Irish Newsbriefs, am, 4/22 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit News from the Wire Services Re: Ireland & the Irish PA 04/22/99 05:25 High-Tech Firm Creates 150 New Jobs RT 04/22/99 05:15 Irish Q1 Company Failures Up, N.Irish Fall PA 04/22/99 04:58 Ireland Awaits First Kosovar Refugees PA 04/22/99 04:07 Ahern Faces Demand For Peace Group Referendum PA 04/22/99 03:41 Clampers Work On As Traffic Wardens Protest PA 04/22/99 03:20 City's First #1 Million Homes Go On Sale RT 04/21/99 22:44 Hepatitis Contamination In Irish Women Traced ****************************** High-Tech Firm Creates 150 New Jobs PA 04/22/99 05:25 Copyright 1999 PA News By Ian Graham, PA News Nearly 150 high-tech electronics jobs are being created in County Armagh by an American owned company which is nearly doubling its workforce. Lurgan-based DDL Electronics is investing 5.6 million in new equipment for electronics manufacture and in an expansion of its international marketing operation which is expected to provide 148 jobs over three years at a new plant in nearby Craigavon. DDL, which currently employs 179 people at Lurgan, is a major assembler of printed circuit boards for use in electronic commerce and such equipment as swipe card machines and motorway electronic signs. The company, which is owned by SMTEK of California, is to set up a new printed circuit board layout and design facility in Craigavon. Announcing the investment today Bruce Robinson, chief executive of the Government's Industrial Development Board, said it was another "important endorsement of Northern Ireland as a European centre of excellence in electronics by a US company". SMTEK chief executive Gregory Horton said: "We are investing in our Northern Ireland operation because we have found the right people with the right skills and very positive attitude that enables us to deliver top quality services on time, every time." The IDB has provided 800,000 towards the total investment. In a separate investment of 500,000 in Tandragee, County Armagh, 20 jobs are to be created following the opening of an enterprise park supported by the International Fund for Ireland. The European Commission Observer to the Fund, Carel Edwards, officially opened TDI Tandragee Development Initiative House and Enterprise Park, the first phase of the project. It is part of a scheme geared towards assisting community groups to bring significant vacant and derelict property in the commercial centre of towns back into economic use. The Tandragee initiative will provide retail units, offices and conference facilities. ****************************** Irish Q1 Company Failures Up, N.Irish Fall -Survey RTw 04/22/99 05:15 Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd DUBLIN, April 22 (Reuters) - Business failures rose one percent in the first quarter of this year in the Republic of Ireland but fell sharply in Northern Ireland, business information service Dun & Bradstreet said on Thursday. In its latest business survey, Dun & Bradstreet said 178 businesses failed in the Republic of Ireland in the first quarter of 1999, up one percent on the previous year. "Irish companies are not immune from failure despite a blistering (economy) growth rate of nine percent," Greg Connell, managing director of Dun & Bradstreet Ireland, said. Connell noted that the first quarter rise in failures followed a 23 percent rise in 1998 despite the sharp interest rate cuts required for Ireland's membership of the single European currency. By contrast, 76 companies failed in Northern Ireland, a fall of more than 30 percent on the same quarter a year earlier. "Only encouragement can be taken from these figures. Despite a background of higher interest rates and a strong pound, the failure rate in the province (Northern Ireland) compares very favourably with the Republic of Ireland," Jonathan Cushley, sales manager, said in the statement. ****************************** Ireland Awaits First Kosovar Refugees PA 04/22/99 04:58 Copyright 1999 PA News By Chris Parkin, PA News The first batch of Kosovar refugees is expected to arrive in the Irish Republic within weeks, junior foreign minister Liz O'Donnell reported today. Up to 300 people were likely to be housed in the Cork area and offered "temporary protection" by the Dublin Government, she said. But Ms O'Donnell stressed: "Temporary does not run out. People are here until they can return peacefully to their community. "This is an indefinite commitment." She pointed out that a number of Bosnian refugees who flew to Ireland some years ago had still to return to their homes because it was not considered safe for them to do so. The Irish have offered to take as many as 1,000 refugees from the Balkan conflict, but that figure could be increased in response to any request from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The minister said it was probable that the Kosovars would reach Ireland in family groups and total between 250 and 300 in the first instance "over the next few weeks." Because of pressure on accommodation and services in Dublin, it is thought the bulk of the refugees arriving in Ireland would be housed outside the Irish capital, in Waterford, Wexford and Kildare, as well as Cork. ****************************** Ahern Faces Demand For Peace Group Referendum PA 04/22/99 04:07 Copyright 1999 PA News By Chris Parkin, PA News The Irish Government is being pressed by a group of business, political, arts and showbiz figures to stage a referendum ahead of joining the Nato-linked Partnership for Peace organisation. A petition of more than 100 names petition is being submitted to Dublin premier Bertie Ahern, calling on him to honour a pledge that his Fianna Fail party gave before the 1997 general election, that there would be a nationwide poll before a decision was made on joining the Partnership for Peace. Though Mr Ahern has since indicated that Ireland will join the organisation -- and secured backing for the move from the main parliamentary opposition groups -- the move is opposed by individuals in all the big parties, centrally because of fears that the development threatens Ireland's long-standing policy of neutrality. The petition signatories include Chris Andrews, a Fianna Fail candidate in this year's Irish local elections, a nephew of Foreign Minister David Andrews and son of Niall Andrews, a member of the European parliament. Others signatories are poet and Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney, singers Ronnie Drew and Christy Moore, TV cook Darina Allen and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe, Dr Willie Walsh. The Partnership for Peace issue will be debated at a conference on Irish neutrality and European security this weekend in Dublin's Trinity College University. Among speakers at the two-day meeting will be Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and former Irish cabinet ministers Alan Dukes and Proinsias De Rossa. ****************************** Clampers Work On As Traffic Wardens Protest PA 04/22/99 03:41 Copyright 1999 PA News By Chris Parkin, PA News Traffic wardens in the capital of the Irish Republic were today planning to picket the Irish parliament to protest at changes in working arrangements. But motorists sensing an opportunity for free parking in Dublin during the scheduled hour-long demonstration were set for disappointment -- traffic officials warned that the city's wheel- clampers were not involved in the dispute. The parking wardens are angry at proposals to transfer them from the Irish Government's Justice Department to take other duties with Dublin Corporation. Their jobs have come under threat over the past year following the introduction last summer of stringent new parking restrictions in Dublin which were aimed at curing the city's chronic traffic problems. To a large extent, the measures, involving the use by the corporation of a private firm of clampers, have worked -- although they have not been entirely controversy-free. Earlier this year, the traffic wardens, most of whom are being laid off because of the new system, claimed that illegal clamping was going on in parts of the city. The City Corporation has said it planned to redeploy all but 31 of the 146 wardens by the end of the year. ****************************** City's First #1 Million Homes Go On Sale PA 04/22/99 03:20 Copyright 1999 PA News By Chris Parkin, PA News Ireland's first IR 1 million-a-time newly-built houses will go on sale in Dublin this weekend. A development set behind high walls in the exclusive Carrickmines suburb of the Irish capital contains 16 new homes which are on offer at between IR 900,000 and IR 1.2 million, depending on the size of each house's garden. The IR 1 million breakthrough coincides with the Irish Republic's biggest-ever property boom, during which prices in some areas have shot up by at least 20% a year over the past three years. The boom is another reflection of the country's soaraway Celtic Tiger economy. Though the IR 1 million price barrier has not previously been breached for new houses, older properties in Dublin often fetch seven-figure prices at auction. The record was set last year, when an end-of-terrace house overlooking the sea at Killiney, on the edge of Dublin Bay, was sold for close to IR 6 million. A key savings benefit for anyone buying the new IR 1 million homes on offer will be on stamp duty. As the homes are newly-built, they will incur duty of just IR 20,000, rather than the IR 90,000 which is payable on second-hand houses costing IR 1 million. ****************************** Hepatitis Contamination In Irish Women Traced RTw 04/21/99 22:44 Copyright 1999 Reuters Ltd Release at 5 p.m. (2100 GMT) BOSTON, April 21 (Reuters) - Tainted blood donated years ago by a woman suffering from hepatitis C has been causing progressive liver disease in hundreds of Irish women, according to a study in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine. But the amount of serious liver damage caused by the contaminated donation is "relatively low," they conclude. The contamination was discovered in 1994. Researchers found that a serum administered to some pregnant women in Ireland had been made from the blood of a woman infected with hepatitis C. A national screening programme identified 390 women who had received tainted shots 17 years earlier and who showed evidence of being infected with the hepatitis C virus. In a study assessing the seriousness of their illness, a group led by Dr. Elizabeth Kenny-Walsh of Cork University Hospital found that 81 percent reported symptoms such as fatigue, and 93 percent had mild or moderate liver inflammation. But only 2 percent of the women -- seven in all -- showed signs of liver damage and two of the seven reported drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, which might have damaged their livers. The threat of another outbreak no longer exists because since October 1991 all blood donors in Ireland have been routinely screened for hepatitis C. ------- Jay Dooling (jdooling@worldnet.att.net) Irish Aires - 90.1FM KPFT in Houston http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Irish_Aires/homepage.htm Dooling & Mabe, CPA http://www.doolingmabe-cpa.com/ ------------- ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-04.25.99-12:17:02-4381