EPA finds water for 46,000 people has cancer-linked pollutant

BT - 10 supplies in Donegal including Greencastle exceed accepted levels of trihalomethanes see this article here for details

By Shannonside news - 1st February 2017

Water supplies serving 46,000 people in the Shannonside region have elevated levels of trihalomethanes – which are environmental pollutants that have been linked to cancer according to the EPA.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘remedial action list’ for the fourth quarter of 2016, four supplies in Longford and two in Roscommon had above the permitted standard of the chemical compound.

 

A supply serving nearly 10,000 people in Ballymahon was found to have elevated levels of THMs, along with a source for 5,100 people in Gowna

There were similar findings from the EPA in the Granard and Longford Central supplies, which serve a total of nearly 22,000 people.

Three water supplies in Roscommon feature on the list, with the Grangemore, near Boyle, and North Roscommon Regional sources having elevated THMs.

These serve nearly 9,400 people, while the North Roscommon Regional supply featured on the list for having inadequate treatment for cryptosporidium.

No supply in Leitrim is on the remedial action list, with the South Leitrim Regional Water Supply among two that have been removed from it.

In a statement, Irish Water confirms that works are progressing and are on target across the four water supplies in Roscommon that are on the list.

It says it’s investing in ongoing projects to tackle different risks posted to the water supplies affected more than 18,000 people in the county.

Source: Shannonside.ie, Feb 1, 2017
               fliuch.org

The man who knows how to make a citizen’s arrest

Stephen Manning uses a legal provision to pursue those who may have broken the law

Stephen Manning has taken actions against gardaí, court staff and judges. Photograph: Collins Courts.

Stephen Manning was sentenced to two months in jail last week. However, he was not in Castlebar District Court to hear the judge’s ruling on a charge of breaching the peace in the town’s courthouse last year. Instead, he was in Dublin, trying to hand in a petition to the Supreme Court.

Manning continues to deny the Castlebar charge and says he was never told he was due in court. He is now on bail pending an appeal. “It’s scary, it’s very scary,” he says.

Manning, a retired teacher, has been in many courts. In the beginning, he was there with other members of his group, Integrity Ireland, to protest against home repossessions in Mayo.

More recently, however, he has begun to use an obscure legal provision dating from Victorian times which allows private citizens to criminally prosecute those they believe have broken the law.

Under the 1851 Petty Sessions Act a person can ask a judge to issue a summons for a suspected lawbreaker. A garda or lawyer is not required. The standard of evidence necessary for issuing a summons is quite low.

Serious allegations

The private prosecutor can take a case to its end, one that could involve jail for a person found guilty. If the allegations are serious, the Director of Public Prosecutions will take over and has the option of proceeding with the case, or dropping it.

He started trying to bring his own prosecutions, he says, because “there was so much wrongdoing going on by agents and agencies of the State”. So far, he has taken actions against gardaí, court staff and judges.

Despite making initial headway in some cases, he has yet to succeed in convicting anyone. Failure, however, proves to his eyes that he is right about the system, not that he was wrong to take the actions.

“Clearly the decisions are made from on high that ‘we do not let our guys get prosecuted because if the public gets to hear they can do this, we’re finished’”.

Last year, Manning was an unsuccessful candidate in the general election, running in Mayo. He got 157 first preference votes.

He has published a book, DIY Justice in Ireland – Prosecuting by Common Informer which is subtitled: “The quick and easy (lawful) way to take on tricksters, tyrants, thugs and thieves in the Irish Justice System.”

Besides offering guidance on private prosecution and citizens’ arrests, it lambasts the Courts Service as a private corporation whose objective is to “turn a profit” and accuses the legal profession of being “rife” with malpractice, fraud, perjury and deception.

“I know I must sound like a conspiracy nut, and I used to think like that when I heard people talking like this, but it is my honest opinion that we have a very seriously corrupt justice system,” he said.

 

Source: Conor Gallagher, Irish Times, Feb 3 2017

State pension rates below official poverty line

There was plenty of coverage today of the numbers of people living in poverty, following the publication of the latest official data by the Central Statistics Office. (Coverage here, here, here and here; CSO press release here & full report here.) Some of the reports mentioned the fact that the figures, which are for 2015, show that economic inequality decreased that year.

Understandably, the comments focused on the specific report that the CSO published today. But a telling detail is revealed if you combine the information in the CSO’s report with the information in a second document, the ‘SW19’ booklet for 2015 (the same year that the CSO report covers) from the Department of Social Protection (PDF, 76 pages here). The SW19 booklet sets out the rates and bands for all social welfare payments.

Comparing the data in the two documents shows that only two social basic welfare payments were enough to give an individual recipient a basic income that was higher than the state’s official measure for being at risk of poverty. ( I am counting about 17 types of payment as ‘basic’ though somebody else doing this exercise could argue that more of them should be classified this way.)  By ‘basic’, I mean the ‘headline’ rate of payment for an individual in their own right, and not including some standard top-ups (like the fuel, gas or electricity allowances, or increases for adults or children who are dependent on the recipient).

Some numbers:

The threshold — chosen by the government — for defining somebody as being at risk of poverty is 60% of the median equivalised income. I won’t go into what that means here. However, the CSO report shows us in the first row of the first table of data that, in 2015, the annual median equivalised income in Ireland was €20,000 (unusually, a round number). 60% of that is €12,000, which converts to a weekly income of €230.77 — below that, and the State says you are at risk of poverty.

The highest old age pension in 2015 was just short of that poverty line, at €230.30. You were eligible for this — the ‘State Pension (Contributory)’ if you had paid PRSI (of the right type) for an average of 48 weeks each year you worked. If you hadn’t paid stamps, the highest pension you could get was €219.00 (the ‘State Pension (Non-Contributory)’). The maximum Widow’s, Widower’s or Surviving Civil Partner’s Contributory Pension was €193.50. The non-contributory equivalent had a maximum of €188.00

If you were on the dole, the maximum basic individual payment you received was €188.00, for both Jobseeker’s Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance. The same rate applied to Farm Assist. (There is also a pretend Fish Assist scheme that isn’t actually a separate scheme.)

The maximum Disablement Benefit was €219.00, the maximum Disability Allowance was €188.00

And so on, through page after page in SW19, where almost all payments are below the key value of €230.77.

The exceptions? One is the Carer’s Allowance (if you’re caring for somebody over 66), where the maximum payment is €239 if you’re looking after one person and €358.50 if you’re looking after more than one person. But that means you are doing a full-time job of caring for somebody. And the maximum Guardian’s Payment was €161.00 per orphan, so caring for two orphans would bring you over the poverty line — but that doesn’t count because the Payment is to be used for the orphans.

 

Source: The Cedar Lounge Revolution, Feb 2 2017