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THE NUMBER OF people experiencing homelessness in Ireland has once again hit a record high with latest government figures showing that 11,754 people were living in emergency accommodation in January.
It is the seventh consecutive month that the record number has been broken.
A total of 8,323 adults and 3,431 children were living in emergency accommodation during the week of 23 to 29 January.
This is a rise from 11,632 people recorded as living in emergency accommodation in November.
The figure from December includes 5,042 Irish citizens, 1,840 European Economic Area / UK citizens and 1,441 non-EEA citizens.
The 11,754 people living in emergency accommodation in January 2023 compared to 9,150 people living in emergency accommodation in the previous January, a 25% increase over the course of a year.
The Dublin Simon Community said it is “deeply worried” about the increase in the number of people staying in emergency accommodation.
“Behind the statistics are real people. Through no fault of their own, they are unable to afford to rent, and unable to afford to buy a home. They cannot move forward with their lives and the lives of their families,” Dublin Simon Community CEO Catherine Kenny said.
“Single people are significantly impacted, with a limited amount of suitable one and two bed properties for them to rent or purchase,” Kenny said.
“Ireland is an economic success story, yet there are far too many people who do not have homes of their own. It is little wonder that so many feel powerless and disenfranchised.”
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Eviction ban
An eviction ban is currently in place until 1 April 2023.
While notices to quit can still be issued to tenants while the ban is in effect, they will not be able to be evicted until after the ban ends.
However, when these evictions actually take place will be dependant on a number of factors, including the date on which the notice was served and the length of the tenancy.
This also means that notices to quit issued before the ban takes place will not go ahead until at least 1 April.
Speaking about the Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting on Wednesday night, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he sought the views of his members on the eviction ban and whether it should be extended past March.
“There was a diversity of views,” he said, adding “it’s not a black and white decision to extend or not to extend. There are other things at play as well”.
“We will make a decision, as I said in the Dáil within the next week or two, so that people know where they stand on the matter.”
Focus Ireland CEO Pat Dennigan has said it is “essential” the eviction ban is extended.
“The introduction of the winter eviction ban last October was essential. At the time all emergency homeless accommodation was full and over 1,000 households faced eviction by landlords wanting to sell up,” Dennigan said.
“Both those conditions still exist so it is essential that the ban be continued to avoid an additional surge in family homelessness,” he said.
“It is wrong to say, as some have claimed, that the winter eviction ban has failed, the situation would be far worse without it and will rapidly become worse if it is ended. What has failed is the Government’s attempts to use the breathing space to make a real difference.”
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People make the mistake of thinking you need to be particularly clever to code. You don’t – it’s easier than doing crosswords or sudoku or figuring out league tables.
As a software engineer myself, I think this is a bad idea. Third level is where people are supposed to train for their career, not primary or secondary level. Primary and secondary level subjects should teach broad skills, not specific ones like coding.
Teaching programming using programs like Scratch teaches logic. Its not an actual.language but uses building blocks. This teaches logic and critical.thinking if anything.
Both my lads would say secondary school Joe, one is a software developer and the other is entering 4th year college studying IT. They both had the same maths/computer science teacher who was exceptional and encouraged those with an interest to keep interested in maths and computer science. He worked with Limerick uni to introduce ecdl certification at junior cert level, even entering projects to the scratch competition at leaving cert level, of which he successfully had two students reach the national finals in 2012, one of which was my son. Dedicated teachers is what’s needed, not a primary school teacher that is already over stretched as it is and who probably has zero interest in computer science/coding anyway.
Fake Avast: Are you joking? The rate of non-nationals employed in development jobs is phenomenally high due to the lack of locals with the required skill sets. There are plenty of development jobs in the country and a shortage of people to fill them.
The reason that there is so many non-nationals is that companies set the bar so high that then can ensure they cannot find anyone, then pay someone in india at a much lower rate and with dubious qualifications, work them 50 hours a week and if they dont like it send them home.
id like to see a comparison between some that they have hired from outside and the person they turned down here. Out of a class of 30 degree students in a college i was in only 3 got jobs in our software companies that are crying out for people.
Aidan, as someone that interviews for software engineering roles on a regular basis I have to say the entitlement culture among a large set of Irish graduates is incredible. They seem to believe a degree is a guarantee to a high paying job. Turning up to an interview with a 2.1 with no extra curricular activities, bugger all interest in the technologies and no research on the job/company/industry is a common standard for graduates. For what it’s worth, our non-national employees often get paid more because they have better qualifications and do bother to show interest in their work and industry ;-)
Having interviewed many potential candidates myself i disagree some of the poor standards in non-nationals beggers belief. I have worked with some that didnt know what an if statement or a loop was.
Thanks for that insight, as a teacher I’m well aware of the concept. My point is, the curriculum is already overloaded, increasingly so with a new language curriculum being rolled out from September. This is just another example of the lack of forward planning from the Department. Yes, I’d like to be involved in something like this, but first give us the resources-time, training, hardware.
There’s plenty of other subjects that would be better suited to be started in secondary school. My kid attends CoderDojo outside of school and I think he should do the same for religion and instead I would have liked him to have started some foreign languages instead in primary school.
Unpopular opinion, but 100% correct, both should be optional, considering in primary school we spend 4 hours a week on maths and 2.5 hours on religion in 2016 is an absolute disgrace. As a parent I couldn’t care a less if my kids know irish, Irish won’t get them a job.
If the only argument for learning Irish is to learn about our culture, then set up Irish language museum. Let kids visit it on school tours. Or even have an Irish language module in school, where they can learn some basic Irish during a ten week course, then move onto another topic. That would keep it going. But is it really necessary to have every child learning Irish every single day? If it’s just for the purposes of keeping the language alive. It’s not alive, it never will be. We all speak English. It’s an insult to our children to spend time and resources on a dead language when they could be learning coding/science/ethics/Spanish/German/French. Our children are worth so more more than insulting them with this.
with the majority merely possessing the ability to ask to go for a piss in irish after a decade of torture its easy see why anyone with a brain would consider it a complete waste of time and money.
But is “preserving our heritage” by teaching children Irish every day really a positive thing? Enforcing a compulsory language on children for 14 years? That has no value after school?
I hardly think we can call it our own language. Mine is English and it appears yours it too. Treat it as a cultural antiquity and let people determine their own level of interest in it. Enforced learning when that time could be better spent isn’t helping the language.
I don’t know about you but I couldn’t converse in Irish despite learning it every school day for 14 years. I haven’t needed to use a word of it since I left so it has left me. I resent the time I spent on it when I could have learnt a foreign language.How was that valuable?
No you don’t require any update to the existing hardware in schools.
You basically learn general computing on any machine that’s on the x86 chipset, like millions have already done.
Kids won’t be doing high performance programming at this level.
The BBC for example are sending out 1m micro:bit computers to school kids. .. My only reservation is that this particular initiative is being managed by the Irish government who’ve about as much understanding of IT as a golden retriever. There’s a good chance they’ll screw it up so badly we’ll end up with a generation of Irish kids who’ll come to resent it like we do with Irish.
True Paddy, but here a Committee would have to be setup first, with members from all political parties, with expenses of course.
And after the Committee rules that it’s a good idea, external consultancy firms would have to be hired, at the cost of millions to advise the committee on how to role it out.
Then DOB will magically secure the contract to provide €1 computers to each school at a until cost of €1,000 per unit. 1000% mark-up!
Then a Public Accounts Committee will be setup to investigate the farce but will conclude, that after long deliberations, expenses, and legal advise, that it was the best deal that the State could get at the time!
in lieu of the significant drop in students taking religion as a final subject for the leaving cert (almost 0% vs maths, English and Science), can you ask the NCCA to allocate proportional time to subjects based on their educational needs, and reduce religious education down to something also closer to zero hours. Thanks, Ireland’s parents.
Many schools are , once again , ahead of the Dept of Education and have introduced coding already beginning with programmes such as Scratch Junior with younger classes. It slots easily into the problem solving / critical thinking area of the Maths curriculum.
As long as it doesn’t interfere with religious education.
Religion is the most important subject in the curriculum.
Let’s be honest here:
A computer is only a machine, a device. It has no soul.
But humans have souls.
‘”For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?’
Matthew 16:26.
Ass before the cart again! Try putting usable broadband into primary schools first. Teach coding is a good idea, but real investment first then a curriculum.
This is great news. It will really be beneficial to the kids of today that are the future of our country. While it may not be for everyone, at least give the child a chance and a bit of encouragement. Make coding an optional subject to religion studies.
I hope this isn’t a way to turn education into a business like the education system in the UK or to the worse system in the US, you can become a millionaire based on what school you went to or how much you pay for your education? Now that is a thought?
I have heard that some teachers are not bothering to teach Science as they just don’t have the time. With the coding idea and another proposal for an Ethics lesson mentioned before, they will need to get rid of the dinosaur aged mythical Religion and Irish classes which are held for every pupil EVERY SINGLE DAY.
When I graduated with a tech degree, 120 started the course and about 40 finished. We all went into the course completely blind as to what it was about. We had never seen coding or had any clue about program design, just that there were jobs at the end of it.
But we could recite the rosary and plenty of Irish verbs verbatim. If the Dept of Education is serious about making the future generation more employable, it needs to look at the timetable and make space.
there is a view that torturing kids with irish for over a decade is like eating your greens i.e. its ultimately good for you in the long run, when nothing could be further from the truth. forcing something that we know is absolutely useless on kids is bordering on sadistic.
The teachers appointed to teach coding in Primary Schools should be appointed in the same way that remedial teachers are appointed to clusters of schools. Each class should have a minimum of two sessions per week. The reason for this is that teaching coding requires that teachers have the ability to code in the first place. It is different to any other subject in that regard at Primary level.
So Ireland is going to be full of ones on computers, they won’t know the meaning of manual work, I do think they will copy the UK and fill those positions with migrants that will force wages down then and increase unemployment for the lower class like what has happened in the UK now?
To have a proper system of employment, children should be educated in a whole range of skills and not just focusing on one set? Or is the future of Ireland going to be people behind computers working and knowing nothing as they don’t have to know anything they can’t use a search engine for? http://www.henryagiroux.com/
And see the interview with Henry Giroux https://www.rt.com/shows/keiser-report/347253-episode-max-keiser-929/
Calm down there Alois. Never said anything about focusing on only one skill set. It’s about ADDING coding to schooling. And absolutely they should. IT and everything that goes with it is a huge part of the future. Like it or not, that’s the case.
Poor Alois – he/she misread “should kids to taught coding?” as “kids should be taught only coding and nothing else, and all be given desk jobs forever and no physical exercise is allowed”.
What a strange interpretation of the real question.
Paul in the future computers might be doing the coding themselves due to cost and time. Tell the computer what you want and it will create the coding. The future can never be predicted as it always changes but I might be scared a bit of it looking at the people who work in Silicon Valley and their children?
Education should be about priorities not making business opportunities for businesses due to lobbyists?
Kids study ICT in primary school here in Vietnam, and it’s roving to be very beneficial for the workforce and technological development. I dont really see the problem
In Microsoft and Apple stores in the US, they have these classes for kids…. I sat in and listened to a class one day while I was out shopping. Sat there for about an hour and learned quite a bit myself :-) I work in I.T., but I’m not a Software Engineer. They explained basic principles very clearly and the kids were coding away during the class making little apps and games… Fantastic facilities and a great idea. Surely someone like MS can work with the Irish government on creating a curriculum that can be rolled out pretty quickly…. though in saying that, the resource blockage may be on the government/Dept.of.Education side… http://www.techlicious.com/blog/microsoft-store-kids-coding-youthspark-summer-camp/
They should be focusing on teaching kids basic maths before they have them programming. Programming is about maths and logic, schools should focus on that first.
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