FFsuicide

Yesterday Fianna Fáil (yes, yes we know) launched proposals on how to deal with Ireland’s suicide problem.

Among them were:

1) Reform and restructure the National Office for Suicide Prevention.

2) Create a 24hr helpline within the NOSP.

3) Phase out alcohol advertising directed at young people.

4) Increase the number of resource officers for suicide prevention.

5) Create a system whereby GPs review the prescription of anti-depressants monthly until the GP is happy that the medication is the best course of action.

6) Establish out-of-hours emergency social worker teams across Ireland.

7) Reverse the Government’s decision to cut dedicated guidance counsellor hours in secondary schools.

8) Introduce guidance counsellors in primary schools.

9) Increase funding for projects aimed at preventing suicide.

10) Make banks provide professional counselling to lenders in mortgage arrears, business or personal debt.

Read it here

00127639Hello!

The people at Coco Television need YOU.

They say:

We are looking for Irish people around the world to send a “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” video message back home to be included in this year’s coverage of the St. Patricks’s Festival Parade shown on RTE1.

All you need to do is record yourself on a mobile phone, digital camera or any video device and send to – parade@cocotelevision.ie. It would be great if you could choose a backdrop that shows off your location to give us a sense of where in the world you are.
We do not want your clip to have any association with alcohol; your message must not exceed EIGHT seconds in duration and the deadline for submissions is Wednesday March 13.

 

You can save the lengthy bitter, booze-fuelled ones for us.

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

Screen Shot 2013-03-05 at 07.59.54Simon Coveney (centre right) at the opening of the APB foods China office in Bejing last April with Paul Finnerty, chief executive of APB Foods (right).

Paul Finnerty, the chief executive of [Larry] Goodman’s ABP food group, will [today] give evidence to MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs committee – inquiring into the horsemeat scandal – after it emerged that the company supplied Tesco with beefburgers that turned out to be 29% horse.

An ABP factory in Tipperary supplied the meat that was made into fresh beef bolognese sauce for Asda that the supermarket found to contain 5% horse. ABP’s Scottish factory also supplied beef meatballs to Waitrose that the retailer found had up to 30% undeclared pork.

…Today’s Irish government is also facing criticism that it was too slow to inform others and had remained close to its beef industry.

Britain’s environment secretary, Owen Paterson, has said his current Irish counterpart, Simon Coveney, only told the UK of the problem in January, rather than when it first became aware of it in November. Coveney’s brother Patrick is chief executive of Greencore, an Irish food processor that made the Asda bolognese sauce found to contain 5% horse. Greencore, however, says its own tests on the same beef batch came up negative for horse DNA.

Horsemeat Scandal: Chief Of Irish Beef Company To Face MPs (Felicity Lawrence, Guardian)

(APB Foods)

Broadsheet.ie