Search Results for: Ireland

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IRELAND has been censured by the European Court of Justice for failing to subject wind power generation projects to environmental impact assessments demanded by European Union law. Judges made the ruling over planning consents given for a wind farm at Derrybrien, County Galway – a controversial large project destroying 263 hectares of coniferous forest.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has warned that British beaches became dirtier in 2007, with a major increase in the number of bathing water sites failing to meet European Union (EU) hygiene standard. These numbered 20 last year, up from just two in 2006, and 10 in 2005.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A REPORT from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) has revealed that almost a half of OECD member countries (including many in Europe) have potentially dangerous nutrient and pesticide concentrations in drinking water sources.

Tests carried out in recent years (NOTE: CALLED MID-2000’S IN THE REPORT) on surface water and groundwater monitoring sites in agricultural areas show these pollutants often "exceed national drinking water recommended limits" said a new OECD report on the environmental impact of farming.…

David Haworth, in Brussels

Outside Ireland, the recent passing of at 85 of Dr. P.J. Hillery – “Paddy” to his friends -was little noticed yet his achievements as a statesman were huge.

The son of a country doctor, he became a general practitioner himself but slipped, unobtrusively at first, into Irish politics.…

BY ANDREW CAVE

SCARCELY a week goes by without volumes of newsprint or prime broadcasting slots being devoted to new and ingenious ways of mitigating climate change.

Global warming is now widely regarded the single most important issue the world faces, so it is no surprise that it is exercising the minds of the world’s most creative scientists.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

EUROPEAN governments have backed reforms to fight tax evasion and fraud. Importantly, the European Union (EU) Council of Ministers has informally supported changes to the EU savings tax directive, to close a loophole where private citizens could protect bank account information by transferring money to accounts held by companies established to boost their privacy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Court of Justice (ECJ) ruling has swept away a European Commission block on Irish fishermen replacing ships lost at sea with larger and safer vessels. Brussels had been resisting plans of Ocean Trawlers Ltd, of Killybegs; Thomas Flaherty, of Mainster; and Larry Murphy, of Brandyhill; all in Ireland, to replace sunk vessels.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

IMPROVED cooperation between fisheries authorities in the European Union (EU) and Russia is to be established, following the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Brussels and Moscow. The deal covers fishing grounds in the Baltic and the north Atlantic and involves better contacts between the European Commission and Russia’s state committee for fisheries.…

BY MARK ROWE

THE ANNOUNCEMENT by the UK government that it intends to build a new generation of nuclear power plants stands out, not just because of the scale of the proposals, but because it is the first such comprehensive initiative in Europe for some years.…

BY MONICA DOBIE

SIGNIFICANT falls in heart attacks and strokes in France and Italy have indicated that the introduction of public smoking bans in Europe are having beneficial health effects, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) has claimed.

In France, the National Sanitary Institute has just released statistics showing that the rate of admissions in emergency wards of patients with myocardial infarction and strokes has fallen 15% since French public smoking ban came into effect in January 2007, preventing smoking in restaurants hotels and casinos.…