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Updated 3.45pm
THE GOVERNMENT HAS confirmed where ministers are going for trade & tourism trips this St Patrick’s Day.
The Taoiseach Enda Kenny will be making his traditional trip to the States including a visit to the White House where he will meet President Barack Obama.
Tánaiste Joan Burton will be on US duty this year – with her tour taking in Boston, Pittsburgh and Philadelpia.
Also heading to North America are Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan (Canada & New York), and ministers of state Paul Kehoe (Houston, Savannah), Jimmy Deenihan (Chicago & Milwaukee), Michael Ring (Phoenix, LA) and Paudie Coffey (St Louis, Indianapolis).
Only Michael Noonan, the Finance Minister, is staying in Ireland to mind the shop along with the Attorney General Máire Whelan.
Health Minister Leo Varadkar is heading to Mexico.
MerrionStreet.ie / Twitter.@Entirl 2015 international programme sees an increase in activity over last year (which saw creation of 8,500 jobs) pic.twitter.com/A4wTZ87vGT
— MerrionStreet.ie (@merrionstreet) February 23, 2015
Speaking today, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan insisted that the trips abroad represent “very, very good value”.
“Last year for example, as an immediate consequence of our ministerial visits €5 million was gained at a cost of €300,000 for the entire event.
“This year, each department pays for its own ministerial engagement. I am quite satisfied that this is money really, really well spent.
“Every minister and minister of state will report directly back to the Taoiseach on the number of meetings, type of meetings, who they met and follow-up engagements. No other country has an opportunity like St Patrick’s Day.”
https://vine.co/v/OQjELY5Xpx0
Elsewhere – Alex White and junior minister Tom Hayes will be racking up the most air miles, with trips to New Zealand and Australia respectively.
On the European front – jobs minister Richard Bruton is heading to Paris, arts minister Heather Humphreys goes to London, and agriculture/defence minister Simon Coveney is Italy-bound.
Junior minister Ged Nash will be off to Sweden. His colleagues in the minister of state ranks, Joe McHugh, Simon Harris, Dara Murphy, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Kevin Humphreys, Ann Phelan and Damien English will also be heading on relatively short-haul trips.
Elsewhere, junior health minister Kathleen Lynch will be off to Russia, minister of state Sean Sherlock will go to Ethiopia, Children’s Minister James Reilly will go to India, Environment Minister Alan Kelly to China, Education Minister Jan O’Sullivan to Brazil, and Brendan Howlin to South Korea and Japan.
TheJournal Politics / TwitterBREAKING: Here's where all the ministers are going for St Patrick's Day #jolly #trademission pic.twitter.com/x48AKEt1Nt
— TheJournal Politics (@TJ_Politics) February 23, 2015
Full details were disclosed at a press event at the headquarters of ding*, an international mobile phone top-up service, in Dublin this afternoon.
- with reporting from Hugh O’Connell
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This was actually the work of a secret government experiment underground. There are 8 letter in bulls**te, minus 1 is 7. 6 letters in “Madrid” plus 1 is 7, 7+7 is 14, same number alonso used to wear at Liverpool. Therefore the UK is the next target for fart bombs…
Went to the alhambra in granada years ago. The architects hundreds of years ago factored these quakes into their building designs and placed lead inside the stone columns. This enabled them to sway slightly. Clever lads in fairness. Well worth a visit.
The earthquake that struck Lorca was not 10km deep, it was only 1 km deep. This was extremely unusual. It explains why this modest earthquake caused so much damage. Today’s earthquake is more typical, at a depth of 8 miles. It should not be as bad.
Some scientists claimed the Lorca earthquake was provoked by water wells that removed ground water, that the removal of water reduced pressure that otherwise clamped the fault shut, allowing it to move.
http://www.independent.ie/breaking-news/world-news/spanish-quake-was-manmade-study-3266682.html
We had a large 7.1 quake in the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge Off the west coast Of Ireland on 13th
That’s big for the Northern Mid-Atlantic Ridge, very interesting. It was on Charlie-Gibbs fracture zone. Here’s a nice article about the earthquake.
Ay caramba!
Paul Murphy is on his way, he blamed the quake on the local police!
I knew it wasn’t the journal reporting this when I spotted they didn’t mix moment magnitude and the Richter scale.
And the mixture of metric and imperial.
It’s maddening. Nobody has used the Richter scale in decades.
The moment magnitude scale (abbreviated as MMS; denoted as MW or M) is used by seismologists to measure the size of earthquakes in terms of the energy released. The magnitude is based on the seismic moment of the earthquake, which is equal to the rigidity of the Earth multiplied by the average amount of slip on the fault and the size of the area that slipped.The scale was developed in the 1970s to succeed the 1930s-era Richter magnitude scale (ML). Even though the formulae are different, the new scale retains the familiar continuum of magnitude values defined by the older one. The MMS is now the scale used to estimate magnitudes for all modern large earthquakes by the United States Geological Survey.
There’s absolutely no threat from Fionna Foil so long as Mehole is in charge
Do you know any kind of earthquake early warning app? I found one here http://remotegun.com/earthquake-early-warning-system but it is under development right now. do you know another one?
All hail the glorious frank…
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