From top: A High Court decision yesterday denied planning permission to provide the country’s first legal drug injection centre at Merchant’s Quay, Dublin. A nearby school and the Temple Bar Company were among those opposed to the project; ‘Temple Bar’ by Billy Treacy
This afternoon.
Singer/Songwriter Billy Treacy writes:
I was brought up not too far away in Capel Street and so was both sides of my family from the surrounding streets. I had family that lived in Crampton Buildings in Temple Bar. I remember Temple Bar before it was a huge tourist industry.
I have been a working musician in Temple Bar for years. Some of this work also involved showing tourists around the area. It used to pain me to have to warn the tourists about the perils of walking around Dublin.
I wrote a song once called Temple Bar (above) written from a personal and a Dubliner’s perspective. It was a humorous but truthful song about Temple Bar as I had witnessed over the years. The song both helped and hindered me in equal measures over the years but I felt I was best placed to comment on it as I worked there and grew up a stone’s throw away.
Temple Bar is a fantastic tourist hub and great for the City. The atmosphere is vibrant and you can soak up the best of Irish Music in a few square miles. Nobody is forced to go there. If it’s too expensive for you then there are other vibrant places in the City to go to.
But anybody who frequents town can’t help but notice the drug and anti-Social problems that have been there for years and have been largely ignored. How anyone can be against a Safe Drug Injection centre is beyond me, especially when it will help users and keep the streets clean.
It seems like a win/win situation. What baffles me is how can a company in Temple Bar object to this when it is proposed to be on Merchant’s Quay (where they already do fantastic work with addicts). It has the potential to make the streets safer all the way along the quays.
What particularly sticks in my throat is that Noel Dempsey [Chairman of the Temple Bar Company] an ex minister and member of a government who lied to the people about the troika and IMF coming/not coming to Ireland can stick his head above the parapet again. This man along with all his colleagues decided to retire from politics back then after running the country into the ground, rather than face the wrath of the public in another general election.
Why does he suddenly get a say in the runnings of my Dublin (and yours)?
Dublin is not perfect and neither are all of its people, but a lot have been left behind by successive governments and what is the solution? Do we let them die on the steeets? Do we let our children witness this? Why don’t we have an injection centre run by the Merchant’s Quay Project?
I can only see it as a positive for the people that need it, for the people that frequent the city and for the tourists. It cleans the streets and makes them safer for everyone and could possibly be the first step to rehabilitation for users. It’s a no brainier!
Nothing else has worked over the past 40/50 years. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Thanks for reading and sorry for the rant. Up The Dubs and enjoy Dublin City everyone. See you for a pint in the glorious sunshine in one of the fabulous outdoor drinking establishments.
Yesterday.
The Dáil sitting at the Convention centre, Dublin
Aontú leader Peadar Toibín revealed new information about how as many as 10,000 older people were moved from hospitals into nursing homes at the start of Covid. Over 2,000 people died reportedly with Covid in nursing homes.
Peadar Toibīn: “Yesterday, under freedom of information, a document was released to me from the National Treatment Purchase Fund, (NTPF). The document was an email (above), which was issued to nursing homes by the contract manager of the NTPF shortly before 10am on 12 March 2020.
I have already furnished the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Mary Butler, with a copy of this email, which states that the NTPF had been asked to establish capacity within the nursing home sector. It goes on to state that nursing homes will need:
“…to have the ability to care for patients coming from [the] acute hospital setting…”
and further states:
“Facilities must be able to facilitate short term residents being discharged from [an] acute hospital. …residents…may be nominated by the HSE [and] the Department of Health as applicable for receipt of appropriate funding.”
Describing what will happen, the letter states that the individual facility would co-ordinate directly with the discharge unit within the hospital.
This is a damning document. In many ways, it is a smoking gun. We know that the Covid-19 nursing home expert panel found that 10,000 patients were discharged from hospitals into nursing homes in the first six months of 2020.
Was it a Government decision to move elderly patients, wholesale, out of hospital beds and cram them into nursing homes?
The major question is who instructed the NTPF to issue this email? The email states that nursing homes were asked to establish capacity. Who asked them? That is the first question.
We have also learned a pot of money was offered to nursing homes at this time. How much was offered to get older people out of hospitals? The context of this discussion is pivotal. In early March, nursing homes voluntarily closed their doors to visitors in an attempt to protect vulnerable residents.
On 10 March, Dr. Holohan, the Chief Medical Officer, issued a statement stating that these restrictions were not necessary. This document shows that two days after telling nursing homes to reopen their doors, an email was issued to nursing homes instructing them to make way for a large influx of patients from hospitals.
Further FOI documents released reveal that, throughout all of this, the Minister for Health at the time, Deputy Simon Harris, repeatedly ignored requests for meetings from the CEO, of Nursing Homes Ireland, Tadhg Daly.
The Fianna Fáil Opposition spokesperson at the time was the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, and he revealed that the HSE “intercepted” supplies of oxygen, personal protective equipment, PPE, and staff that were meant for nursing homes.
Was there a concerted effort by the Government or the HSE to take older people out of the safety of hospitals and cram them into nursing homes during the pandemic?
How could this decision be made when the Minister in charge was ignoring appeals from the sector to meet with him, when nursing homes were having their PPE, oxygen and staff taken from them by the HSE and when the CMO was telling nursing homes to keep their doors wide open to the public?
These were an incredible set of events at a period when there was an influx of Covid-19 in this country. It should be remembered, in all the conversations we have had about Covid, the majority of people who died with Covid were in a nursing home or hospital, two locations owned, or under the regulation of, this Government. Can the Minister answer these questions?”
In her reply, Hildegarde Naughton, Minister of State at the Department of Transport, declined to address these issues, but stated:
“The decision to discharge patients from hospitals to nursing home settings is always subject to clinical assessment. Discharges to nursing homes and other settings are a regular, daily feature of a functioning health system. The period from early March 2020 to mid-April 2020 saw an increase in the number of such discharged patients as the health system prepared itself for an expected surge in Covid-19 cases. From an older person’s perspective, being admitted for longer than necessary increases the risk of a patient contracting a healthcare associated infection or deconditioning. The vast majority of these discharges took place from 10 March 2020 onwards, when clear public health guidance was in place across all acute hospitals.”
Paedar Toibín: “In fairness, none of the questions I asked about accountability have been addressed by the Minister of State whatsoever. This is a serious problem. We need clarification with regard to who is behind these decisions.
She [Deputy Naughton] mentioned that HSE support was provided to the nursing homes. That is not exactly true. Further freedom of information documents I have received show that on 19 October 2020, the Minister of State with responsibility for older persons and mental health, Deputy Mary Butler, wrote to the chief executive of the HSE, Mr. Paul Reid, seeking assurances that the HSE would continue to provide staffing support to homes.
Paul Reid did not respond to the Minister of State for a month. When he did, he said that all was well and that the HSE would continue to provide funding for nursing home staffing and support for nursing homes. On 16 October 2020, a similar letter was sent to Mr. Phelim Quinn, the chief executive of HIQA. Paul Reid said he was disappointed that Mr. Quinn stated certain private nursing homes had not reported that they have received support from the HSE.
When Mr. Reid was telling HIQA and the Minister of State that all was well, I had people from nursing homes on the telephone to me crying for staff. I have in mind specifically a case in the Minister of State, Deputy [Martin] Naughton’s, county, Galway. It occurred almost at the same time that these letters were issued. All staff in a nursing home, bar two, tested positive and it was left without any support. This resulted in the two staff who had tested negative being unable to leave the nursing home because there were no replacement staff.
That is an incredible situation. In case the Minister of State did not notice, the headlines in the newspapers at the time were screaming about staff shortages in nursing homes. All the while there were 75,000 people who had applied to Be On Call for Ireland but they were pretty much left untouched.
The Minister of State mentioned people being discharged under normal regulations. People were being discharged from these hospitals into nursing homes without being tested. It was an incredible situation. When will there be a full investigation? When will there be accountability? When can we be sure this will not happen again?”
Yesterday: Damned
Previously: Left To Die: Nursing Home Timeline
Constance Markievicz & these inspirational Irish ladies had a secret meeting in the ladies toilet of The Round Room in 1917! The immersive Leaving the Ladies Experience lets you eavesdrop on what they had to say! Pick up your free ticket now from https://t.co/q9Ao6wSs1Q pic.twitter.com/MZwDUfHVMF
— Lord Mayor of Dublin (@LordMayorDublin) July 16, 2021
“He won’t stop texting me.”
“I don’t normally drink this much.”
“Should we invite her?”
“I. Love. Your. Nails.”
“Can you smell me? Do I smell bad?”
“Don’t cry.”
FIGHT!
Barcelona, Spain
This afternoon.
Via The Local:
Barcelona and other cities in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region will impose a night-time curfew starting this weekend to fight a surge in virus cases after the measure won court approval.
The curfew is intended to discourage social gatherings on beaches and in parks to curb a spike in cases of the highly-contagious Delta variant, especially among unvaccinated young people.
The region’s top court on Friday signed off on the measure, which will affect a total of 161 municipalities, including popular beach resorts like Sitges and Salou.
Catalonia, the epicentre of Spain’s jump in infections, has already ordered all public gatherings to finish by 12:30am and restricted gatherings to no more than 10 people.
KN writes:
‘Like Ireland destroying its pub culture, this about changing a way of life. In Spain, 1am at the weekend in Summer is like 11pm here and all ages are about. Things are only getting going.’
Getty
Eyes Front
at
Woof Pack doggie daycare in Miami – masters of the canine group photo or serial dog ‘shoppin’ scamps?
You be the Judge.
Off Wanderly Wagon.
Man And Boy
at
Run To Me
at
The results are in.
Last week, from an idea prompted by marathon-missing reader Janet and with a €50 Golden Discs voucher redeemable in any Golden Discs store on offer, I asked you for your favourite song to go long-distance running to.
You replied in your dozens, creating an exhausting but worthwhile playlist that might jog the memories.
But there could be only one winner.
Third Place:
Sweet Disposition by the Temper Trap
Millie writes:
“Perfect for an early morning run (if I ever manage it). I frequently listen to it when out walking and it never fails to lift the mood.”
Runner-up:
Lose Yourself by Eminem
Fez writes:
“Running is quite a religious thing for me, got me out of a depression that lasted for my latter teens and most of my 20s, and helped me drop 40kg. It’s also religious in that I feel weird if I don’t do it, kinda like my mother having to go to mass, even in a country where she doesn’t speak the language.
“Eminem’s Lose yourself is a proven 20s per km pace increaser, in particular this verse, when you feel like giving up…”
‘Gotten me to the point, I’m like a snail I’ve got
To formulate a plot or end up in jail or shot
Success is my only motherfuckin’ option, failure’s not
Mom, I love you, but this trailer’s got to go, I cannot grow old in Salem’s Lot
So here I go, is my shot
Feet, fail me not, this may be the only opportunity that I got.’
Winner:
Claire de Lune (with two pianos) by Claude Debussy
Harold Molloy writes:
“Long distance running is about running slow, especially starting slow, which is something that I’m learning and struggling with.
“As such, I need music that is serene and so I choose classical. And my favourite piece is Clair de Lune by Debussy – must be a recording on two pianos, like.”
Nick says: Well done, Harold and thanks all.
This morning.
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin 2.
Logan Sisley, Head of Collections, Hugh Lane Gallery and Lord Mayor of Dublin, Alison Gilliland launch From the Secret Block to Rosc, a celebration of [German artist and Fluxus founder] Joseph Beuys at the gallery until October 31, 2021.
‘From Secret Block to ROSC’ (Hugh Lane Gallery)
Previously: Beuys In The Hood
Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland
‘sup?
This morning.
Carlosfandango writes:
Little Miss Lette wishes you a happy Friday and a sunny weekend.
(No animals were harmed in this set up. A seat belt was applied as soon as we moved off)
Arf.