Geoffrey Shannon reckons it doesn’t establish any precedent.
At the Tribunal, Michael Wall gives Ahern £28+ to do up a house that he wasn’t going to buy for another 6 months? Or did I get that wrong? Oh and that “formula” which Ahern’s lawyers says proves it was sterling and not dollars – well they’re still working on that and can’t show it to the bank officials….
Mary “Who do you think you are having babies and wanting schools?” Hanafin is caught out nicely by Pat Leahy in the Post.
“The Department of Education has never objected to, appealed or offered observations on any planning application for housing developments on the basis of lack of school provision in the area.
Last week, following revelations that children in north Co Dublin had been left without school provision, the Minister for Education Mary Hanafin was critical of property developers for not providing school accommodation where they were granted permission for housing developments.
‘‘Far too many planning permissions were given, far too many large estates were built,” Hanafin said on the Morning Ireland radio programme on RTE. ‘‘The council should be saying to the developer that we will give [planning permission] to you, subject to you putting on an extra classroom, or if it’s a large development, providing the site for the school,” she said.
Hanafin was repeating her earlier similar criticism of local authorities for poor planning in cases where permission for huge housing developments has been granted, leading to overcrowding in some schools, and a lack of places for some pupils.
But here’s the amazing bit – the following two sentences, which seem entirely contradictory to me:
However, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education confirmed to The Sunday Business Post that the department had never sought to become involved in the planning process, even by the submission of observations.
‘‘The Department of Education and Science does liaise closely with local authorities regarding school accommodation requirements in areas,” the spokeswoman said.
They NEVER sought to become involved in the planning process (except when the Minister blames planners) but they do liaise closely. How exactly? Does giving them a wallop on Morning Ireland count as liaising? Radio interviewers take note and press her on this one next time she’s on.
By the way, how DID she get away with the ” this is not a race issue but it might be a skin colour issue”. SKIN COLOUR????????????????????????????
Also, I learned of a case recently where a developer offered to build a whole new school, FOR FREE, but the Department of the Environment and the Department of Education refused point blank to negotiate with each other on the issue. They said they weren’t getting mixed up in the other’s business. I think he’s building a creche instead. So as part of a planning issue the Dept of Education is OFFERED a school and bureaucracy gets in the way of even talking about it.
On a happier note I see that Enfield’s St Mary’s National School under Principal Enda Flynn won a NATIONAL award for best school garden. He took the pater around to see it who is most impressed. Each class has a section and they grow everything from roses to vegetables. Well done! 
“Incidentally, on the occasion of this first ever all-Munster football final, and on behalf of Ulster people everywhere, I would like to take the opportunity to apologise to everyone for the dark years of Northern domination just ended. It was a blight on the game, we know. We now accept that there was never any pulling, dragging, gouging, biting, third-man tackling or anything else unpleasant in GAA until it introduced by the Northern teams in the 1990s.
Now, mercifully, football’s long night of the soul is over, and those twin aristocrats of the deep south are about to remind us how pure the game was before it was hijacked by savages.
The Cork-Sligo match notwithstanding – and Sligo’s proximity to the Border can be blamed for that – a Cork-Kerry final is sure to be a celebration of the human spirit, of everything that is noble and beautiful. Freed from the shackles of massed defence, I particularly look forward to individual displays of balletic grace from the Kerry forwards, of a kind not seen since the death of Nijinsky.”
Wake up: mental health status : nervous
M away on business for a few days. LONG days ahead.
Action: deep breath, get up. Assume control. Soon, optimistic.
Breakfast, dress, (them and me). LEAVE THE HOUSE!
Go to garden centre. Huge hit. Lots for them to look at. It’s like a fun park. Water features, garden furniture, plants, flowers, household pets! Rabbits, gerbils (with 5 baby gerbils), Budgies. I buy 350! bulbs inspired by ST gardening column advising to plant bulbs now. I have visions of daffodils, crocuses, bluebells. We also buy a bag of sand. Boys have visions of building a house. They KISS the lady assistant goodbye! I have perfect children and am perfect mother. We get icecreams and load up delighted with our grand plans.
Home. “Cement” mixing gets going. Not bad and only the odd whinge. Uncle drops in again so after tea I gather up garden tools and with boys “helping” we start to plant. Oh my god. It’s HARD. The bloody soil is like concrete. The daffodil bulbs have to be at least 6 inches down. The rabbits look predatory. The roll of wire I had planned to use for protection is overgrown with grass. Can’t unravel it. I give up after 12. Sweating and dismayed. There are 350! I need an enthusiastic man to come and do this. Surely there is some machine to do this? Sigh. We retreat to house for hot chocolate and a rest.
Update: We go swimming. A great success though it started poorly. There was an official swimming class and we were shunted out of the baby pool. Still, nervous older child sat on the edge of the big pool throwing a ball. I held braver younger child and we played fetch for 20minutes. Back home for pasta. Bath next. A pretty good day!
Activity again the key. Oh and I got a bigger spade and planted another dozen bulbs. And covered them up with a board. Hopefully it’ll keep the rabbits off for a while. Unless they form a team and move the board. Wouldn’t put it past them.
Further Update: Eek, they used the time it took to write that wisely. Threw the “cement” at each other and against the back door and walls. I didn’t freak. Encouraged them to clean up a bit themselves and figured it’s only sand..it’ll dry and fall off right?
Wake up: mental health status: poor
Husband brings tea and toast: MH improves slightly.
Get up and start chasing children around to get them ready, interspersed with co-operative play as instructed by mothering books.
Low point: Sit on bottom stair feeling like I’ve been hit by a bus wondering how I will emerge from fog of stress and depression.
Decide to pull myself together.
8 hours later:
- Been for a swim and properly blow dried hair. My clothes are clean.
- Been to bank and grocery shop and butcher
- Ate BLT and chatted to uncle who drops in for tea
- Make sponge cake and apple tart (with virtuous homemade pastry and own apples)
- Have hoovered sitting room and bedroom AND shampooed stains in bedroom (gotta stop spilling tea husband brings).
- FOUR washes done and hung out to dry in lovely sunny weather
- Newspapers read (a bit)
- Emailed John Waters (could be symptom of general madness, not sure)
- Decided not to waste an hour booking flights for upcoming US trip and rang friendly local travel agent instead. He is on the case. Much better use of time.
- Preparing to get dinner.
- Ate apple in sunshine
MH: Excellent!
I’ve been holding fire on the Sean Dunne proposals until I get a chance to go into the Berkely Court and see the models. I’m not instinctively against the development because as far as I’m concerned, from the American Embassy to the RDS is horrible black hole of ugly office blocks and third rate hotels (Jury’s was a kip surrounded by a disgusting car park) and a huge main road off-putting to any pedestrian traffic or village atmosphere. A few smelly old pubs and a Spar constituted the “village”. There is a nice thai restaurant over Paddy Cullen’s but that’s about it. So bring on the bulldozers I say.
However, John McManus whose Business Opinion column on a Monday is one of my few business must-reads, makes an interesting point – Dunne will succeed because the banks can’t let him or any of the other developers (McNamara, O’Reilly and Grehan) fail.
“Whatever problems Dunne must face, their [McNamara and Co, who paid far more per sq/m than he did] difficulties will be significantly greater. It is hard to see any of them, Dunne included, making money unless the planning laws are rewritten massively in their favour, and the only logical reason for them to spend the sort of sums they have expended is because they are certain that they will be. It is not even a case of projects being able to wash their faces within the current planning paradigm. Without a decision to allow massive high-density development in Ballsbridge, they will be in trouble.
And that might explain their optimism. Put crudely, Ireland’s big property developers are too big to be allowed fail. As UCD economist Morgan Kelly pointed out in this paper last Friday, the Irish banking sector has a €100 billion exposure to developers and builders. The sort of blood bath that would ensue if a big developer got into trouble would cost the taxpayer billions to fix.
Confronted with that sort of reality, it is possible to see Dunne getting his tower blocks and his peers getting whatever it is that they need. “
I always thought it interesting that the role of the AIB in relation to Liffey Valley hasn’t warranted more scrutiny. When they lost faith in Tom Gilmartin’s ability to develop the site it was they who sent for the Eoin O’Callaghan/Frank Dunlop team. Liffey Valley had to go ahead because the AIB had too much money at risk for it not to. Looks like the same will apply in Ballsbridge.
SEVEN years ago Professor Niall O’Higgins recommended that the government establish a dozen centres to specialise in the treatment of breast cancer care. The state accepted he was right, and then did nothing. Within two weeks an expert group established by the Health Service Executive is expected to recommend that specialist breast cancer services be confined to about eight locations around Ireland. Health services for slow learners.
If O’Higgins’ recommendations had been implemented in 2000, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now. Or rather, thousands of women wouldn’t spend the next month wondering if the cancer they thought they had beaten still lurks within their bodies.
Failure to plan is at the root of many infrastructural problems in this country; such as the emerging crisis over lack of school places in north and west Dublin. But even when the government is presented with a first-class plan which needs to implemented promptly, it is prone to prevarication. Today I confidently predict that the strategy of confining treatment of breast cancer to a handful of locations will never be implemented.
If I have cancer, how do I want my treatment to proceed? First, I want the top expert in the country to look after me. I want a second or third opinion. I want a doctor who has treated many cases like mine before and has built up the knowledge that could save my life. In short, I want O’Higgins or John Crown. They’ve treated thousands of patients and know what works and what doesn’t.
Then I want the best pathologist, radiologist and oncologist and I want them all talking about my case, comparing notes and deciding together on the next best step. If I’ve to travel from one end of the country to the other to get to these people, that’s fine. I’ll drive, I’ll crawl. What I will not do is entrust my survival to the doctor up the road who sees half a dozen cases of breast cancer a year, who sends my results to a lab 50 miles away, and only chats to the radiologist on the phone every now and then. Last year eleven Irish hospitals treated less than 20 cases of breast cancer. That isn’t just inefficient. For some women, it could be a death sentence.
It is beyond argument that one of the most significant factors influencing cancer survival is volume. Where there is a significant throughput of cases, survival increases by 20%. High volume enables the development of MDTs – multidisciplinary teams – and a mechanism known as triple assessment. That means every week the pathologist, radiologist and surgeon sit down together and discuss each case in detail. Most will be straightforward: a woman either has a benign tumour or cancer. In a small number of cases there will be doubt; perhaps nothing shows up on a mammogram but will in a biopsy. This is where the MDT is essential, and this is the difference between sending a patient home with the all-clear and starting her treatment immediately.
Errors happen in medicine, but triple assessment reduces the risk of them. A small regional hospital with a low throughput of patients can never hope to build up the expertise required to give the best treatment. Now the HSE expert group is to recommend that the number of treating hospitals be reduced from 30 to 12. This is best practice, but will cause a row.
The 18 units earmarked for closure will be dismayed. Local TDs will be mobilised; local women will ring Liveline to complain. The medical staff will be outraged and their unions will kick up a fuss. Protest meetings will be organised, and local ministers will be prevailed upon to attend. Mary Harney, the health minister, will be forced onto the defensive. As Cathal McCoille of Morning Ireland pointed out to Niall O’Higgins when they discussed the political implications of his plan last week, TDs represent the people, and Irish people like local hospitals. Aren’t they entitled to them? O’Higgins argued that if people realised they could get better care by travelling, they would be willing to travel. I’m not so sure about that. When it comes to health, people can make very irrational decisions.
For some patients, such as women in labour and acute cardiac cases, time spent travelling is a problem. For most other cases, cancer included, the arguments in favour of being treated in high-volume specialist centres are overwhelming. And still any decision to close low-volume regional centres will be characterised as “cutbacks” and greeted with well-rehearsed outbreaks of spontaneous outrage. This is not a matter of cost. Pouring money into cancer services in regional areas will not increase expertise; only experience and big case loads can do that. The lack of a coherent national strategy on cancer has had appalling consequences. Opposing this plan, when it finally appears, will only compound the problem.
The best we can hope for is that Mary Harney will show the political toughness of which she is capable and over-rule short-sighted parochial concerns. Brendan Drumm, head of the HSE, has demonstrated determination in the past two years but unfortunately the HSE has no control over private hospitals, such as Barringtons, which is at centre of the current crisis.
Will Harney succeed? I’m not sure. The inertia in the Department of Health seems to have been the key motivating factor in her decision to build private hospitals on public sites. Despite all the problems they will create, Harney believes that it will simply take too long and cost too much money to provide public beds. In other words, she accepts that it’s just too difficult to make civil servants implement the will of the government in a timely and efficient manner. So she has sidestepped the problem by turning to the private sector for action.
That sort of solution is not available with the national strategy for breast cancer care. Somehow Harney will have to force the department to close units in the face of emotive opposition from staff and patients. If the Shannon-Heathrow row is indicative of government unity and loyalty, she can even expect trouble from her cabinet colleagues.
When Professor O’Higgins was asked about the review taking place of all cancer cases in Barringtons he observed that it was a “great pity” that it had got to this stage. It will be much a greater pity if the belated effort to right the wrongs of our ad hoc system of cancer care is thwarted by misguided opposition.
Following on from Joseph’s comment, I think everyone is a bit confused.
On the one hand, in any interviews and columns I’ve done, I always stress that a child is most likely to be harmed, deliberately or accidentally, in their own home at the hands of their own parent or adult trusted by the parent. The boogey man is not out there. The sedative theory is logical BUT I don’t see how they could have concealed and disposed of the body. That side of it just seems impossible given the media circus. I think I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt until someone comes up with a theory for that.
The only thing that bugged me about this case was that if the McCanns were working class and had been in the pub, the press would have screamed neglect and “home alone” and social services would have taken the other two kids. The McCanns seemed to have avoided that because they were doctors.
From the IT
The mother of two children with autism has criticised residents from Ballinakill Downs in Waterford city for lodging objections to the establishment of a special school.
Lucy Phelan (44), a patron of the Waterford Applied Behavioural Analysis School, said yesterday she had fought “tooth and nail” to set up a school for children with autism and the objections could jeopardise the project.
The residents’ submission to city council states that around 12 children, aged under six, play on a cul de sac at Ballinakill Downs and there was a serious issue concerning safety with the coming and going of additional traffic and parking.
…The city council has received 23 objections to the school from residents.”
Objecting on health and safety grounds so their kids can play in the street? PLEASE. If they want to look after their children, then em, don’t let them play in the street. You really have to wonder are they just as concerned about having austistic children around? Creeps. Poor autistic kids get nothing without a battle and smug stupid parents of normal kids line up with the enemy. Wonder who they voted for?
Suspension of disbelief is a necessary requirement when watching telly, but never moreso than with Grey’s Anatomy.
In the current episodes showing on Living TV, during a ferry disaster in which hundreds of people are injured, Grey falls into the sea and apparently drowns. The hospital is swamped with patients and the interns had been required to attend at the scene. Grey is brought back to the hospital and suddenly ALL the principal surgeons are working on her. The Chief, Burke, Bailey, Addison, the other 3 interns show up while Shepherd and McSteamy pace the corridors. I’m like, em, what about the other patients? That would never have happened on ER.
So after HOURS of Grey being dead she comes back to life with NO brain damage. Riiiight. Still, good episode.
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