LAST UPDATE | 4 Oct 2021
GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
1. There is “no question” that there is ingrained institutional racism against the Traveller community in Ireland, Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Roderic O’Gorman has said.
In an interview with Noteworthy, as part of an investigative series into the challenges facing Traveller children in Ireland, the minister said a recent Children’s Ombudsman report on overcrowded and unsafe conditions at a Cork halting site was “just one example of that institutional racism”.
The report on the Spring Lane halting site found Cork City Council failed to consider the best interests of children living at the site, noting that there was a high rate of childhood illness caused by living conditions, Michelle Hennessy writes in today’s lead story.
2. The revised National Development Plan will be launched in Cork later today. The NDP will set out spending plans of more than €165 billion for capital projects.
This plan is expected to commit €35 billion in spending on transport up to 2030. Investment in housing and climate change initiatives will also be announced.
3. CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan has returned to Ireland to receive palliative chemotherapy after scans revealed new tumours.
The activist had been undergoing trial cancer treatment in the US state of Maryland. In a post on Instagram she told followers that, as the new tumours are “far too extensive”, she is no longer eligible for the treatment.
“I have two new tumours in my neck but the worrying one is a new tumour on my bowel,” Ms Phelan wrote.
4. CervicalCheck encourage women aged over 50 and members of the LGBT+ community to get a free smear test, based on studies that suggest these cohorts of people are less likely to attend cervical cancer screening.
An LGBT+ Cervical Screening Study recommended that CervicalCheck should promote training for cervical smear sample takers, and ensure sample takers are recommending cervical screening to members of the LGBT+ community.
The study, launched by the National Screening Service in partnership with LINC and CervicalCheck, also recommended that a section on the CervicalCheck website should be created for the LGBT+ community, and that a communications campaign should be developed to appeal to this group to take part in the free cervical screening programme.
5. At-risk groups including pregnant women and people aged over 65 are being urged to get a free flu vaccine to protect against serious illness from the virus.
In Ireland, between 200 and 500 people die from flu each winter. Every year around the world, flu causes between three and five million cases of severe disease and up to 646,000 deaths.
6. It has now been over five years since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a result partly driven by concerns over immigration. So what’s happened with migration since then?
The honest answer is that we don’t know with any certainty, especially not since the pandemic struck.
The number of British citizens in the EU is contested, while the UK’s Office for National Statistics admits “we can’t simply count people in and out at the border”.
7. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has admitted that the country’s widely praised “Covid zero” strategy has failed to halt a stubborn outbreak in Auckland and a new approach is needed.
The hardline elimination policy had largely protected the country from the pandemic, with residents enjoying a near-normal domestic life alongside tight restrictions on international borders.
But an August outbreak prompted a seven-week lockdown in its main population centre that has failed to curb infection rates.
8. The ‘Pandora papers’ have revealed a complex web of companies and structures used by the world leaders and the wealthiest business people to hide their assets and, in some cases, avoid paying tax altogether, Ian Curran writes in today’s Morning Memo.
Meanwhile, Facebook is scrambling to contain the fall-out from a blockbuster interview on US television last night with a whistleblower. The subject of that interview was Francis Haugen, a product manager at the social media giant, who revealed herself to be the person who leaked a trove of sensitive internal documents to the Wall Street Journal over the last year or so.
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9. And finally, the weather.
Met Éireann says there will be mix of sunny spells and scattered showers this morning, with showers most frequent and heavy at times in the west and northwest.
Cloud will build from the southwest through the day, bringing showery outbreaks of rain which will gradually spread across Munster, Leinster and parts of Connacht. The rain will turn heavy and thundery at times, bringing the risk of localised flooding. Highest temperatures will range from 11 to 14 degrees Celsius.
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