Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
AROUND 45,000 CHILDREN across the country are set to learn how to grow their vegetables this spring, as the Sow & Grow 2017 initiative gets underway.
Organised by the group GIY – grow it yourself – and innocent drinks the idea behind the initiative is to encourage an awareness of where food comes from and show children just how easy it is to grow their own greens.
The programme was officially launched at Scoil Thomais in Castleknock, Dublin, on Wednesday.
At the launch, cress, runner beans and baby carrots were sown, and blind taste tests took place to test children’s knowledge of various fruits and vegetables.
Any class can sign up to take part in Sow & Grow, now in its sixth year, by signing up for a pack online here.
Each pack contains soil, growing pots, seeds and expert growing guides along with details on how to prepare and cook the produce that will be grown.
Bláithnid McKenna, from innocent drinks, told RTÉ: “This year, there’ll be enough soil and cup seeds to help 32 kids in each class to help them grow their own fruit and veg.”
The most engaged Sow & Grow school will win a trip to Bloom in the Park for their class, as well as €500 worth of gardening equipment for their school.
Ahead of this year’s campaign, GIY conducted a survey to gauge reactions to the initiative.
Michael Kelly, the founder of GIY, said: “Surprisingly, nearly half of parents we surveyed had grown something in the previous 12 months with their kids. This is fantastic, much, much higher than we expected.
It shows that food growing is something that is becoming more and more mainstream, which is absolutely why we’re here.
However, the survey also showed that almost a third of children don’t get enough fruit and veg, while around one in six don’t know where their food comes from.
To help launch Sow & Grow, GIY and innocent drinks visited St Saviour’s National School in Waterford last week to chat to 1st class pupils on their thoughts on growing your own food, as well as their favourite, and least favourite, fruits and vegetables.
If you can’t see the video, please click here.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
He’s not fit for office and enough is enough.
@David Quigley: Neither was that incompetent Simon Coveney before him.
Coveney is an emblem of how much FG hates Ireland.
@David Quigley: are any of them?
@mursim: You got it in one. I’m no fan of FG but it appears that they are happy to allow Murphy take the blame for the homelessness crisis despite his predecessor being the one who screamed promises from the airways on Morning Ireland that he would implement policies to ease the situation. Coveney was Varadkers only real opponent when FG elected their new leader a few years back and I would imagine he was given the Foreign Affairs portfolio as a sweetener rather than for his abilities or lack thereof. It stinks either way.
@David Quigley: I seen him down in Ranelagh just before the repeal vote and he was standing at the triangle with a bunch of leaflets in his hand. But instead of handing them out and maybe talking to people about the upcoming referendum he was more interested in taking selfies of himself with the leaflets.. This lad is an absolute joke!
More porkeys from the boys in blue,
I read earlier that Mobile homes AND halting sites were counted in the housing stock,
this shower will stop at nothing when it comes to spin and obfuscation
@Pearse Mc Mullen: it’s the homeless hipster
@Pearse Mc Mullen: It was the most ridiculous way to find out how many new homes were built .
To deal with this national emergency, a crisis plan to build 100,000 state owned council houses to be built within the next 12 months.
The market has failed so the solution to this national emergency needs to be nationalised.
@mursim: free houses for everyone and who is going to pay for it? Why should working people be expected to house themselves in the commuter belt with huge mortgages while others sit on their backside waiting for a free house?
@Pat Mustard: Thousands of working people out there that don’t qualify for loans & cant afford the ridiculous rents either!
@Pat Mustard: What’s your problem?
@mursim: They don’t need to be Council houses in fact it would be preferable if they are not, but they do need to be built by a National Housing Agency. Some of the houses could be bought by the Councils for social housing, with the rest being rent to buy so it can be ensured the don’t fall into the hands of private landlords.
@Joe Phillips: read his comment it’s pretty clear
@Pat Mustard: Not free houses.
State owned affordable houses.
The important point is that control housing is taken out of the control of the market.
The market has failed.
@mursim: ‘Not free houses..’
Various councils around Ireland are owed a total of 72 million in rents so I’m afraid it looks like a lot of tenants don’t want subsidised local authority housing….they want FREE housing paid for by the taxes of some worker who on a modest salary of €35,000 is taxed at super rich tax rates. Anyone ever wonder why hospitals find it so hard to attract and retain nurses etc? FREE for the people!
@mursim: so the state builds hundreds of thousands of houses using everyone’s tax money and then offers them at “affordable” ie below market prices? So who decides the people that get a house subsidised by the taxpayer and who is left to buy their own house at full price? I’ll tell you, the people working will be told you have an income so buy yourself and those not working clearly can’t get a mortgage so hey presto they get a state house for a fraction of its value. My point is that these schemes always screw people who work and reward those who don’t
@Pat Mustard: Local Authority houses are not ‘free’ houses. Tenants pay rent on the property and the rental income pays for the house build cost over a period of time and they then go into profit for the local authority.
@Pat Mustard: my family lives in a council house and believe me that it is no free €40 to €60 per week period person for my family that works out at €350 per week
@Pat Mustard: using that logic, we should close all punluc hospitals, because people who have expensive operations shouldnt be subsidized by the tax payer. Or are you suggesting only people who have payed enough tax for the care they need shoukd get it?
@Pat Mustard: There are NO free houses!If you mean social housing,they are not free either and very little social housing built eg in 2015 just 75 social houses built!
By the way there are 3 thresholds of income to qualify for social housing,the highest equivalent to €45,000&54% of workers earn €30,000& under!Take in account also according to last Daft.ie Report that rents are twice to triple the price of mortgages on similar properties but those with low incomes can’t qualify for mortgages but yet expected to afford rising rents!
Over €4B spent on private rented accommodation and another €3B expected to be spent over next 5years re same but that’s not paying for permanent housing(lifetime of household),just year to year tenancies &many people have been evicted and became homeless if landlord selling property or property been repossessed as Fr Mc Verry has stated.
It would be much better spending vast portions of that €4-€7B public monies on social or affordable housing instead.
@Pat Mustard: Oh sure the Government just loves to hand out houses to dole scroungers and buy them gold plated toilet seats, and sure they’re only pretending to be homeless anyways..
Sure you have a house, you’ll be grand, probably paid €400,000 for a house in an estate built in the middle of a field in Kildare that went on the market for €250,000 back at the height of the celtic tiger eh?
@Brian Deane: Great ‘headline’ figure of 72m, out of that figure can you tell me the average owed per council property??? Its a pittance and you know it. Bankers and government policy is at the root of this crisis, yet you blame everybody who resides in a council house??? What is your agenda, are you a landlord like the 33 per cent of elected FG TD’S?
Maths really isn’t the strong point of the FG and lets not forget FF either along with the Garda.
@Dave.: Why don’t the shinners put up or shut up ,call an election ,push the no confidence vote and see how it goes ,knocking on peoples doors in the middle of the world cup ,and children’s summer hols,go for it SF,FF
@Robert Harris:
Leo knew this was coming when he warned us of a snap election if SF forced a vote of confidence in Murphy. Murphy will be sacrificed to save FG and Leo’s skin.
What a shambles of a government and FF have 100% confidence in their coalition partners.
@Robert Harris:
Silly billy Robert, why of course it’s ALL SF’s FAULT.
@Robert Harris: I’m sure those 10,000+i homeless in Emergency accommodation &refuges,the 707,000 on hospital waiting lists,the 1.2m in deprivation &those in consistent poverty which has doubled since 2008,etc would put their and their children’s stressful circumstances above the world cup and as for children’s summer holidays,the children affected by Homelessness, deprivation, consistent poverty,on waiting lists for procedures , counseling,etc ,these children have NO holidays from their experiences!
I hope the people of Ireland have sufficient compassion for those families especially children to welcome knocks on the doors at any time of the year re General Election campaign.
A Tweet From Mick Caul , a Social Democrat :
967 farm buildings housing cows, chicken and pig,s but not people were included in the Governments housing stats in 2017. All on your watch @simoncoveney – now we know why you legged it. #not1home #morningIreland
Everyone knows it’s not in the interests of a neoliberal government to allow homes to be built. Certainly no Social Housing homes.
The simple reason is it will interfer with the articficial housing/ rental market they have created.
The long term strategy is to get Mortgage to Rent to replace Mortgage to buy. They don’t want ordinary people owning their own homes. There is no future in that for investment companies.
@Dave Doyle: The Housing Market is the single most effective control mechanism in this society. Forget Big Brother. In the end, it has proven to be a simpler affair: control housing and you control people.
How can we not know how many houses were built? Assume all houses need planning permission and receive a sign off once complete so there is a record somewhere of what was built
@Carl: Amazing that never seemed to cross their minds . It should be straight forward to differentiate between renovated and new build .
ESB connections , why didn’t they use the number of new front doors sold , or some other completely whack way of figuring out new houses built .
@Before its too late: Well that would let the cat out of the bag the. .. wouldn’t it?
@Stephen Devlin: They should use new RTE licence fees as a guide .
The homeless figures are cooked, the housing figures are cooked. No doubt the state finance figures along with lots of other things are cooked too.
So if the esb connected a shed or a business premises and a factory it was included in government house building figures, the lying cheating twisting b#st@rds.
Spin Doctors the lot of them , great for dealing with the past and making plans for the future , but anything to do with the present and it’s all too hard .
Fair play to the people who hounded the government about their fake stats. It’s getting harder and harder for them to spin their way out of this one.
Would a new address logged not be a good indicator,???
@Mick Hannigan: you would imagine it would be pretty easy. I mean, it’s just adding up.
The ineptitude of this government in dealing with the housing crisis goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Now they cannot count the houses or lack of houses – properly !
@Gavin O’Brien: And the irony is that Murphy is one of FG’s leading ‘scopers’. Always ‘scoping’ but never actually doing anything substantial. You’d think that they would have made sure that their incessant scoping exercises would not malfunction in this way. But , no. They can’t even operate their own infinite deferral programme properly. Shoddy.
Where are all the millennial snowflakes who campaigned so vigorously for the 8th amendment they look to be deathly silent on this, isn’t this “trendy” enough for you then, no repeal t shirts or badges or street rallys, pathetic.
@Jonny: what’s up? A little sore?
@Jonny: start the campaign….we can join in…
@Jonny: What generation is it that can’t afford to get on the property ladder and are most affected by this do you think?
@Jonny: the salt is strong in this one
@Jonny: Or the 700K+ on hospital waiting lists, or the Cervical Smear disaster or the……not cool enough
@Jonny: Hi Johnny, I’m an average run of the mill “millennial snowflake” that campaigned for repeal, however I didn’t do it because it was trendy, I’m just a firm believer in basic human rights for women which includes abortion services. I also believe in the right to housing and am a strong advocate for better housing just because I don’t wear a jumper with a house on it, nor do other young people it’s a matter that affects many of us. Just remember the next time you refer to me or any person of my age group a “snowflake”. You probably have a decent job, got a great mortgage with pittance and some, whilst we struggle to find permanent jobs, pay extortionate rents, therefore pushing us out of the housing market and so much more so take your head out of your arse buddy.
@Jonny: furthermore Johnny, we can shout and scream at government, as many have but it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference they do as they please and I bet it is you who probably votes for FF or FG! Should their be a constitutional amendment which guarantees the right to housing, many of us “snowflakes” wouldn’t have melted and would be out campaigning vigorously for it.
@Dave Thomas: why mate I voted yes… You nutter
@Dan: I do enough and I’d gladly do more unlike poxy snowflakes
@David Farrell: my heart bleeds for you all offended anall, no I think you’ve referred to me as all wrong, people like you should be out on the steets campaigning I bet you were for repeal but that’s because it was the in thing to do for millennial fashionastas
@David Farrell: yep great attitude to have roll over and allow them to shaft you
@Jonny: @Jonny: and tell me Jonny, what have you done in the past twelve months to alleviate the housing crisis? What have you been involved in? Have you submitted policy documents to any local politicians? Probably not, I guess us snowflakes are more proactive and as mentioned before I haven’t seen you leading any particular movement in regards to homelessness or do I have you all wrong? It’s pretty shit being labelled isn’t it? Furthermore I didn’t take to the streets during repeal, I did the right thing, I lobbied politicians, had conversations, debated with people in a calm, respectful manner! And no you didn’t offend me, I just really hate stupid people
What way are they calculating how many new houses are built when there are 30,000 less than was thought?
@Slim Shady: back of a fag packet in the Dáil bar.
No other way to describe this other than deception.
Lies, fiddling the numbers. Call it what you want but it’s just not good enough.
Will someone sack this yoke for telling lies to the public,its disgusting.
A government of flip floppers ,dont believe any thing they say ,decades of mismanagement and still we have mismanagement ,no transparency ,no accountability and a shed load of spin .same old same old .
If somebody builds a new house and knocks down their old house (which happens quite commonly around the country) then that is one new build / new ESB connection but how it benefits anyone beyond the person living there is beyond me. These should be removed from the stats also.
Minister for housing humans, cattle, chickens, anything with an esb meter, etc. etc.
Build the houses and stop all this waffle.
At the start I thought Murphy sounds as if he means it but I’m not sure now.
@Gerry Fallon: official FG policy is not to build large scale housing.
The solution is not to build houses – the solution is to get rid of Fine Gael.
When a plan is approved to for example 6 houses.
Builder completes house.
Someone should be checking quality and if house built.
On completion box ticked.
6 completed houses.
You can do this on excel!
@Patrick: doesn’t the house have to be surveyed by a quantity surveyor before you can get a mortgage? They could keep records
This is ridiculous stuff , go out and build a house or a dwelling without planning permission and see how long you”ll be waiting before some little pr**k from the local planning office come calling, the level of Intelligence is really questionable The days for fooling people is over.
This government really does pull figures from the sky FFS
Let’s think practically before calling for the Minister’s head. What is the impediment to building new homes (social or private)? Are the Minister’s hands tied by an external or internal force for the government?
I know the Developers sank the country, and that is a strong argument against exorbitant lending, but we must account for the impediments, decipher a resolution, and move forward to house people at a FAIR (ergo in proportion to real wages) market rate.
It seems the current Minister’s only solution is a photo opp in a hard hat and high vis vest while spouting fantasy arithmetic dribble.
@Hellenize Dublin: the impediment to building large scale housing including social housing is Fine Gael. They don’t believe in it. Building lowers prices. They believe in exorbitant housing costs. Good for banks. Good for middle class homeowners. Good for landlords. Bad for homeless people but they don’t vote and certainly don’t vote for FG. So they don’t matter.
If you want to fix housing, rent and homelessness you have to get rid of FG. Bear in mind that FF also believe in high housing prices.
@Stephen Adam: Thanks for the point of view Stephen. It’s beggars belief at this stage. Even the media attention (which they love and no doubt fondle themselves over) is water off a duck’s back.
@Hellenize Dublin: well I can’t agree it beggars belief. They don’t and have never hidden who they are. LV launched an expensive “welfare cheats cheat us all” campaign before his rise to Taoiseach. He achieved nothing in health or transport.
As for Murphy – exactly what are his qualifications? What does he know about housing?
The facts and history speak for themselves. Don’t listen to what they say. Look at what they do.
I’m not the least bit surprised and will be voting for other candidates. But then I’ll be in a minority who will vote FG.
Eoghan Murphy can be trusted about as much as his late Grandfather Russell Murphy could be!
If they got the numbers of houses built completely wrong,surely an alarm bell would have been that over 30,000+ not paying property tax?!
@Nuala Mc Namara: or maybe the were using the figures totally wrong in order to make it look like they were doing something. Optics and spin.
@Nuala Mc Namara: they cant use calculators in finegael
Would there be any spare labour capacity in the County and City Councils for the continuous monitoring and reporting of this important national statistic, without having to be asked? A proactive, not a reactive approach is required!
Collating house completion numbers in a timely and accurate fashion, and delivering said numbers to one gov body should not be complicated or so convoluted, ffs! What’s the CSO at on this?
Poor gov MIS are making the smart, articulate and pleasant Housing Minister look like a complete idiot! Hopefully, one day soon he’ll wake up, lose the rag, get fired up and demand improvements for accurate key data flows into his office.
As a learned contributor here asked earlier “ is there anything at a b rewery this man could organize”
an amazingly obvious data oversight is finally righted.
Past sound bytes that were never really anything but codswallop. How do you summarise the mess anyway.
Lying blueshirt swines…
Finegael are being exposed their lies are fading they have ruined Ireland . Up too 10,000 homeless . Record highest ever waiting for hospital appointments , 32,000 less than stated homes being built , pre recession house prices , rents now out of control & they think ahh sure isn’t everything only booming . They have absolutely created a big mess .
The goverment need to step aside disgracefull shambles all round ..and ff are backing them
Does he hv any idea about fwd planning ..dosent look like it..jobs for the boys as usual
The housing crisis seems not to be a political crisis
Why are we even building social housing.
Dissolve the department of housing
Deregulate the industry, make it easier and cheaper for private companies to build houses
Allow companies to compete with each other to provide the cheapest and best quality housing.
Spoofer
Promises and Lies.
So housing builds included a farmer connecting some power to his cowshed? This is so ridiculous you would be tempted to laugh. When i built an extension I had to send a completion notice to the local authority. Why not count them? After all, it’s builds being counted, not people using power
Bring on FG/SF. Solve all our woes
have your say