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TEENS ACROSS IRELAND are being called on to design ‘a home for everyone’ as part of a national competition aimed at attracting young people into the construction industry.
The competition launched by the Construction Industry Federation (CIF) is aimed at senior cycle students and is a team-based project. Students are asked to work together to design a home that helps solve issues such as climate change and the housing crisis as well as inclusivity.
The submitted designs will need to be eco-friendly, affordable and suitable for both elderly people and those with physical disabilities.
The competition will run until 1 March with judging taking place until mid-March. The winning team will have their design rendered into a three-dimensional model, so they can ‘walk’ through the house in March 2021.
In addition, the winning school will receive high end measuring equipment, a laser level and a masterclass in the use of the equipment. The winning team members will have the option of taking a CIF scholarship or access to its apprenticeship programme if they do decide to take a construction-related career route in their future.
Research by CIF found more than 63% of parents would be happy for their children to pursue a career in construction and over half believe the sector provides careers for both men and women.
CIF’s director general, Tom Parlon said the pandemic has shown how solid a career in construction is, as it was able to operate throughout the most difficult Covid-19 period.
“Increasingly, our workers are travelling internationally, using technology instead of a hammer, and are working as part of diverse, multi-disciplinary teams,” he said.
“Salaries and wages are increasing all the time and there’s a clear career path from building site to boardroom for those who want it.”
Parlon said the competition is a celebration of the “creativity and purpose that’s sometimes taken for granted” in the construction industry.
“We’re marrying young people’s concerns about homelessness, climate change and inclusivity with construction to demonstrate that a career can make a difference and have a real purpose.”
Anyone wishing to enter the competition can do so here.
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A big thank you to all health care workers… absolute hero’s… deserve so much more than a round of applause
@jonathan masterson: versus teachers not wanting to turn up to teach kids with data saying that they have low transmission rates , doctors and nurses are not to happy with these people , drop their wages down to 350 a week
@Paddy Dunne: That is one long nonsensical sentence.
@Paddy Dunne: Seriously! I know you are probably trolling but come on, don’t be such a bell end!
@Paddy Dunne: Diction very poor. Commas in wrong place. No full stop. Must do better Paddy. D minus.
@Paddy Dunne: jaysus you are everywhere.
@Bert Carolan: poor Paddy must have had a bad teacher
Will someone please ban that Ryanair ad on RTÉ vax and go. Who is even thinking of holidays the mess the country is in.
@John brett: that advert is just depressing….
@John brett: I am, I know it’s probably wishful thinking. They can take our freedom but they’ll never take our dreams.
@John brett: me.. a health care worker! I can’t wait to go abroad but yeah, not right now
@John brett: i reckon absolutely everyone is thinking of holidays!
@John brett: The UK version of the ad did get 1’600 complaints. Either version is incredibly tone deaf to the situation we are in.
15,500 vaccinated out of 81,500 vaccinations delivered,, be better off getting just eat to do it
@Ronan Lawler: well said !
@Ronan Lawler: Using Just Eat would guarantee it arrives at the low temperatures needed also.
@Ronan Lawler: Speaking from your vast experience in logistics are you?
@Phil Redmond: zzzz
@Phil Redmond: mehhhh, it’s a joke that’s sooo badly needed now, chill ffs!
@Ronan Lawler: thanks for the laugh, badly needed!
@Phil Redmond: I would imagine that he is speaking from a sense of icredulous disbeliefe.
11 months so far to tackle the logistiical side and this is the best the HSE can do?
Not good enough.
@Ronan Lawler: they should have it over to a private company to run HSE and Govt not up for this professional job
With the rate we’re vaccinating people I’d urge them to get even more worried..
@Shay Redmond.: Shambles.
@Shay Redmond.: Vaccine are mot a cure, they are a preventative measure. Any one who is likely to need an ICU bed in the next few weeks was infected at over the christmas.
@Shay Redmond.: That’s not HSE’s fault, you know, of course.
@Robert Clifford: You describe yourself very well.
@John Hazelnut: Agreed. Our Government are too busy trying to curtail Off license sales and haven’t really got their eye on the ball here.
@Shay Redmond.: they should have shut them at christmas with what some people were at, but hey, don’t bother accepting any blame yourselves.
@Joe_X: No blame here Joe .. I don’t drink.
Brilliant news item. About time someone with real experience shouted about how bad it could get. Remember Italy! People going on about a shambles this and a shambles that need to remember that the real shambles is us, the public, who refuse to follow the advice and instead whinge about the authorities not enforcing said advise. Then again, personal responsibility is a very dirty phrase on this island.
@Tony Harris: not just this island , uk is as bad. Taking responsibility for yourself is almost seen as a old fashioned concept nowadays.
@John Pog: we shouldn’t be comparing with the UK which has one of the worst case and death rates in the world. Personal responsibility is important, but someone can do all the right things and somebody else can endanger them. Then people don’t know until they actually get ill. Some people are selfish and break rules. Human nature is predictable. The less chance they have to break these rules the better things would be. People had to turn up to work in meat plants where virus was rampant but there was no sick pay. Healthcare workers cannot avoid the virus. Not having people quarantine on arrival is the biggest mistake of this pandemic. Some people will obviously break rules on entry because they’re selfish. The Government gave them the chance to ruin it for everybody else. We have the North but even with open borders our rates were better for a long time so it’s not a reason to not try.
@Aidan O’ Neill: fact still remains ,if we social distance , wear masks , gloves , wash hands and have good procedures then this won’t spread .
Doesn’t matter what setting you’re in or what regulations are in place.
If only they had 11 YEARS to prepare…
“In 2009, the HSE said we needed 579 ICU beds. [...] We have about 280 at the moment. And that is down from the 354, we had in April,” – https://www.thejournal.ie/icu-bed-numbers-5217685-Sep2020/
@Ricardo Almeida: Two factors intervened, firstly following the banking and euro crisis we were forced to take a real cut in health spending to meet the requirements of the Troika. Secondly we have a spineless set of politicians who decided it was better to cut beds and frontline services rather than reform the HSE.
@Dan Jacobson: id disagree with your first point -we are 4th in health spending per capita in the european union – the issue isn’t the money spent – id agree the solution is to reform the hse and take out the 000;s of managers and eliminate outdated paper processes and use tech to drive efficiency and push resources into front line and beds – the wastage in hse is criminal ….hospital building costing 2.5bn that other countries can do for 400m is just one example of how out of kilter we are in ireland.
Failed to prepare since March. Public health consultants were considering a strike in the middle of a pandemic. Our healthcare professionals and the people have been utterly failed by FFG and by successive governments! Their day of reckoning is coming
@Craic-Hommy:
The people have been failed? Oh give me a break. We are in another lockdown because the public didn’t listen. Private house parties, not wearing face masks, hanging out in groups. That’s all the Government too
@Craic-Hommy: The people let themselves down, whole families walking around supervalu with masks on but not over their nose, pawing at everything on the shelves. People going for parties, desperate people demanding they be allowed have a pint, cramming into shops to do Christmas shopping when anyone with an ounce of sense omdone it online or already had done it online, people traveling on holidays and coming back, people gathering in the streets to have a session, morons having raves, the “I’m not wearing a mask cause it’ll make me look stupid” crowd and the “sure it’s my family, I know none of them have it crowd” or the “ah it’s Xmas or new years eve, it’s only one day, I’ll disregard the restrictions and common sense cause one day won’t make a difference” the same people then turn around and blame government, vaccine roleout, NPHET, Tony Holohan, the Taoiseach, FFG, Sinn Fein, The North, Etc basically anyone and everyone but themselves, sure all they done was go shopping for Xmas presents, had dinner in the pub 5 or 6times so they could have a ton of pints and stayed way past the time alloted to them and visit a few friends houses on Xmas and had a few cans, same on news years, just had a quiet one with 12 friends over for drinks, and they still have no idea how Nan or Grandad or their elderly parents or aunts or uncles or the nephew that is getting chemo for leukemia or their niece that has a compromised immune system from crohns disease have managed to get Covid, I mean they washed their hands that time.
It was the public, the minority that let the public down and have us where we are. That’s not even including the “it’s less lethal than the Flu” or the its “a hoax so the government can control us” lobby
@Simon Carroll: Hear! Hear!
@Simon Carroll: we are where are now because our leaders ignored public hesitation advice in early December, actually doing the opposite of what NPHET advised. We would t be where we are today if they had listened to public heath experts advice about what would happen. Failed. The vast majority are compliant. I’d say you blame being homeless on the individual would you?
@Just Some Guy: yawn! Keep drinking their BS! Failed! Utterly failed!!
@Craic-Hommy: Not at all, having been homeless myself for a time I know well that it isn’t always the individuals fault, that there is and can be myriad reasons for someone to end up homeless mostly its just a case of bad luck.
Coming back to your complaining about the gubberments, yes the ignore nphets advice but no one absolutely no one held a gun to any one’s head and forced people to shop, drink, congregate, go to pubs, parties, visit family and or friends over Xmas and new years, to disregard regulations and health advice, it was adults making their own decisions about socializing and taking risks. Regardless of whether the shops and pubs were open because nphets advice was ignored. The health advice was still to minimize costs tax, wear a mask. Don’t congregate, essential trips only, don’t visit elderly or vulnerable relations unless it’s to drop of shopping etc. Only leave the house for essential reasons, wash your hands etc. That advice was still in place. It was the in your view “blameless” adults that took the risks knowing full well what the outcome could or would be but went ahead and done it anyway, you can’t blame that on government decisions, nphet, pubs, shops, restaurants or anything else because as I said, adults made the decision on how much they are willing to risk. No one forced them to do anything. So yes, it is the publics fault, true it was a minority and that minority ruined it for the majority, like they often do. Now they are considering reducing off sales times which makes no difference. People will just go to the off license earlier, all it will do is reduce the amount of hours the staff can work, reduce their take home pay, reduce the tax, or sign and usc they pay affecting the exchequer which is something they should be trying to avoid, if course it has nothing to do with the vintners association lobbying because they were told to lay off the takeaway pints so they want everyone else to suffer as bad or worse than them financially, another example of Irish “adults” only thinking of themselves and not the wider community, vulnerable, elderly, front line workers or support staff. Just what’s in it for them, the same attitude the minority displayed if liver cm Xmas and new year
@Simon Carroll: ffs, to minimize contacts, not tax costs! Bloody predictive text, all the other mistake you can work out!!
@Simon Carroll: bollox
A very tough job. They have a very difficult time ahead of them.
Guys let’s not get distracted by the red herring the government are throwing us on schools, we all know 6th years won’t be returning. Let’s all focus our voices on the abysmal vaccination rate, it’s simply not acceptable. More people are being infected than vaccinated. The health care system will be completely decimated at this rate.
@Darren Mc Cann: The Health Care System can’t Administrator vaccines they don’t have, it’s logistics problem from the manufacturer only being able to churn out a certain amount every hour and filling back orders, it’s not like only one or two countries are looking for the vaccine. It’s every country in the world, billions and billions of doses, some countries paying 2-3 times the asking price to get priority. Can’t blame the government or hse or NPHET or doctors or nurses or managers for that, it’s a situation that should have been for seen and planned for but wasn’t, Israel and UK are running into problems now with what to do about the second dose, UK want to stretch it out from the advised 3 weeks to 12 weeks even though Pfizer have said it won’t work unless the second one dose is adnibistersed sooner. Is it going to be a case where some people in the UK will get 3 doses, first one, second one 12 weeks later which they’ve been advised against and then a third one within 3 weeks of the second, I mean it’s Boris and the Torys we’re talking about so wouldn’t be surprised if that is their plan. Israel has also copped that they should have kept back doses to ensure they had sufficient supply and could give the second dose on time, if they expend one million first doses, and don’t hold any back what happens if there’s a 4,5,6 week delay in the supply chain. They’ll be in the same situation as UK
@Simon Carroll: According to Leo today on a news channel, when compared with similar countries such as Denamk” We know we are behind” “Give is a few weeks to catch up”
Speaking on RTÉ’s News at One, Varadkar has said that all of Europe’s vaccine rollout has been “slow”, and that weekly vaccination figures in Ireland will be published.
Commenting on Ireland’s rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine thus far, Varadkar said: “Give us a couple of weeks. It’s fair to compare us to other EU countries. I think people will see us catch up on peer countries.”
@Dave: Leo is living in his own little world…..
@Dave: Denmark have also extended the time between first and second jab to six weeks, unfortunately its a cause of either or with the disease if vaccinations available, steady role out and three or four weeks between jabs or fast role out and longer Gao between jabs
Watching the TV last night I noticed an advertisement for Lemsip Cold and Flu remedy.
What a waste of money, has nobody told them that there is no cold and flu this year.
Unless they know something that we don’t.
@Garry Coll: Yea, they definitely know something. I’ll let you in on it but you’ve gotta pinky swear you won’t tell anyone, ok ? Here it is… There have been no reported cases of flu in Ireland up to last Friday, 3rd Jan, but the common cold has not gone anywhere. You can read all about it here, but I know you won’t as it would conflict with your ‘truth’. https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/influenza/seasonalinfluenza/surveillance/influenzasurveillancereports/20202021season/
@Garry Coll: Of course there is cold and flu….. there is no database recording the numbers of the cold and flu!!!! Why because most people who get the cold and flu do the usual get the old Lemsip, uniflu and stay at home for a few days until its gone…
There is no database reporting on this Gary will ya cop on lad…..
If there is one thing that nurses are good at, it’s complaining!
@Pakistani Atheist: When you need them most i hope they see this comment….
@Pakistani Atheist: ah I dunno, they’re also pretty good at aging lives, caring for the sick, vulnerable and elderly, being over worked, underpaid and under appreciated, working in over crowded and under funded hospitals, doing the best they can in a horrible situation, so maybe they deserve to moan when something is a glaringly obvious problem
@Simon Carroll: saving lives * f ing hell, I just can’t type today!!
Worth trying considering it’s been advised to be expeditiously implemented as a
priority element of standard care>
high dose, oral vitamin D supplementation to augment 25(OH)D >50 ng/ml helped to achieve SARS-CoV-2 RNA negativity in greater proportion of asymptomatic vitamin D-deficient individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection along with a significant decrease in inflammatory marker. SARS-CoV-2 RNA negativity by cholecalciferol supplementation may help in reducing transmission rates of the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 infection. A reassurance for public health workers regarding greater likelihood of SARS CoV-2 RNA negativity in individuals receiving therapeutic cholecalciferol supplementation will be encouraging.
https://pmj.bmj.com/content/early/2020/11/12/postgradmedj-2020-139065
In the absence of a cure, or an effective safe vaccine for
SARS-CoV-2, it is timely to consider whether vitamin D de-
ficiency is an easily reversible host factor which increases the
risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and worsens disease severity,
and by extension, whether optimisation of vitamin D status
through supplementation can ameliorate these risks.
In the context of the accumulating evidence outlined in this
position statement which strongly suggests a protective role
for vitamin D against SARS-CoV-2 infection and Covid-19
disease severity, this paper is a call to action for Health
Professionals and Policy Makers in Ireland to:
(i) Recognise the importance of enhanced vitamin D status
in skeletal and extra-skeletal health, and particularly in
the optimisation of immune response;
(ii) Identify more adults with vitamin D deficiency through
more widespread measurement of serum 25(OH)D;
(iii) Prescribe vitamin D at doses which achieve a restoration
of 25(OH)D levels to greater than 50 nmol/l, with a
confirmatory subsequent blood draw to ensure restora-
tion has been achieved;
(iv) Develop explicit population guidance and clinical pro-
tocols for vitamin D supplementation at these effective
doses, as part of a comprehensive policy response to
combat vitamin D deficiency and enhance the immune
function and overall health of the Irish population
This is especially important for older
adults resident in nursing homes or other long-term care set-
tings who are particularly vulnerable; here, sufficient vitamin
D supplementation to achieve a minimum serum 25(OH)D
level of 50 nmol/l should be expeditiously implemented as a
priority element of standard care.
Vitamin D and SARS-CoV-2 infection—evolution of evidence
supporting clinical practice and policy development
A position statement from the Covit-D Consortium
Daniel M. McCartney1 & Paula M. O’Shea2,3 & John L. Faul4 & Martin J. Healy5 & Greg Byrne1 & Tomás P. Griffin6,7 &
James Bernard Walsh8,9 & Declan G. Byrne9,10 & Rose Anne Kenny8,9
Received: 25 October 2020 /Accepted: 29 October 2020
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11845-020-02427-9
The INMO have alot to answer for also. There are hundreds of nurses who have qualifications not recognised here in Ireland who are ready to work but yet they are happy to have student nurses on the front line who I assume are registered.
@bombboy: Ah you see it’s because as an organization the INMO are only interested in getting their fees from the nurses from overseas, the cost of registering, having your qualifications recognized, proper paper work etc it’s just a money racket, why bother jumping through hoops and paying all that money to work in Ireland when you can go to another country where your vocation is appreciated, your paid what your worth and your work conditions are immensely better
I understand totally that we do not want to overwhelm the health system. I get that. But to me the number of deaths with or from Covid 19 simply do not warrant shutting down the country. 85 deaths per day was the average in 2018. Covid death rate is around 7 per day. What am I missing?
@Verners Tess: what were the 85 Deaths per day in 2018 from?
@Verners Tess: a lot.
@Verners Tess: That average of 85 will increase when all they icu beds are treating covid cases and there’s no acute care for heart attack KS, strokes, head injuries, respiratory problems etc maybe it’d end up like Italy and have doctors having to decide who to try keep Alive and who to just make as comfortable as possible while they die
Remember a few weeks ago when FFFG said they wouldn’t pay student nurses because the risk was low now. Here we are though being thrown into chaos next week.
Can asymptomatic hospital staff that have tested positive for covid still work if they are dealing with COVID patients?
If this is the reality of where we are at with this virus, why are they not listening to these people and do a complete countrywide lockdown, not any of these level 3,4,5 or a new 6 nonsense, just a complete lockdown, nobody leaves there home for 1 month only essential workers, no more fapping about
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