Surge in welfare cheats as Irish struggle to cope with ongoing recession

Ireland's social welfare system, colloquially known as 'the dole', is buckling under the strain of a never-ending economic depression, latest numbers show.

Startling figures appearing on RTÉ.ie show that the number of reported welfare frauds has sky-rocketed from barely 600 in 2006 to over 16,000 this year.

That's an over 20-fold increase, and although not all of those reported can be assumed to have been 'cheating' the system, it's a safe bet that at least some of those reported were not unfounded.

Unsurprisingly the majority of claims were for 'working and claiming' -- those holding down a job while also drawing the jobseekers' allowance, but a substantial number - almost 4,000 - were thrown out due to 'lack of information' on the part of the reporters.

A whopping 40pc of the latest Budget was dedicated to social welfare and protection measures.

Appeals to the public to reported suspected 'welfare cheat', as they are unflatteringly called, have worked, according to government.

A report appeal along the lines of those commonly seen for insurance fraud has clearly had the desired affect.

Anonymous reports never form the sole basis for a cessation of payments, but are often the catalyst for an official investigation on the case file -- which evidently often yields the same results.
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A spokesperson for the Department administering the system said that the unsettling number of reports could be put down to a sense of 'fair play' among those drawing the support system reasonably, wishing to ensure that it was kept open only to those who really needed it, but in reality the figures speak equally loudly about the kind of endemic incoming shortages that Irish families are considering to face with the ongoing recession.

Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton has taken an unusually hard stand on the issue of social welfare.

She caused controversy this year by accusing some of purposely choosing to live a 'welfare lifestyle' rather than making any good-faith effort to find employment.

Her comments were rightly decried as insensitive at a time when job creation initiatives seem to be thin on the ground and lay-offs rampant, but there will be cracks in every system, and the Dole is no exception.

The Minister underscored that the number of anonymous reports represented a 'cultural shift' in peoples' perceptions of social welfare, and a growing disdain for those taking it unjustly:

"I think it is principally a feeling that, at a time when resources are limited, many feel strongly that those limited resources should be used for the benefit of people who need them most." she said.

10,226 of the 16,142 tip-offs came by email, followed by 5,000 phone calls, and 985 written letters.

'Dead cat' plague strikes Ireland -- motorists' antifreeze pinned down as the unlikely culprit

A plague of sudden and unforewarned cat deaths has torn through Ireland in recent days.

The culprit? Common antifreeze -- the sweet-smelling chemical that motorists use to keep their vehicles running in icy conditions.

The bizarre story comes as pet owners nationwide have reported a sudden spike in the number of sudden inexplicable deaths of their beloved felines in recent weeks.

Exact incidences have not been forthcoming, but one University College Dublin based vet remarked that: “Over the past few weeks we have seen an increase in the number of cats referred to the UCD Veterinary Hospital by local veterinary practitioners," confirming what many had already known.

“Many have died suddenly or after a short illness, and our post-mortem examinations have confirmed that these animals experienced rapid kidney failure following the ingestion of ethylene glycol, a major component of anti-freeze," the vet told the Irish Examiner.

The alarm was raised after pets around the country -- from Carlow to Cork and seemingly just about every county in between -- were found lying lifeless after having been struck down by the viscous chemical.
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It also seems as if dogs could be at risk unless preventative measure are brought into play -- a scenario that will prompt worry among canine-lovers as Ireland's winter continues.

“We cannot identify the precise sources of the ethylene glycol that is poisoning an increasing number of cats, but we are asking people to be vigilant with the storage, use, and disposal of their anti-freeze products," the vet said.

Cats are believed to be ingesting it after licking it off the sides of road surfaces, while dogs are reported to be scavenging for more plentiful sources, typically puddles and other greater accumulations of the toxic chemical.

Leaky car radiators have been pointed to as another source for the shocking outbreak.

The Road Safety Authority (RSA) is reported to be contemplating offering motorists official warning of the hazards of overusing antifreeze, while cautioning pet owners to be wary about letting their animals roam near areas that may have the liquid on their surfaces.

Unfortunately antifreeze has become something of a wintertime staple for Irish motorists following a series of unusually cold and difficult winters.

It can be purchased in common supermarkets for bargain-basement prices -- and it takes just a few mililitres of it to render any pet that ingests it a walking dead duck.

Pets that ingest the chemical will typically become uncoordinated and dizzy before finally succumbing to kidney failure and dying.

Dullness and listlessness are other warning signs of the pre renal failure stages but by then it is unlikely anything can be done.

Radical politician invited to Irish university -- BNP leader Griffin calls Holocaust "profitable lie" and finds gays "revolting"

Leader of the British National Party Nick Griffin is set to speak at University College Cork after reportedly accepting an invite from the Government and Politics Society to take part in a debate there.

The radical politician caused a stir this October after Trinity College Dublin effectively banned him from its campus after pressure groups including an anti-fascism campaign organization and a Jewish students' union mounted a high-profile campaign of opposition to the visit.

The surprise cancellation of the Trinity event sparked off a heated debate on the boundaries of freedom of speech in major Irish newspapers as well as as flourish of letters in the Irish Times, Ireland's paper of record.

Many have questioned whether the decision to cancel the event was really based on security, and argued that free speech demands that he be given a platform to air his views.

Fears reportedly ran high that Griffin was on a recruitment junket, and would try use the Trinity appearance as means of promoting the establishment of an Irish branch of the party.

Griffin is head of the British National Party (BNP), a far-right political entity that takes a tough, often racist, stance on radical Islam, immigration, and minorities.

The party emerged as a splinter group from the National Front in 1982 and restricted its membership to only "indigenous British" until 2010.

In the last British general election the party received under 2% of total votes, and is generally seen as extremist and racist.

Griffin himself has done little to downplay that image: he has a history of Holocaust denial (an "extremely profitable lie"), homophobia (gays are "revolting"), and a longstanding opposition to Islam.

He was arrested for suspected incitement to hatred for remarks he made about Muslims during a BBC documentary in 2004.

The Trinity debate which Griffin had been invited to take part in what entitled: "That This House Believes That Immigration Has Gone Too Far." He was to speak in favour of the motion.

The UCC society's decision to invite him to speak in Cork will foist the problem of how best to deal with Griffin and his radical views onto UCC's management and security, who will no doubt be less than pleased to find out that a potential public relations and security liability has landed in their back yard.

Trinity's handling of the event was less than graceful: the last minute cancellation did little to quell fears that the decision to ban Griffin was based on his political ideology rather than security.

The notorious David Irving, for whom Griffin once stewarded a Holocaust denial meeting, was the last speaker to fall foul of UCC's security ahead of an upcoming campus event.

Protesters opposed Irving's appearance on national television as well as his debate on campus, while a high profile march took place outside the college gates.

Judging by the protests that pre-empted his first possible appearance at Trinity, he can expect more of the same from UCC.

Irish police pose as prostitutes -- unprecedented Garda sting nets 27 convictions as police promise further crackdowns

Female Irish detectives posed as prostitutes in an unprecedented sting operation that saw a total of 21 man convicted of soliciting 'ladies of the night'.

The US-style operation, one of the first on this scale for the Gardaí, took place over almost a month in Limerick city centre and its environs, ultimately bagging the cops a total of 21 convictions before Limerick District Court, all of whom were directed to make a donation to a local charity by the judge.

The men, most of whom were living locally, also had their names and addresses published in an embarrassing 'name and shame' sequitur to the report carried by a local Limerick newspaper.

Many of the men were in their sixties, although the youngest caught was only 23. All pled guilty to the charge of soliciting prostitutes.

The highlight of the trial, no doubt, was the moment when one of the convicted summoned the courage to ask Judge Eamon O'Brien for free legal aid. The judge's response: “If you can afford a lady of the night, you can afford a solicitor."

The remarkable operation took place in the city centre over a number of weeks and involved two undercover female detectives embedding themselves in well-known prostitution hotspots in the city center.

Prostitution has remained a problem in Limerick for some time, and the latest Garda effort is just one of many to crack down on the trade before it becomes even more widespread.

Lobbying groups such as Doras Luiminí claim that Ireland has become a major venue for human trafficking, intimately bound up with the sex trade, and claim that thousands of women, many of Eastern European, are living in effective imprisonment in Ireland.

A similar sting operation, minus the covert element, took place in Cork last year where a number of brothels that had been operating in Cork were busted in a citywide crackdown.

Local prostitution linchpin Tony Linnane was found to have set up an elaborate recording system at one of his locales operating just metres from a popular nightclub in the city centre, and close to the South Mall, Cork's financial and insurance thoroughfare.

The fear spread like contagion to the professional classes on the Mall, many of whom must have been extremely thankful that the prosecution took place <i>in camera</i>, where the prying eyes of journalists and locals alike could not see who had been literally caught with their pants down.

Although using brothels as a patron is not illegal under Irish law, soliciting prostitutes in the public domain, operating them, or deriving criminal proceeds from them, are.

Many are reportedly turning to online ventures such as the very notorious Escort Ireland to use prostitutes.

Girls are advertised as 'escorts' and go to great lengths to explicitly say they offer sexual services, but in reality are prostitues.

Trinity College Dublin bans the Daily Mail newspaper after faking student death story

An Irish university has moved to ban a prominent tabloid from its campus after it deliberately published a story falsely claiming that a search subject had been found dead.

Although Caolan Mulrooney, a 19 year old teenager, tragically was found dead just two days after the story's publication, it was clear within hours of it going to press, while the search was still ongoing, that the body had not yet been found, and that the story had been deliberately invented.

The story, by journalist Marisa Lynch, sparked widespread fury in Cork and on the Twittersphere.

The piece enjoyed a prominent position in the paper's popular Sunday edition, and claimed that the body of the student had been recovered in the River Lee, suggestive of a suicide, – Mulrooney's body was recovered two days later in a local business yard, after seemingly sustaining a 25 foot fall from an unprotected cliff after a night with friends.
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The motion to ban 'the Mail' was passed after students promised to seek some measure of reprisal for the tabloid having deliberately invented the story in a callous and caculated bid to merely sell more copies.

An apology was printed in the newspaper yesterday, and a marketing manager for the paper's parent company said that the editor had personally travelled to Cork to meet with members of Caolan's family to express his sorrow at the pieces publication.

It now cannot be sold on the campus of Trinity College Dublin, Ireland's most prominent university, while there are rumors that other Irish campuses, including University College Cork where Caolan was studying, will be encouraged to do likewise.

The search for Mulrooney, a first year engineering student who went missing after a night out with friends, drew a near-record number of volunteers in Cork to help out with the search.

In a small city such as Cork there was a real sense of civic cooperation in the case as both friends and those merely moved by the tragic news joined forces to search every metre of the River, and then the area where Caolan had last been seen, to hopefully find the boy, not the body.

The emotion aroused by the search made the tabloid's piece seem all the more heartless.

The 'Mail' is largely viewed as a barely localized counterpart of its UK version, and has been involved in several squirmishes with Irish authorities over its often controversial techniques to get stories, but never has it been reduced to inventing the death of a search victim in a bid to boost ailing revenues and circulation numbers.

The piece was not only grossly offensive, but also had the real danger of encouraging those who had read the piece and not heard it contradicted to give up on the search.

The people who have a right to be most disappointed by the story, though, are journalists themselves, particularly those working for tabloids.

In the wake of the phone hacking inquiry at a time when the industry struggles to regain its sense of decency, stories like these do nothing to further the belief that tabloids are doing anything to clean up their act in the wake of that scandal.

The opposite is of course the case: the story does everything to reinforce the belief that tabloids will stoop to all depths just to get a story.

I only hope that University College Cork (UCC), where Caolan was studying, takes encouragement from their counterparts in Trinity and moves to do likewise.

If it's even for sale here: after that story I'm glad that I honestly don't know.
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College fees go up by €250 -- students have little room to complain

Students, in fairness, should have relatively little to complain about after today's first installment of the Budget.

While much of the country still braces to see precisely how Enda Kenny and his Cabinet will go about making the kind of massive cuts that prompted the Prime Minster to make a rare 'state of the nation'address on public television last night, all students have to contend with, after the first of two Budgetary installments, is what should seem like a relatively trifling €250 ($336) hike in their fees, alongside a 3% cut in the maintenance grant, a first-line student assistance fund.

No increase, of course, can truthfully or honestly be described as trifling, but given the rather frank and startling tone of the leader's address to the nation last night (“I would love to tell you that .. the worse is over, but for far too many of you that is simply not the truth”), students should be able to see the light from the dark, and acknowledge the fact that the impossible dream of stagnant fees, frozen at €2,000 a year, simply isn't achieveable or feasible, and that an increase of €250, rather than €500, or €1,000, is probably the best out of a few fairly dreary but inevitable options they were faced with.

Despite the relatively benign increase, student leaders, unsurprisingly, seem set to rather predictably jump on the PR attack bandwagon of bashing the hike for all that it's worth: Macra na Feirme has already called the hike 'short sighted', while the USI, refuting claims from the government that the increase will be a once-off, has done likewise, but Education Minister Quinn's statement this afternoon that he merely 'regrets' (rather than, say, profusely apologizes for) the hike is perhaps as good an indication as any that he realizes that the increase was not as bad as many students might have feared it to be, or that might have been levied in the kind of climate the country finds itself in.

He was the Minister, after all, who notoriously and to public outcry decided to backtrack on a pre-election promise not to increase third level fees, whose head was called for at a national student march on Dublin, and who singly seems to have been foisted with responsibility for the government's decision to raise fees.

Despite not knowing what decision had been taken on the fees question, the apparently prophetic Free Education for Everyone (FEE), a breakaway student movement advocating a more hardline approach to countering fees issue than that being taken by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), has managed an impressive four occupations of parliamentarians' constituency offices over recent days in a desperate last attempt to show their opposition to what they must have known was about to take place

Which would make you wonder, or at least it makes me: in light of all the fee increase amounted to, was the fear and distress that student activists caused by barging into busy constituency offices really justified? Could perhaps – I don't mean to suggest this seriously – an apology not be in order?

It seems a little unfair.

Fine Gael TD Anthony Lawlor recounted to a local news site how his staff were confronted by the sight of 8 invading students who proceeded to lock him out of his political office

The students, being hashtagged on Twitter as the 'Maynooth8', after the university they hail from, are still living there on chemical toilets and food rations if the police haven't arrived yet (they almost certainly have), but just in case that hasn't happened, and now that the relatively small hike in fees is now known, would it not be time for them to put down their smartphones and call it quits for the day?

The student movement here is one that is understandably committed to ensuring that third level remains as affordable as possible for as many as possible.

It's a noble aim, and one that I, as a beneficiary of that affordable third level education, fully support t.

It's moments like these, however, when student leaders stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that it's not as bad as it could have been – or, more pointedly, as the country and its finances can afford – that FEE and the USI begin to lose my support, and perhaps that of other students and graduates.

Irish students occupy politicians office as Budget Day nears

Budget Day is Tuesday 6th December

Eight Irish students have refused to leave a local politician's office as the occupy phenomenon hears an echo in the student movement and Budget day fast approaches.

The students told Ireland's national broadcaster RTÉ that they have chemical toilets and food to last a week – and they aren't going anywhere unless they are forcibly removed or the poltician in question (Anthony Lawlor, FG) commits to voting against any grant cuts or fee rises in parliament.

The student occupation, led by protesters from Maynooth SU, is just one such incident in the past few days.

Nine students who took part in an occupation and roof climbing of Galway TD Brian Walsh's constituency office were released without charge on Thursday, while earlier in the week the Union of Students in Ireland led a brief sit-in protest at the Department of Social Protection, after having earlier attempted similar protests at the Labour Headquarters.
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The hotly anticipated and feared Budget 2012 is to be published this coming Tuesday, December 6^th, at 4:30pm, and is widely expected to include the first of several measures aimed at increasing the cost of third level education, which many fear will force students out of college.

Ireland currently charges students €2,000 (~$2,600) per year for college education, but political leaders have made clear that the figure will have to increase in the face of ever-rising student numbers and ever-falling resources.

As Ireland's economy continues to weather stormy waters, a surge in students seeking out a haven in higher education has placed an unprecedented strain on government resources not equipped to deal with the surge in demand.

Labour Party TD Ruairí Quinn has also come under heavy criticism after effectively reneging on a pre-election pledge not to increase or stand over a rise in college fees should he come to power.

That pledge has already been broken and students have no reason to believe that the same thing won't happen again this Tuesday.