Work & Life Issue No 11

THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS

ISSUE 11 • WINTER 2010

GOLD FEVER IMPACT paracyclists aim for Olympic heights

PLUS WORKING FOR NOTHING AWARD WINNING PUBLIC SERVICES CROKE PARK IMPLEMENTATION HELPING HANDS AT HOME CLAIMING YOUR FUTURE

ALSO INSIDE WORKPLACE MOTIVATION. IRISH FASHION FLAIR. HOW TO BREATHE EASY. MAGNIFICENT METSU. LOCALLY-SOURCED FOOD. WINTER GARDENING. FALLEN MOVIE STARS. BOOK GIVEAWAY. FUNNY MUSIC. YOUNG SPORTING TALENT. YOUR LETTERS. ALL THE NEWS. PRIZE COMPETITIONS.

www.impact.ie

In this issue

work& & life – Winter 2010 COVER FEATURES

REGULARS

MORE REGULARS

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AT THE MOVIES

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BOOKS

GOLD FEVER Fresh from the world championships, IMPACT members Catherine Walsh and Michael Delaney are paracycling their way to Olympic heights.

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Coffee conscience and the lost generation of young workers.

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YOUR CAREER Work not working for you?

ISOBEL BUTLER on how to find your motivation.

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Beat the bad breathing that makes you more vulnerable to winter colds.

PUBLIC EXCELLENCE

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HELPING HANDS

CLAIMING YOUR FUTURE Join the new movement, which aims to turn the economic crisis into a positive turning point.

Win Win Win…

SPORT KEVIN NOLAN on the young talents set to become household names.

DUTCH MASTER BERNARD HARBOR takes a trip to the National Gallery of Ireland.

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FOOD Locally-produced food is working for MARGARET HANNIGAN.

MARTINA O’LEARY talks to people who organise and deliver home help services.

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CROKE PARK CHANGES We speak exclusively to PJ FITZPATRICK, the new chair of the Croke Park implementation body.

MUSIC RAYMOND CONNOLLY cringes over some ‘funny’ songs.

BREATHE EASY

Sporting Fingal football club featured in this year’s public service excellence awards.

NIALL SHANAHAN reports on this and other winners.

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FASHION

Movie stars’ media machinations with MORGAN O’BRIEN.

IMPACT member KIERON CONNOLLY’s new novel is out.

TRISH O’MAHONY on the fashion creations that create Irish jobs.

WORKING FOR NOTHING Unpaid internships and proposed workfare schemes are finding favour as employers seek new ways to cut pay.

YOUR LETTERS

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GREEN FINGERS JIMI BLAKE has the wellies on for winter garden tasks.

NEWS

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CROKE PARK LATEST LOCAL AUTHORITY CUTS TIPP BRANCH FUNDS CAMPAIGN COMMUNITY SECTOR WOES HSE TALKS CONTINUE HOSPITAL CAMPAIGNS AER LINGUS CDVEC MORTGAGE DEBT

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Put pen to paper and win €50.

Win a copy of Kieron Connolly’s new book.

Enter our prize quiz and win €50.

Tell us what you think and win €100.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 1

THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS

work&life

Back in the saddle

MANY CONGRATULATIONS to Mark Rohan who won Ireland’s first ever gold medal in the world paracycling championships over the summer. Mark’s dad is IMPACT’s midlands official Denis Rohan, who alerted us to the fact that two of Mark’s team mates were IMPACT members. You can meet them in our ‘IMPACT people’ feature on page 4.

Remember to let us know of any interesting IMPACT people we could feature in future issues.

Work & Life is produced by IMPACT trade union’s Communications Unit and edited by Bernard Harbor.

The sun was kind to us this summer, which was a relief as the recession meant many more of us stayed at home during the holidays. There’s definitely a ‘back to work’ vibe around now – one reason why we have an exclusive interview with PJ FITZPATRICK, the man appointed to oversee implementation of the Croke Park agreement.

Contact IMPACT at: Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1.

Phone: 01-817-1500.

Email: rnolan@impact.ie.

The summer also saw a further weakening of the link between work and pay for many young workers, as employers exploit unpaid ‘internships’ and ministers develop ‘workfare’ proposals for the unemployed. BERNARD HARBOR looks at the growing numbers of people working for nothing.

But it’s not all bad news. NIALL SHANAHAN applauds some IMPACT members whose work attracted public service excellence awards this year. Meanwhile, MARTINA O’LEARY spent some time with the people who organise and deliver home help services, while our regular ‘travel and trips’ item features one of the great spare-time options provided by the National Gallery of Ireland.

Front Cover: IMPACT members Michael Delaney and his tandem partner Con Collis paracycling for Ireland. Photo by Ann McFarland.

Designed by: O’Brien Design & Print Management.

Phone: 01-864-1920.

Email: nikiobrien@eircom.net.

Printed by Boylan Print Group.

Advertising sales: Frank Bambrick.

Phone: 01-453-4011.

Unless otherwise stated, the views contained in Work & Life do not necessarily reflect the policy of IMPACT trade union.

Work & Life is printed on environmentally friendly paper, certified by the European Eco Label. This magazine is 100% recycable.

The darker mornings and shorter evenings won’t help if you’re having trouble getting motivated for work. But ISOBEL BUTLER’s careers column will. Check it out, along with KAREN WARD’S advice on avoiding those winter colds.

It’s always a pleasure to feature IMPACT members’ literary achievements in the magazine. Last time we spoke to KIERON CONNOLLY it was in the old paper IMPACT News. He’s now got a new novel out and you have a chance to win a copy.

And we’ve a couple of great letters in this issue. Don’t forget that we pay money for the ones we publish, so keep them coming.

IMPACT trade union IMPACT is Ireland’s fastest growing trade union with over 65,000 members in the public services and elsewhere.

We represent staff in the health services, local authorities, education, the civil service, the community sector, aviation, telecommunications and commercial and non-commercial semi-state organisations.

Find out more about IMPACT on

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www.impact.ie

Work & Life Magazine is a full participating member of the Press Council of Ireland and supports the Office of the Press Ombudsman. In addition to defending the freedom of the press, this scheme offers readers a quick, fair and free method of dealing with complaints that they may have in relation to articles that appear on our pages. To contact the Office of the Press Ombudsman go to www.pressombudsman.ie or www.presscouncil.ie.

All suppliers to Work & Life recognise ICTU-affiliated trade unions.

That was then…

8 years ago

STRANGE WORLD

Seaside councillors reject Status Quo CITY COUNCILLORS in Brighton and Hove, on the south coast of England, struck a sensitive chord or three over the summer when they advertised top jobs using the strap line “Status Quo fans need not apply.”

The marketing gurus who came up with the ruse could find themselves living on an island after aged rockers Fran Rossi and Rick Parfitt took offence.

According to People Management magazine, the band reportedly threatened to display a banner reading “Brighton and Hove councillors need not attend” at their forthcoming gig in the town.

Back at the town hall, this might have been expected to elicit sighs of relief. Instead, council chief executive John Barradell felt obliged to apologise to the sensitive purveyors of hits like ‘Roll Over Lay Down’ and reassure them that it was merely a play on words.

“We don’t want people who will accept things the way they are. We want people who will come to the council with brilliant and original ideas,” he explained. Maybe it’s time to review that policy. Either that or stop overreacting to pompous ponytailed prima donnas.

With the new Government about to hack into public services with a reckless policy of cutting spending by up to 40% in some departments you might think the city, which recently returned Britain’s first Green Party MP, would have bigger threats on its mind.

Eminem, for instance, should definitely be made unwelcome if he ever plans to turns up with the auld chainsaw in tow l

On 2nd October 2002 the US Congress authorises the President to use the armed forces against Iraq. A week later, the dot-com bubble bursts and Geraldine Kennedy becomes the first female editor of the Irish Times.

15 years ago In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa is hanged by government forces, along with eight others, on 10th November 1995. Back home, the divorce referendum is passed on 26th November with a margin of just 9,114 votes out of 1.62 million cast. Jack Charlton retires as Republic of Ireland football team manager on 21st December.

70 years ago The Blitz starts on 7th September 1940. Fifty-seven consecutive nights of strategic bombing on London follow during which councillors lead a march of East Enders on the posh Savoy hotel to demand that it open its bomb shelters to all. On 7th November Taoiseach Éamon de Valera refuses British access to Irish ports following months of diplomatic effort.

120 years ago On 12th October 1890 Michael Collins is born in Sam’s Cross, West Cork, the third son and youngest of eight children. On 17th November Captain William Henry O’Shea divorces his wife Kitty naming Charles Stewart Parnell as the co-respondent.

Parnell is re-elected as leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party on 25th November but British prime minister Gladstone declares Irish home rule “impossible” as long as Parnell remains party leader.

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IMPACT people

On track for Lond The Irish paracycling squad made front page news this summer when Mark Rohan – son of IMPACT official Denis – won gold in the road world championships in Canada. Two IMPACT members, Catherine Walsh and Michael Delaney, also secured impressive finishes at the event and now hope to qualify for the London 2012 Paralympics.

Tell me a little about yourself Catherine: I’m from Dublin and married with two children.

Michael: I was born in Belgium to Irish parents and reared in Dublin from the age of four.

How would you describe yourself?

Catherine: Steady and good humoured. I’m fairly easy going but focused on my tasks. I’m not very good at late nights.

Michael: While competitive, I’m a very easy going person. I like to train and compete hard. And I like to rest hard. I’m a well balanced person.

What about the day job?

Catherine: I’m a physiotherapist, with the HSE, in Lusk community unit in Dublin.

Michael: I’m a HSE computer programmer based in Dr Steevens hospital in Dublin.

How did you get involved in cycling?

Michael: I was involved in athletics and won a bronze medal in the high jump at the 2001 world visually impaired championships.

Tandem cycling was relatively new in Ireland and I was approached to get involved. I came fifth in the tandem event in the 2008 Beijing paracycling Olympics. The rest is history.

Catherine: I have competed at international championships since I was 16. I have won nine European and two World championship medals and a bronze medal in the Paralympic games in Sydney in 2000. I retired from that in 2005 and I was hoping to do a triathlon in the future. u 4

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don Paralympics Mick told me they were looking for people to try out for the female tandem. I was selected and it has gone from strength to strength. It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ever since. And I still haven’t done the triathlon.

What are your hopes for your cycling career?

Michael: To qualify for the 2012 London Paralympic games and get a medal there.

It’s a very competitive sport, even to qualify for the squad.

Catherine: The same. I competed in Beijing after only a year on the bike. I was just delighted to be there. We need to qualify, but hopefully we’ll be there to contest the medals as a formidable paring. I don’t want to make up the numbers. I want to be a contender.

What’s the training like?

Catherine: It’s pretty much all-consuming. I don’t do very much else between work, family and training. I’m partially sighted and try to meet up with my competitive partner Fran Meehan twice a week. I do the rest at home and also some gym work.

I’m lucky to have good family support.

Michael: I train 14-15 hours a week, over six days. Some of it’s in the gym and two days are on the road with my tandem partner Con Collis. Con is also an Impact member working in the department of Agriculture. We also do seven to eight camps abroad, because Ireland doesn’t have an indoor velodrome.

Who inspires you?

Catherine: People who set themselves a goal and go about achieving it. Anyone who’s passionate about what they are doing.

Michael: My mother.

What inspires you when the going gets tough?

Catherine: The team, especially as I came from a sport where I was on my own.

Now that I’m on a team I don’t want to let someone else down. I think about other competitors. I know they’re training today, so I have to keep going.

Michael: When I’m tired of training, I’d be spurred on at the thought of beating someone at the next competition.

How do you want to be remembered?

Michael: As someone who has achieved in life. Someone who’s been very active in different areas, and had a balanced lifestyle.

Catherine: I don’t consider myself the most talented person. But with a good team behind you, you should aim high and believe in yourself l Interviewed by Martina O’Leary

Hard cash

OUR PARACYCLING team did Ireland proud in Canada, a gold medal and three top five finishes. But money’s too tight to mention.

Their aim of qualifying at least six bikes for the 2012 London Paralympic games is rightly ambitious. But it’s going to take more than hard work and commitment. They need funds for training, competitions and the huge travel and accommodation costs that go with it.

The Cycling Ireland Paracycling Commission is very grateful for its vital Sports Council support. But this only goes half way to meeting its funding needs. The rest comes from the athletes’ own pockets and fundraising efforts.

If you can help them find funds or sponsorship, you should contact the chair of the Cycling Ireland Paracycling Commission, Denis M. Toomey, on 087-253-3630 or dmtoomey@kinsale-energy.ie.

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Photo: Conor Healy

Any pet hates?

Catherine: I don’t like people who are bad at managing time and I don’t like waiting for buses. I can’t drive and I don’t like not knowing how long I will be waiting.

Michael: Waiting around. I absolutely hate queuing, particularly for a bus when you don’t know how long you could be waiting for.

Interns

Working for nothing Unions have growing concerns that internships and work experience programmes are exploiting young workers, fuelling inequality and displacing precious paid jobs. BERNARD HARBOR reports.

ON A September Saturday morning, management at the Irish Examiner newspaper gathered its staff to tell them it was cutting everyone’s pay by 10%. During the heated three-hour meeting, workers were also told to expect swingeing cuts to their pension benefits as the title struggled to survive in one of Europe’s most crowded newspaper markets.

It was brutal news. Yet the Examiner was among the last of Ireland’s large media groups to cut pay during the recession, a situation that helped form the media myth that everyone in the private sector has suffered pay cuts.

Last year, one household-name presenter explained to me, without irony, that public service pay cuts would have to happen. After all, he had suffered three pay cuts from his various well-paid jobs.

But I digress. The point is that times are hard in the media world, a sector that for many years has been characterised by obscenely huge salaries for the sainted few and low grade terms and conditions for most of the rest. Now, here and abroad, media organisations have also been among the pioneers of another low pay phenomenon. A no pay phenomenon, actually. Working for nothing.

Branded under the banner of internships, it is now increasingly common for media and communications graduates to start their

career working for low or absolutely no pay as they desperately try to get the vital experience that might help them land a proper job.

Cop on And it’s a phenomenon that’s spreading to many other sectors of the economy as employers cop on that desperate young graduates see working for nothing as the only alternative to long periods out of work, during which they will forego experience or even miss the work practice they require to maintain their professional qualifications. So much so that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions is now petitioning the Government to agree new guidelines to cover the thorny phenomenon.

There’s no principled objection to employers offering work experience and there are many legitimate ways of going about it from FÁS work experience arrangements to the European Union’s Erasmus scheme, which helps young graduates gain work experience in another country.

More than one IMPACT staffer started out as a FÁS trainee in the 1980s or early 1990s. One told me it was crucial to her getting back into employment after 15 years out of the workforce. “It brought me into a work environment and gave me a sense of u

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members

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Interns confidence. If I hadn’t got that chance I wouldn’t have got the confidence to go back to work,” she said.

Culture clash But outside well-structured and monitored schemes, work experience or internships can quickly turn into rank exploitation of young people. Fair Access to the Professions, a 2009 report by the then Labour British Government, found that internships had become common practice in most professions including law, engineering, IT and tourism. Meanwhile, the British Trade Union Congress (TUC) calculates that around a third of them are unpaid or ‘expenses only’, despite qualifying for the minimum wage.

The rebranding of unpaid work experience as internship has also led to a worrying culture change among job seekers.

Research by the British National Council for Work Experience recently found that two-thirds of graduates felt obliged to work for free even though they felt exploited or undervalued while doing work experience. And one British recruitment specialist has pointed to evidence that some graduates now spurn paid work as they believe unpaid internships will look better on their CVs.

A recent poll found two-thirds of British graduates felt obliged to work for free even though they felt exploited or undervalued while doing work experience.

Research by the National Union of Journalists found that people on work experience suffered “months of unpaid or poorly paid work which can continue long after a student has become fully qualified.” Its study of 500 student and ex-student members found that almost 70% received no expenses during their work placement, even if they were required to travel to research and report stories. Less than a third found full-time work once they completed their training.

Excluded Fair Access to the Professions also makes the obvious point that the institutionalisation of unpaid internships perpetuates inequality because it effectively excludes the poor from access to the professions. Research by the British campaign group Internocracy found that lack of funding was the most commonly cited reason for not taking internships. The less well-off simply can’t afford to forego an income for months on end. Instead they must forego the experience that may eventually land them professional paid employment. As one student leader told the Guardian newspaper last year: “People who aren’t supported by the bank of mum and dad are excluded.”

Irish unions now fear internship and work experience schemes, which might have made sense in a period of relative prosperity and full employment, could now be displacing precious paid jobs. IMPACT has raised this issue in relation to a longstanding OPW graduate architect scheme. And alarm bells have been ringing in other parts of the public service too.

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Yes! We can regulate.

IMPACT raised the case of a business student taken on for three months unpaid by the HSE in the south, who was simply assigned to cover the work of a clerical officer on maternity leave. “The work was not relevant to her business degree so we objected. It’s our view she was taken on as a student to cover for a vacant post and the placement would not be of any benefit to her in relation to her degree,” said local official Marie Levis. A number of “students” were also taken on to cover administrative work in Cork University hospital.

Balance Unions will have to work to get the balance right. Blanket u

Workfare AS WELL as internships, ICTU is on the warpath over Government proposals to compel unemployed people to work for benefits. ICTU says it supports the idea of creating employment opportunities for unemployed people while providing “much needed community, social, cultural and environmental services.”

But unions are deeply concerned about reports that unemployed workers would be under threat of losing social welfare benefits if they don’t participate. “Trade unions will vigorously oppose mandatory participation and ‘workfare’ schemes that are more about punishing the unemployed than helping them,” according to ICTU general secretary David Begg.

In a meeting with social protection minister Éamon Ó Cuív, the union leader said the scheme must not be used to replace existing jobs. “Congress acceptance of the need for a work guarantee scheme should not be seen as agreeing to ‘park the unemployed’ until the economy u

that given in a school or college, must be properly supervised, and must not displace regular employees.

The Department goes as far as to insist that employers should derive “no immediate advantage from the activities of the trainees” and that occasionally “the employer’s operations may actually be impeded” by taking on an intern. While proper regulation is needed, it’s hard to imagine many employers jumping through this hoop, particularly in the recession.

Blanket opposition to all work experience or internships, even those with low pay rates, could put unions offside with thousands of young people.

Care opposition to all work experience or internships, even those with low pay rates, could put unions offside with thousands of young people who face the hard choice of taking internships, damaging their professional status or career prospects, or travelling abroad for work.

At the same time, unions have to offer protection to the same young workers, who are otherwise ripe for exploitation, and stop employers from displacing real paid jobs with unpaid internships.

Under the Obama administration, the US Department of Labor has come down hard on unpaid internships. Under new rules, US intern programmes must include training similar to

fears picks up. This scheme only reinforces the need for job creation.

Nor should the scheme be used to downplay cutbacks or make up for dwindling funds for local and community work,” he said.

Unions are pressing the minister to include a number of safeguards in the scheme. They include: • Participation must be genuinely voluntary • All employment rights must apply to those on the scheme • Participants should be entitled to time off to attend job interviews • They should be able to modify working time to avail of part-time work opportunities • The scheme should benefit men and women equally, ensuring women are not excluded by childcare or other caring responsibilities

ICTU general secretary David Begg says internships can be a valuable means of providing work experience. But he wants more care and better rules to ensure that they aren’t used to exploit unemployed people or substitute for real jobs. “The most important question is what the real arrangement is, not whether someone is labeled an intern or not,” he says.

“If someone is engaged on a regular basis, for an extended period of time, and they carry out full-time and core work, then they must be considered an employee and should be entitled to be paid at least the national minimum wage.”

Back in Britain, the TUC has established a website to help young interns access their rights. It’s part of a broader ‘next generation’ campaign aimed at young people. It’s something we should be doing over here l

• Both the worker and the not-for-profit employer should have freedom to choose • Those taking up the scheme must be free to change to another non-profit organisation.

Meanwhile, the independent think tank TASC has said the proposed scheme is unnecessary and would simply stigmatise participants. The organisation published survey figures that show 77% of people would rather work than stay at home for the same pay.

“Implicit in proposals to make work schemes mandatory is the idea that the unemployed are somehow work-shy. This is reinforced by suggestions that the scheme would help stamp out welfare fraud,” according to its head of policy Sinead Pentony.

“A survey carried out by TASC earlier this year showed that over three-quarters of all respondents would rather work than stay at home for the same pay. Based on those figures, any work schemes are likely to find themselves over-subscribed. The problem is unemployment, not the unemployed,” she said l

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Excellence awards Twenty projects lauded over the summer puncture the stereotypes about our public services says NIALL SHANAHAN. FROM A Cavan playground for older people to an intermediate care service in Roscommon, the projects cited at the Taoiseach’s public service excellence awards reflect the very best in dedicated and professional commitment to delivering services.

Established in 2004, the awards showcase excellence in the public service. This year saw over 200 submissions from across the country, up from just 53 in 2004. Their range and effectiveness really cuts through the stereotypes and illustrates the public service at its best.

Selection committee chairman David Harvey talked of his renewed sense of respect for what’s going on in the public service. “The sector has its own problems in dealing with negative PR and has become a whipping boy for everyone else. But there are a lot of good things happening in the public service,” he said.

One winner, Sporting Fingal Football Club came about as a result of a conversation among Fingal council staff about the need to promote sport among their growing and

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diverse population. “As the fastest growing local authority in Europe, we didn’t just want to provide space for homes. We also wanted to build viable and vibrant communities,” says Fingal’s coordinator of community, culture and sport services John O’Brien, who is also the football club’s secretary While the soccer team has enjoyed huge success, winning the League of Ireland first division and the FAI Ford Cup in its short two-year lifespan, the associated Sporting Fingal Community Trust has been engaged in the important business of community building.

“The popularity of football is a great means of collaborating with a number of other agencies for the delivery of community development and social inclusion initiatives,” John explains.

The Trust is actively involved in more than 40 primary schools and has succeeded in engaging thousands of youngsters in sporting activities, including through local clubs.

It runs late night youth matches aimed at distracting young people from anti-social activities, as well as initiatives to counter racism and tackle alcohol and substance abuse. There are also family support initiatives and retraining for the unemployed.

As if that weren’t enough, Sporting Fingal also runs a third level scholarship scheme for players in collaboration with Dublin City University and Blanchardstown institute of technology. This helps players who want to develop a third level qualification while pursuing a professional football career.

“The promotion of education as part of a sporting career is a crucial element in the shaping of mature individuals and good citizenship,” says John.

Photo: Courtesy of Cavan County Council

Council staff are involved in the club, which is 26% councilowned, on a voluntary basis separate to their paid jobs. “The success of the football club will always be measured by the programmes it delivers in the locality and the extent to which it’s embedded in the community,” according to John.

Older people can enjoy the outdoor gym provided by Cavan county council.

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Adults at play IMPACT member Conor Craven works for Cavan county council, where a Chinese innovation has been successfully established in Cavan town. He explains the background to the outdoor playground for older people.

“In 2007, the council successfully completed 22 children’s playgrounds as part of its play and recreation strategy.

But the recreational needs of adults and older people had not been investigated. The Irish population is ageing which raises the challenge of providing suitable and affordable play opportunities,” he says.

In China, adults and older people have been using outdoor u

Photo: Courtesy of Sporting Fingal

of the class

Sporting Fingal; Success on and off the pitch.

gyms in public parks for some time and, closer to home, the Third Age Foundation had developed a similar pilot project in partnership with Meath county council.

the scheme helps avoid unnecessary hospital admissions and facilitates early discharges. There are currently two teams, in the west and south of the county.

One of the crucial features of the Cavan project is that the outdoor gym is situated beside an existing children’s playground, providing combined activity for children and their grandparents. Everybody can play no matter what their age.

Bringing care home

“The project is centrally located in a public park within two minutes of Cavan town, which is essential to the idea of social inclusion,” explains Con. He says the benefits of the project are far-reaching, “Outdoor gyms encourage physical exercise and social interaction. Above all it’s cost effective and sustainable.”

While all local authorities are keeping a close eye on budgets, there’s potential to develop the idea in other areas, and other councils have made enquiries.

Meanwhile, a project in Roscommon is transforming the lives of patients taking the crucial step of convalescing at home.

The intermediate care service is a short-term service provided in the patient’s own home by a multi-disciplinary team of a manager, nurse, physiotherapist, home help, occupational therapist and secretary.

Designed as a bridge between secondary and primary care,

Team manager Marie Gunning explains that it was piloted in Castlerea eight years ago, as part of an initiative to relieve the pressure on A&E services, before being expanded in 2006.

She credits director of public health nursing Dolores O’Neill with developing the initiative.

“Dolores identified the need for the service, as there were a lot of older people in the area. Many of them would be very apprehensive about returning home from hospital, where they would have nobody to look after them. Bear in mind that there is a whole generation whose children emigrated in the 1970s and 1980s.” Surveys show over 90% of clients are very satisfied with the service.

These three award winning projects provide a snapshot of the quality and depth of the public services celebrated in this year’s awards, each of them a unique example of excellence in serving and responding to community needs.

While the debate about public services, spending and value for money rages on, it’s fair to say that these initiatives, and the people working on them, might be showing the way l

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members 11

Croke Park deal

New man puts staff Proper staff involvement can make public service modernisation work for taxpayers and a punch-drunk public service. So says PJ FITZPATRICK, independent chair of the Croke Park implementation body, in an exclusive interview with Work & Life.

I READ the first of the inevitable criticisms that the Croke Park agreement “isn’t delivering” three days after I met the chair of the implementation body set up to drive the deal. With the budget looming, we can expect more of the same from the small but determined band of commentators who see the economic crisis as a vehicle for attacking public service pay and jobs. This despite the pay cuts and the loss of over 10,000 public service jobs since last year.

But PJ Fitzpatrick doesn’t strike you as someone who’ll be easily unnerved by ill-informed or agenda-driven commentators. He’s placing emphasis on the need for “quick wins” on modernisation to offset the pay protections in the deal, and robust verification to answer the critics.

“If the impact of pay reductions is going to be addressed, modernisation must deliver the savings. And the verification is going to be subject to more scrutiny than at any other time in the past, by Government, the media and those who are sceptical that the agreement can work. So it’s in everyone’s interest that the verification process is robust enough to stand up to such scrutiny,” he tells me.

“Staff know most about what’s working and what’s not working. If we’re not tapping into that, we’re not likely to respond to what the public are actually looking for.”

Implementation Fitzpatrick was appointed at the end of June and believes the implementation body, which also includes representatives of management and unions including IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody, “hit the ground running.”

As early as 12th July he set out his approach to modernisation in a letter to senior public service managers and trade union leaders. It contained a strong emphasis on staff involvement in the development of proposals and said the impact of proposed changes should be assessed and communicated before implementation.

This is because he thinks winning the hearts and minds of staff is the first and biggest challenge. “Staff have to know and understand what they’re being asked to do and the reasons behind it. If they have an opportunity to input themselves, and believe it’s the right thing to do, you have the environment that will produce change that’s sustainable over the long term,” he says.

He doesn’t believe unions are barriers to change either. “I’ve yet to meet a union official who’ll try to block a change initiative

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where the staff are happy with it. It just doesn’t happen.” The chairman is adamant that the pace of change cannot be set by the slowest mover and says some areas may require “a lot more driving than others.”

He also points to many examples of where the public service is already delivering better services with fewer staff, often through the adoption of new technologies. “You just have to look at revenue on line, motor tax on line or court small claims – all areas where public and business satisfaction is extremely high. Yet in tax it started when there were fewer than a million taxpayers. Now, coupled with self-assessment, Revenue is dealing with nearly two million with the same or fewer staff.” More for less indeed.

Fitzpatrick concedes that there’s a tension between the u

Gxxxxx

at centre of change courts service. Prior to that he spent 27 years in the public health service, where he worked in four health boards including a stint as head of human resources in the north east.

Interestingly, he sees middle management as key to the success of the deal. “Whatever unions or senior management do, it just won’t work if we don’t get middle managers energised and on board. For most staff, the relationship with their immediate manager is where enthusiasm is either harnessed or lost. “That’s why for me the challenge in the Croke Park agreement is getting the managers of individual units within departments and organisations to sit down and engage in genuine and meaningful discussion with staff,” he says.

“The deal itself is not negotiable.

Whatever happens must be within its parameters.

But if managers want quick solutions they are more likely to get them by talking to their staff than by imposing change.”

Photo: Conor Healy

He’s confident of achieving this on the basis of the feedback he’s getting from the many managers he’s met. “I don’t see how anybody could disagree with it because it’s what good managers do all the time; talk to their own staff and their representatives. Many managers in the public service are doing it today. But not all are doing it,” he says.

desire for quick wins and his insistence that staff should have the opportunity to influence the changes. “There is a trade off between participation and time. But it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this agreement runs for a number of years.

The deal itself is not negotiable. Whatever happens must be within its parameters. But if managers want quick solutions they are more likely to get them by talking to their staff than by imposing change. That’s likely to lead to protracted dispute procedures, which are not even guaranteed to give managers what they’re looking for,” he argues.

Middle managers The Cavan man spent the last ten years leading a major modernisation programme as the first chief executive of the

His emphasis on middle management doesn’t mean top brass or union leaders can ignore their responsibilities. “The leadership has to come from the top. That’s because the things leaders prioritise tend to be the things that get done.

We need a very strong signal from senior managers cascaded down through departments and organisations – especially large organisations – that this is what and how they want it to happen,” he warns.

Punch drunk The pace of change in most workplaces is likely to pick up from now, after the implementation body told departments and organisations to produce implementation action plans by the end of September. But Fitzpatrick believes that, done right, modernisation could lift morale in a punch-drunk public service.

“The public service has taken a lot of unfair and unwarranted criticism over the last couple of years. Coupled with pay reductions, that criticism has created a morale and motivation issue out there. This agreement provides an opportunity for the public service as a whole to demonstrate that it can transform itself, that it can modernise,” he says l Interview by Bernard Harbor.

xx Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members 13

Public service

Organising that helping hand

Photo: Michael Crean..

Co-ordinating hundreds of care attendants and clients is no walk in the park. MARTINA O’LEARY takes a look at the work of home care managers and the vital services they provide.

Rose and John Power benefit from the home care service.

PHYLLIS HENDRICK has worked in the home care service around north Dublin for over 26 years. She started as a home help and progressed to become a home care manager (HCM) with over 600 clients and 75 staff to manage. The service has seen a lot of changes since Phyllis started working in the service back in the 1980s.

Ten years ago, many of the tasks performed by the traditional home help, or care attendant as they are now known, would have been done by the public health nurse. Under the new ‘dual-care’ approach, care assistants’ jobs may include getting clients with little or no mobility out of bed in the morning, using a hoist, getting them showered and dressed, or changing colostomy bags or catheters.

The range of jobs and services provided by the care attendants is practically endless, as each client’s need is different. Some counties, like Dublin and north Wicklow, provide a palliative care service and 24-hour cover.

The HCM, or home help organiser as they were previously known, assesses the needs of each individual client and organises the vital services they need. The service is all about having an overall care package, with the emphasis on keeping people at home, according to Chris Reilly, home care manager with Fingal Home Care.

“The client’s needs are our priority. Each person has a right to choice and this should be respected. Quite often it is economically u

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members 15

Public service unsound to keep people in hospital. People thrive at home, surrounded by familiarity, their neighbours and family,” says Chris.

Angel Care attendant Val Dunne is visiting Rose and John Power three times a week while Rose recovers from an illness. “I get a great satisfaction from the job, seeing people like Rose coming on. It’s a pleasure to work with them,” she says. Rose and John describe Val as their angel.

Val, a SIPTU member, has seven clients to visit during the week. Traditionally SIPTU represents home care workers in most of the country, while IMPACT is the union for HCMs. Although HSE-funded, the home help service in Dublin and north Wicklow is run through voluntary committees and boards of management. In most other areas it’s both run and funded by the HSE. Chris describes her job as a one-man-band. “In Dublin and north Wicklow the HCM needs to be proficient in a range of skills. We deal with payroll, information technology, industrial relations issues, human resources, hiring, firing and discipline issues. The buck stops here,” she says.

In the rest of the country, HCM’s have the back up of the HSE infrastructure, with all of these services available to them.

The core function of the HCM is to co-ordinate the home care service staff with their many clients. This involves a huge range of jobs from getting clients to hospital or doctors visits, to getting prescriptions, and making sure there’s food and heat in the house.

At the moment the Chris co-ordinates over 1,600 clients and 400 home helps, in the Fingal area of Dublin. It’s the job of the HCM to ensure that their staff have the necessary training including basic first aid and patient handling and the correct use of a hoist.

Range “There’s a perception that the home care service deals largely with people over 65 years of age. But there’s a huge range of clients who need the service. It can be short-term, like a new mum who needs help looking after and bonding with the baby, or a new mum with breast cancer. We also help motor accident victims who need care and help while recovering.”

Home Care Ireland

There are 32 home care managers in the Dublin and north Wicklow region, which includes some very isolated areas.

Home Care Ireland is a network where home care managers can discuss issues of mutual interest, such as insurance cover, computer-software, time management, dealing with the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) and maintaining service standards. For more information on Home care Ireland contact Frank Cardiff on 086-606-7577 or Chris Reilly on 087-293-9535.

16 WINTER 2010

Home care supervisor Marion Glen with IMPACT member and home care manag

It’s up to the HCM to match the home help worker with the client. “If you have a young lad coming out of Saint Michael’s rehabilitation centre after a serious car accident, you need someone they can relate to. Someone young, where they may have common interests. Communications and the relationship between the care attendant and the client is vital,” says Chris.

“Most of our clients are wonderful people and so appreciative of what the home care service does for them.

But others can be quite difficult to deal with.”

“We try to keep clients with the same home help as the social contact is important to the client. The HSE forget the social aspect of the job. A lot of clients just need you to listen to them,” she says.

The job is very demanding. “For instance, when we give palliative care to a child, we are not just dealing with a sick child but with the whole family. There could be other children in the house who need looking after, feeding, help with homework or just someone to talk to,” says Chris.

Each manager enters an annual service agreement with the HSE, which sets out the number of clients, the hours of service provided and the level of skills available. It is up to the HCM to negotiate, implement and monitor this service agreement, which according to Chris is normally a huge tome of a document. u

The service is also coming under increasing strain during the recession, according to Frank. “Demand is increasing as there is an increase in the elderly population. This needs to be recognised. They are cutting back resources but saying hours shouldn’t be cut.”

Attempts to privatise the service are also a huge concern to the caring staff who work there. There are now many private companies offering home care services and, for some, the main motivation is profit rather than clients’ wellbeing.

Photo: Michael Crean..

Photo: Michael Crean..

The private sector is unregulated. There may be no Garda clearance and there are concerns that many private agencies don’t give their staff adequate training. “It seems that anyone can establish one of these home care services. They are thriving while those in the public and voluntary sector are struggling with cutbacks and the recruitment embargo,” says Chris.

ger Phyllis Hendrick.

Working her way through the service has been invaluable to Phyllis. “You know exactly what your staff are dealing with. Most of our clients are wonderful people and are so appreciative of what the home care service does for them. But others can be quite difficult to deal with. You could have people who have families that never visit, or even that live with them but don’t care for them at all. Some homes could be filthy,” she says.

The home care worker is never quite sure what the day will bring. According to Chris, HCMs and home helps have to deal with major social issues from drug abuse to violence. They can also deal with calls from home helps saying “She’s locked me in the bathroom, or the relations are getting a bit out of hand here.”

“I have one mum of four children, three of whom are wheelchair bound, and their life span is restricted. Here it is just giving the mum a hand as this is obviously a very difficult situation,” says Chris.

Complex Frank Cardiff, home care manager for the Wicklow region, manages 120 staff and 500 clients. “We liaise with local authorities on a number of issues, from housing clients to dealing with someone in rent arrears or sorting problems such as blocked drains or sewage issues,” he says.

The job of the home care manager is a complex one, with a huge amount of judgement, tact and diplomacy involved. “We could have carers finding their client has died, either naturally or by suicide. Or there could be abuse in the home. Abuse takes many forms,” says Frank.

It is clear after speaking with several home care staff that it is a particularly difficult, yet rewarding job. All of them talked about the satisfaction of knowing they are making a difference to people in their own communities.

“It is nice at the end of the day, when you’re putting the key in the door, to know you have done a good day’s work. Having the satisfaction of helping people to stay in their homes with dignity,” says Phyllis.

Chris says the home care service is there when all else fails.

“We have come across some lovely stories. But, sadly, we have also come across some horror stories. It’s our job to close that gap,” says Chris l A special thank you and best wishes goes to Rose and John Power for allowing us into their home.

MORTGAGE or DEBT PROBLEMS Under pressure or feeling stressed? Let us help you sleep at night.

Talk to us in CONFIDENCE Contact Declan 086 832 0478 for Leinster & north Dublin Contact Danny 087 630 0271 for Connaught & south Dublin Contact John 087 931 3753 for Munster & west Dublin

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members 17

Your say

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A lost generation?

AS THE recession continues its hold over Ireland, youth unemployment and rising emigration prevail. A generation that once had every opportunity of a good education and abundant job prospects have had their hopes and ambitions stamped on by a seemingly apathetic government. They have become the lost generation.

They could have flourished into the most promising generation since the foundation of the state. They grew up in the ‘Celtic boom’ era and had aspirations and a drive to contribute and succeed.

Today however, it does not matter how many degrees they have, or what previous work experience they accumulated, the prospects are no longer there.

The ESRI has predicted that up to 200,000 people will migrate before 2015. This brain drain will only be to the detriment of our country.

The government has failed these young people. It has devised no strategy to tackle this social crisis. In return, young people have lost faith in politics. Most of them see it as tarnished and corrupt; too busy bailing out banks to care about people and jobs.

Ernst and Young’s 2010 summer forecast predicted that unemployment would remain at 10% for the next five years. It described how the recession has been disproportionately severe on the young with 23% of the increase in unemployment in 2008 and 2009 experienced by people under 25. Surely this deserves a response by our government.

The youth committee of IMPACT will work in solidarity with other youth organisations and Congress to try and build a positive coalition to advocate for measures to address youth unemployment. It is time for an effective plan that

includes affordable training and education and genuine employment stimulus. If the unemployment crisis is not tackled now, it will manifest itself into a range of social problems, which could last well beyond a generation.

Joe May (chair), Ciara Browne, Brian Furey, Ciara Mahony, Mark Mulhall, Amanda O’Hara. IMPACT Youth Committee

Dublin airport to avoid the M50 toll bridge. Workers and taxpayers have paid for it multiples of times over and they should own it.

When I do finally get to the airport, I rant and rave to my unfortunate companions about my hatred for ‘that’ airline and its execrable boss. Irish Ferries are out for obvious work practice reasons. Now I’m wet and cold and am restricted in leaving the country.

Bought two bananas and went to the IMPACT office for a warm welcome and a hot cup. I hope the coffee was Fairtrade!

Coffee and conscience

Jerry King Mayo branch

Dear Editor, EN ROUTE to an IMPACT meeting in Galway last February I attempted, without much success, to get something to eat at 9.30am. Having being up since 6.00am I cer tainly had an appetite. But where to go?

A certain fast food outlet was out due to its antipathy towards trade union membership. So was another national food franchise as their founder had been on the radio preaching on the evil of the minimum wage.

write, hone... r e v e You n ou never p letter y st rest. he be

for t r the s €50 nd €30 fo the y a p a ut & Life issue think abo Work ed each u o y e h t v s publi know wha ssues we’ i t, s Let u ine or the think of i ything z n o a t a g e n ma om so er ed. C your view and pap r e v o c n t w e o p p n k ur ee i let us Get out yo orget to k f ! at all And don’t y. , a d A cup of coffee and the o t hor t. & Life and s Work in 1. e , n paper was out of the quesnic a l l o b t, Du isin N tion as I’m boycotting all to Ro ey’s Cour t.ie. e t i r n c W er daily papers due to their antiimpa CT N d IMPA il rnolan@ signe worker and anti-societal blish ema y u r a p O m y l e stance. So no ‘viewspaper’ We on Work & Lif size. r s. either. Passed hotels, which ter fo letter ur let o y were not on my list of fair t i ed hotels. Kept going. Still raining.

I thought of other things I’m boycotting. I travel extra miles to

PS

Work & Life Work & Life is the magazine for members of IMPACT trade union. It is posted on our website and IMPACT members can have it mailed to them by contacting Work & Life at IMPACT, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1 or by emailing rnolan@impact.ie. Or call Roisin Nolan on 01-817-1544.

IMPACT also produces a monthly e-bulletin with more detailed information about the union’s activities and campaigns, and developments in your workplace. Sign up via the website on www.impact.ie.

IMPACT is Ireland’s largest public sector union with members in health, local government, the civil service, education, the community sector, semi-state organisations, aviation and telecommunications.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 19

Your career

Can’t face another day at the office?

What do you do when your work no longer motivates you? ISOBEL BUTLER has some suggestions.

MANY OF us, at some time in our lives, will find ourselves doing a job that doesn’t motivate us.

What was once challenging and exciting has become mundane over time and with experience. Being in a workplace where general morale is poor or there is an atmosphere of negativity can also be draining and demotivating, as can poor workplace communication or lack of consultation.

But the need to earn an income, coupled with a lack of alternative jobs or promotional opportunities, can compound a demotivating situation leaving a person feeling trapped.

What can you do faced with this type of situation? How can you make going to work more motivating? If changing jobs is not a possibility then you need to learn to self-motivate and the secret to this involves taking control over how you think about and approach your work.

The first step in motivating yourself is to really know what you want out of your day at work. Think back to why you started in the job. What was it that first attracted you to this work or this workplace?

Priorities Can you remember how you felt in your first week? List the things that you like about the job and then focus on them and make them the main reason why you go into work in the morning. If you can focus on the positives in your job it will motivate you and minimize the impact of the negatives.

For instance, if dealing with members of the public and helping them is what attracted you to the job, then that is what you need to focus on. Concentrate on interacting with the public and providing them with the best service you are able to give.

Images: www.dreamstime.com

Have you got the balance right between work and other priorities in your life? Research has shown that achieving good work-life balance is so ➤

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important not just for individuals but also for organisations.

Those who achieve it are likely to be more motivated, satisfied and productive in their workplace.

Getting it wrong can be stressful for the individual and contribute to productivity losses and higher absenteeism. A vicious circle can arise with high absenteeism impacting negatively on colleagues and adding to poor morale and further demotivation.

There is no one size fits all solution and what suits you will vary over time – perhaps even on a daily basis.

Work patterns or practices that allow you to balance priorities when you’re young and single may not work when you have small children.

Reflect You may be able to work long hours with no negative side effects for a short period of time, for instance to reach a deadline. But long hours over an extended time period with no space for recovery can be a powerful source of negative stress, demotivation and may cause illness.

You may have enough time for the job and the family but are you neglecting yourself? Review and reflect on your priorities regularly and make choices that help you keep balance in your life.

Leisure activities offer a chance to recharge your batteries and can also be an alternative source of motivation. Many people are very happy to see work as their source of income and their leisure activity as the source of excitement or satisfaction in their life.

It’s also important to manage your day effectively. It’s as hard to be motivated if you have nothing to do and the time drags as it is to cope with a hectic day full of deadlines that you can’t achieve.

Time is a resource and needs to be treated as such. Plan your day, identify tasks and priorities, set yourself some targets and goals, and reward yourself when you achieve them. Self recognition is a good motivator.

Finally become aware of what demotivates you, what drags you down. Think about this and jot down what demotivates you. Is there anything on that list that you can change? Plan to change at least one of the things in your life that demotivates.

Typical demotivators include having a general low energy level. It’s hard to be motivated or get excited about something if you feel drained or have no energy. Causes of low energy levels include lack of sleep, poor diet, lack of exercise and of course illness.

Get medical advice if you feel that your tiredness is caused by illness. Daily exercise energizes, act’s as a stress-buster and help’s focus the mind. Try walking or cycling instead of driving. Take a brisk walk at lunchtime.

Negative stress reactions happen when there is an imbalance between our coping resources and the demands being placed upon us, and when pressures exceed our perceived ability to cope. Stress can sometimes motivate in the short term. But exposure to

prolonged stress demotivates. Examine the stressors in your life and identify which you can change or avoid.

Look at how you cope with stress. Do you need to develop more stress management skills?

Negative or rude people can also be a big demotivator. One way of dealing with this is to limit your exposure to people or behavior that demotivates you. Daily coffee break conversations that drain you with their negativity should either be avoided or changed by inviting more positive colleagues to join you.

Is your physical environment problematic? A cluttered, disorganised, untidy workplace can frustrate, demotivate, waste time and cause inefficiency. Bring some order to your own desk or work space ensuring that everything has a place and is kept in that place. If the disorder extends to a wider area then bring the issue up with your line manager and other team members making constructive and realistic suggestions on how you could improve the work area.

You might find yourself in a job that doesn’t motivate, or in a workplace with poor morale. But, with a proactive and positive attitude, it’s still possible to take some level of control over your environment and make your time more fulfilling and less dissatisfying ●

Isobel Butler is an independent organisational psychologist who works with people on a wide range of workplace issues including conflict management, dealing with change and solving problems. If there are specific issues you’d like her to tackle in these articles send them in via the editor, Work & Life magazine, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1 or info@impact.ie.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 23

Looking good

Great looks and local jobs You’re not exactly flush, but you fancy fashion creations that create Irish jobs. Time to tune in to some affordable Irish designers says TRISH O’MAHONY. LOOKING FOR something a tad different this season? Working on a limited budget? Like the idea of supporting local Irish industry? Don’t want to compromise on style or quality? It’s time to check out some local designers in your quest.

At long last, two emerging Irish designers called Charlotte and Jane have started to create a bit of a splash in the fashion press. When I had a couple of special occasions to prepare for recently I very quickly settled on a Charlotte and Jane designed dress in my search for something suitably special to wear.

The beauty of the product was that, to all intents and purposes, I got a customised dress without an exorbitant price tag to match.

Based in Kinsale, county Cork, Charlotte and Jane are doing something a little different with fashion. Their formula seems to be working well though, because they are in the process of increasing the number of home-based seamstresses they employ from eight to 20.

That’s very unusual in the current fashion industry climate where layoffs are the order of the day.

es, s o p r u p d an s t n e ut t o n h i t i l l w a s o s T e “ dr d e s i m h.” o c t t s a u c m o a t t g o Ig e ta c i r p t n a t an exorbi

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They are using entirely natural Irish fabrics like tweed, wool, cotton and linen. Some of the linens are sourced in the north, with tweeds and wools from Tipperary, Kerry and Kilkenny. Some of them are limited edition, so your dress could become a collector’s item sometime in the future.

Ladylike chic A key trend for autumn- Charlotte and Jane winter 2010 is ladylike chic, a completely appropriate description for Charlotte and Jane.

Their designs are timeless, elegant, feminine and ethical.

Charlotte and Jane

You won’t have to compromise on cutting-edge fashion though. Each design has a vintage inspired fifties twist. Think Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. The use of boning achieves a lovely hourglass shape while lace trims enhance ➤

Charlotte and Jane

and luxuriate. All dresses are fully lined, with intricate detailing.

On a practical note, mine was hand-washable, with a perfect result. And while the styles lend themselves to occasion wear, you can make them more versatile by wearing with opaque tights and flat ballet pumps. Add a cardigan and you can achieve a successful daytime ensemble.

Maynooth, Granny’s Bottom Drawer in Kinsale, and Sarah King in Wexford. The website is excellent and attractive and gives details on prices, fabrics, styles and stockists. Check out www.charlotte andjane.com.

Hats off!

Couture service What’s different about their service, you may ask? Well, stockists carry a number of ‘sample’ dresses which, if you’re lucky enough to be the perfect fit, you can buy there and then. Off the shelf, so to speak.

Dessislava

But for the couture option you can vary the length, material, sleeve length, and straps to suit your preference. Dress sizes are from six to 16.

You can also order through their website or visit their studio in Kinsale for individual advice on styles and fit. Allow about three weeks for the couture service. They even carry a range of vintage bags, hats, kimonos and bolero jackets to complete your ensemble.

Stockists around the country include Divine Boutique of Malahide and

If you’re looking for something unique, don’t forget the Loft Market, Powerscourt Townhouse in Dublin. Dessislava has a great collection of bespoke head pieces, which is being showcased alongside the likes of top designers Philip Tracey and John Rocha in the Design Centre.

Originally from Bulgaria, Dessislava has been living in Ireland for the last 10 years. The good news is Dessislava that you might afford to buy one of Dessislava’s pieces – Rocha and Tracey you can only dream about! Emporium Kalu in Naas is also a stockist.

Naas has a great selection of boutiques if you’re looking for something a bit different. Local designer Joanna Cribbin is stocked exclusively in the Couture Boutique, Johns Lane.

Up until now Joanna has been based in London and you will see the influence in her collection. Described by herself as “classic modern” her collection is aimed at women of all ages.

The collection comprises dresses, coats and jackets with prices ranging from €180 for a dress.

It’s great to see a few success stories in an industry that isn’t enjoying too much success at the moment ● WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 25

Be good to yourself Gxxxxx

Breathe easy

Now that the dark damp nights of winter are descending, we asked holistic therapist KAREN WARD to advise on how to avoid that annual cough or cold.

Developed by a Russian doctor, Buteyko breathing is a natural way to retrain yourself to breathe properly. There are classes available in Ireland which, over a six or eight week period, show you how to use your body’s breathing apparatus in the healthiest way possible. It’s about unlearning the bad habits that may have contributed to the condition in the first place.

If you are or think you have any of these habits then check out www.ButeykoClinic.com for more details and advice on what to do about it.

IF YOU seem to come down with more than your fair share of colds, flu and bronchial problems then read on. If you have asthma or related conditions, many of these simple tips will help you breathe easier at this time of year.

Photo: Dreamstime.com

Our lungs are one of the main elimination organs of the body.

We breathe in air and extract oxygen, which the body uses to break down our food to produce energy and power us through life.

Central heating Homes and offices with central heating on full blast in the colder months, with no circulation of fresh air, can zap entire families or workforces with viruses trapped in the stale air.

The constant hot temperature breeds the virus and impairs your immune system.

When colds, sinusitis or asthma impair this natural function, it’s no wonder we’re dragging ourselves around. Let’s start with a simple check list for good respiratory health.

But don’t despair. Just make sure you get regular breaks near a window, or a brisk walk outside. If you can, turn down the temperature and don the auld thermal vest. This way your body can adjust naturally to the change in the season’s temperature and your immune system can react accordingly.

Use your nose

Diet and exercise

If you breathe in and out through your nose, you are using the body’s natural filtration system – the nasal hairs – to catch airborne bacteria and viruses.

Our bodies need food that’s capable of keeping our energy levels up to maintain a healthy immune system and nourish our respiratory organs. And exercise is vital to keep our body systems functioning optimally. You can’t survive on junk food and no exercise.u

If not, it’s possible that you’re asthmatic. Mouth breathing and over breathing are classic symptoms of those who may develop this condition.

Excessive sighing, panicky breathing, not using your nose but taking air in and or out through your mouth, and waking up with a dry mouth are all factors that contribute to unhealthy breathing conditions.

10 26 WINTER WINTER 2010 2010

Holistic therapist Karen Ward, from RTE’s Health Squad and BBC’s The Last Resort is the author of the bestselling book Change a Little to Change a Lot, now in all good book shops. www.karenwardholistictherapist.com.

Gxxxxx But it’s never too late to start a healthier regime. A walk around the block at lunchtime, a simple breakfast of juice and fruit, a wholemeal sandwich at lunch and the traditional meat, two vegetable and potato dinner will have you feeling strong quickly.

Dust up Does your home or office have dust balls lurking under furniture and old files or books? Airborne dust irritates the sensitive lining of the nose and throat causing coughing, sneezing and streaming eyes. These impaired respiratory organs are more prone to any bacteria or viruses on the move.

So a big clean-up may be called for. Get the whole office or family involved in dusting and vacuuming the problem away.

While you’re doing this, consider wearing a mouth and nose mask similar to the kind that workmen wear. You can buy them cheaply in any hardware shop l

Immune boosters KAREN WARD has some suggestions on how to keep your immune system working well.

KEEPING YOURSELF in an optimum healthy condition will help you avoid any bug doing the rounds. A good tonic or multivitamin in the winter months will boost from within. But make sure you remember to take it. I find placing it near the teabags helps!

The reason that some of us pick up every cold, while work colleagues or partners breeze through, is because their bodies are fending off or fighting the bug more effectively. If your system is not in good health the invisible little critters will pass through your body’s lines of defence and snuggle down to invade the warm, cosy interiors. Not a very pleasant thought.

Most of us will get at least one simple dose of a cold over the winter months. It’s nothing to worry about. But the viruses change each year and our body needs to acclimatise to the new varieties. So for a few days we feel a bit under the weather as our immune system reads and produces the required antibodies to fight the invasion. Rest as much as possible, drink lots of fluids and juices, and in a few days all will be well.

Personally I avoid the myriad of over the counter medications for colds and flus. I ride it out with my own homemade drinks of hot water with lemon and honey. A few early nights and lots of warm comforting soups and stews really work for me.

Our bodies are very clever. When we are rushing around not attending to our work-life balance it finds ways to slow us down and make us take a break. One of the simplest ways of doing that is to catch a cold.

So why not avoid the pain of illness and busyness and go for a sensible bit of relaxation in the evenings?

Delegate wherever possible with work colleagues and those at home, including children.

Don’t feel that you have to do everything yourself. It’s possible to be Superman or Superwoman some of the time. But not all of the time l

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members 27

Travel and trips The latest fine exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland reveals the fascinating hidden world of Dutch genre painting says BERNARD HARBOR.

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) A Woman Reading a Letter, c.1664-6

DUBLIN’S PUBLIC galleries offer a great way to spend a cheap hour or three in the company of some of the artistic greats.

If you’re one of those people who need a little something to galvanise you into visiting these cultural treasures, there’s seldom been a better time to get down to the National Gallery of Ireland.

The current exhibition of 40 works by the undersung seventeenth century Dutch master Gabriel Metsu is a real delight – and a chance to discover more about this fascinating period of seventeenth century painting.

Painters of a certain age inevitably find themselves at the mercy of changing tastes and trends. Unbelievably, the celebrated Caravaggio (see his The Taking of Christ while you’re here) was out of fashion for a couple of centuries until relatively recently.

Intimate Like Vermeer, Metsu began his career as a history painter and the exhibition contains a couple of his early biblical paintings from his time in Leiden where he started painting, possibly at the tender age of 14.

In the 1650s he moved to Amsterdam where, along with contemporaries like Vermeer, Gerrit Dou, Pieter de Hooch, and Gerard ter Borch, he took up socalled ‘genre’ painting, which took intimate scenes of daily life as its subject matter.

Some of the genre paintings in this collection are undoubtedly Vermeer- ➤ 28

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Photo © National Gallery of Ireland

Born in 1629, Metsu has suffered a similar fate. Up to the early nineteenth century he sold better than his now more famous contemporary Vermeer, one of whose few surviving works, A Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid, is in the National’s permanent collection.

Exhibition curator Adriaan Waiboar says that, like other artists, Metsu’s work became undervalued as he fell victim to the “increasing glorification” of Vermeer.

esque. Two of them, considered to be among Metsu’s best, are the companion pieces A Man Writing a Letter and A Woman Reading a Letter. Both come from the gallery’s permanent collection, but set against the richness of this exhibition they really come to life.

You can look for sexual innuendo wherever you see poultry or game in these paintings.

The paintings of street scenes depicting market vendors are among the strongest here, perhaps unsurprisingly as Metsu lived just off the main vegetable market on Amsterdam’s Prinsengracht.

a well-understood sexual pun of the time and the dog, a symbol of faithfulness, is clearly alert to the sexual threat.

The Vegetable Market in Amsterdam brims with life. Like the other market scenes, its exquisite mini still lives of the good-enough-to-eat cabbages and cauliflowers can be read as an expression of pride in both the neighbourhood and contemporary innovations in Dutch horticulture.

Or is it simply an exquisitely painted depiction of a shopping expedition?

The catalogue certainly comes down on the side of decency, arguing that the refined painting, with its “elegantly dressed decorous figures” transcend “base associations” and instead depicts the social order of the Dutch neighbourhood.

Character

Erotic But is there more to it that that? The erotic undertones in A Old Man Selling Poultry and Game are discussed in the excellent, though pricey, catalogue that accompanies the exhibition.

There’s a hidden message in this scene, in which an old man tempts a young virgin (the caged songbird is the clue) with his plump chicken, while the withered bird beside him suggests that she might not get all she’s being promised. The hare in the picture represents

The Dutch verb vogelen, literally ‘to bird’ was among the most common seventeenth century slang for copulation. So you can look for sexual innu-

endo wherever you see poultry or game in these paintings.

The meaning of many may remain a matter of debate, not least because Mestu left us scant hard evidence of his ideas or life story. But there’s no debating the quality of the work. Above all, Metsu’s characters – predominantly ordinary people going about their daily lives – are full of life and convincing character.

That’s certainly true of my favourite, the magnificent Baker Blowing His Horn which, like many here, is from a private collection and unlikely to be on display again anytime soon – certainly in Ireland. Well worth €7 of your cash and a couple of hours of your time. Don’t miss it.

Gabriel Metsu: Rediscovered master of the Dutch golden age is on at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin until 5th December 2010. It costs €7 or €4 concessions. Family and group concessions are available. Contact 01-663-3513 or metsu@ngi.ie. Visit www.gabrielmetsuexhibition.com ●

Six to see

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667) A Baker Blowing his Horn, c.1660-3

The national gallery’s permanent collection is free. Spend an absorbing afternoon or pop in for a cultural boost when you’ve a few spare minutes. BERNARD HARBOR lists half a dozen of his favourites.

The Turner watercolours: This great collection from the nineteenth century master of light and colour is only on display in January. Don’t miss it.

Caravaggio’s world-class The Taking of Christ is the most powerful single painting here.

Perugino’s The Lamentation over the Dead Christ was one of Beckett’s favourites. There’s another Italian renaissance treat in Fra Angelico’s Saints Cosmas and Damian.

Picasso and other famous names – including a very early Van Gogh – are among the excellent later European works. But I’m always drawn back to Keer van Dongen’s 1907 Stella in a Flowered Hat.

Photo © Mike Fear

Drunken and decidedly mucky in parts, there’s plenty to ponder in Pieter Brueghel’s Peasant Wedding.

The Jack B Yeats collection stands out among the Irish artists, of which there are plenty. From earlier favourites like The Liffey Swim and Before the Start to the powerful and generally less figurative later works.

Look out for the kids programme too.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 29

From the kitchen Margaret’s top ten tips

1

Learn to cook.

Seriously, it’s the only way to control what you eat, especially soups, bread, casseroles and pasta sauces.

2

Ditch the plasticwrapped sandwiches, and buy a lunchbox and a flask. Bring something to work everyday.

3

Make lots of soup, for eating and freezing and filling you up.

4

Buy a hand blender, for turning chunks of vegetables in soup velvety smooth, and whipping tins of tomatoes into pasta sauce.

5 6

Check your portion size, and consider investing in smaller dinner plates.

Only buy what’s in season and grown locally.

7

Look out for promotions and special offers. But remember, it’s only a bargain if you’ll actually use it.

8

Never have more than two packets of breakfast cereal open at a time. Turn neglected cereals into Rice Krispie/Cheerios/Cornflakes buns by adding melted chocolate.

9 10 30

Buy spices and pulses at more reasonable prices from health food shops.

Save margarine and other containers for use in the freezer.

WINTER 2010

Bringing it all back home MARGARET HANNIGAN gives lots of advice and tips on sourcing your food locally and saves a few bob with some sensible shopping.

THIS YEAR I’ve found myself keeping a keener than usual eye on the blackberry hedges and apple trees, imagining gleaming jars of jam and hot crumbly tarts.

Some instinct has spurred me to make jams, relishes, chutneys and cordials in preparation for the winter. Whether this is driven by fear of the weather or fear of the Budget, I really don’t know. But the squirrels and I are gathering and hoarding as much as we can.

In the olden days before supermarkets and convenience foods, preserving was an established ritual in many houses, and was viewed as an important contribution to the household budget. With a further reduction in income virtually guaranteed by Lord Voldermort (sorry, I mean Brian Lenihan) most of us are looking

for ways to spend less and spend smarter. With food taking up most of the weekly budget, that means looking at how we eat.

Let’s start with the fridge. Recent research has established that we throw out around 30% of our weekly groceries, mainly out of date yogurts, and spoilt fruit and vegetables. Sound familiar?

Then next week buy less yogurts and only enough vegetables for two to three days, that’s their shelf-life. Avoid big bags of salad leaves, and buy some longer-lasting Little Gem lettuces, or Chinese Leaves instead.

Throw out half-used sauces and the pickled onions left over from last Christmas – it’s time to give them a decent burial. Now you can find the mustard. ➤

Look at your cooking routines, and make sure you stock up on store cupboard essentials so you will always have the makings of a meal, and one less excuse to troll the aisles, and spend money you don’t have on things you don’t need.

Images: www.dreamstime.com

Examine your shopping habits. How much of it is aspirational (of course I’ll eat all those yogurts) and how much of it is habit? What do you actually eat?

son, and weighing up the cost against the expected use.

Granny didn’t have strawberries in October; she made apple tarts instead.

Use your freezer if you have one. Fill it with staples like bread, cheese, meat, fish, and any extra portions of soups of other meals.

Plan ahead as much as you can. Think about how you’re going to use each item, and how long it will last.

Step back and take a deep breath. You don’t have to fill the trolley every time.

While I know it’s early, Christmas deserves a special mention. It is the Mount Everest of shopping and cooking, and should be prepared for almost as thoroughly.

Shop with the local butcher, baker, and fruit and veg man, they will give you better service than a large supermarket.

And you’re helping your local community to thrive.

Make lists, be realistic, be ruthless. If half the mince pie tray, pudding or cake is binned every year, make a smaller one, or none at all. Have recipes for leftover turkey etc. lined up, and the ingredients in the house.

Look for your nearest farmer’s market.

We’ve got to learn how to shop like our grannies did, looking at what's in sea-

Give homemade jams (see, there was a point to it), chutney, biscuits, sweets, whatever as gifts, and encourage your friends to do the same ●

Make fizzy drinks for kids using fruit juice mixed with sparkling water, and avoid the sugar rush tantrums.

A little indulgence La Gioiosa Et Amorosa, Pinot Grigio The name derives from a 14th century poet’s description of the region near Treviso where the wine is produced, and describes the area’s “joyful lifestyle and love of good wine.” But which came first I hear you ask? Smells of peaches and sunshine, tastes of fresh fruit and long lazy lunches. Tesco, €7.99

Toro Loco Rosé A Spanish Rosé, from the Uriel-Requena region, with a glorious deep pink colour, tasting of raspberry and cherry with hints of lemon. Just perfect for anytime at all. Aldi, €5.49

Famiglia Terraccia Chianti Reserva 2007 A Tuscan red, ruby in colour, smelling of cherries and spice. Full, berry flavours, and a tangy finish. For red meats and fireside debates. Tesco, €6.99

French onion soup THIS RECIPE from Normandy is a variation on the classic French onion soup. It ticks all the boxes; good for an everyday lunch or a special occasion, cheap to make, and freezes well. Omit the bread and cheese for a lighter broth.

INGREDIENTS: (Serves 8) ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

115g/4oz butter 1.5kg/3lbs 5oz onions very finely sliced 1 tbsp sugar (optional) 250ml/5fl oz cider 1.2l/2 pints chicken stock Leaves from 3 sprigs thyme 8 rounds toasted French stick Camembert/Brie cheese 15g/half oz melted butter

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and cook the onions gently over a low heat, stirring ocassionally until soft. Add a splash of water, cover, and leave to sweat until they are very soft and starting to carmelise – up to 50 mins, adding more water and stirring occasionally.

Remove lid, and increase to a medium heat until the juices are absorbed, and the onions are starting to look brown and sticky (not burnt!) add the sugar at this point if it’s not carmelising well.

When the onions are dark, add the cider, stock and thyme and simmer for 10 minutes.

Put the soup in heatproof bowls, and put a round or two of toast on each. Put some cheese on each round, brush with the melted butter and heat under the grill until melted and bubbling.

Serve immediately.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 31

Green fingers

Fail to prepare, JIMI BLAKE says would-be vegetable gardeners have lots to do to ensure a plentiful harvest next year.

WHEN I remove the old vegetable plants from the beds I add a layer of manure and then cover up the beds with black plastic until spring. This produces the most beautiful planting bed without having to dig in the spring. Gone are the days when I leave the soil open to the winter elements, causing the nutrients to get washed away. And, of course, it keeps the weeds from growing.

This is your last chance to plant garlic in the late autumn.

Plant the cloves 20cm apart. If your soil is wet and heavy like mine leave it till the spring. Only buy bulbs from a reputable source, not from the local supermarket. I get my in Johnstown garden centre on the Naas Road.

Mark where root crops like parsnips and carrots are left in the ground over the winter, as the foliage will die down. Cover the row with straw to protect them from frost.

● 1 year: Onion, parsley, parsnip, salsify, some lettuce ● 2 years: Sweet corn, pepper, okra, leek ● 3 years: Asparagus, bean, broccoli, carrot, celery, kohlrabi, spinach, pea, lettuce ● 4 years: Beet, brussel sprout, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, aubergines, fennel, kale, mustard, pumpkin, squash, tomato, turnip, ● 5 years: Cucumber, endive, melon, radish ● Order seeds if you have not done so already. My favourite seed suppliers last season were: - www.brownenvelopeseeds.com - www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk - www.cnseeds.co.uk ➤

Broad beans can be sown in sheltered gardens for an early harvest in June next year. Choose a variety such as Aquadulce Claudia for the best results from autumn sowing.

This year I added the flowers from the broad bean plants to my salads and it looked delightful.

Photo: www.dreamstime.com

I have enough vegetable seeds left over from last year to supply Wicklow with vegetables! I keep them in a sealed container in a cool room out of direct sunlight.

You can get caught out sowing dead seeds, as I did this year with my lettuce. Follow my list of how long seeds stay viable.

Flowering favou

32

WINTER 2010

prepare to fail Kale Kale is one of the most wonderful winter vegetables. It’s so easy to grow, looks fabulous, tastes delicious and is so good for you as it’s full of vitamin A, C and E. Rich in iron and packed with minerals. I grow mine in the flower borders where it looks well all summer and even better through the winter as other plants go dormant. You will only need to grow two plants to have a good supply for eating. I sow single seeds in modular trays in April-May and plant it out in July. Make sure you plant them out before they get pot bound, as they don’t recover well.

They can be cropped from late autumn for many months by cutting individual leaves from the bottom of the plant

first and always leaving at least eight leaves on the plant. Cut out the flowering shoots as this will keep them productive for longer.

Best varieties Ragged Jack and Red Russian have reddish leaves and look stunning in the garden through the winter, Nero Di Toscano or Black Tuscany has dark green palm like kale. This is the variety I have growing through my flower borders this year and it looks amazing with the grasses and late perennials.

Redbor Fi is the one of the most attractive with curly purple leaves. I planted these with leeks one year, which looked gorgeous ●

Guerrilla gardening GUERRILLA GARDENERS are just your average, unplanned plant lovers who seek to improve the area they live in.

Images: www.dreamstime.com

Groups of organized guerrillas often form in online groups and meet under the cover of night to complete a whole transformation in just a matter of hours.

It’s a wonderful way to meet like-minded people in the community and get your hands into the soil. Many people work alone improving areas near where they live. Sometimes they ask permission; sometimes they just get on with the planting.

I imagine all these half-finished housing estates and apartment blocks will have plenty of available space and areas that will be crying out for planting. Writing this has me thinking of some shocking looking roundabouts that I would dearly like to get my hands on!!

urites

One of the pioneers of the guerrilla gardening movement is English-

man Richard Reynolds who started planting flowers secretly at night when he moved into a south London tower block without a garden. He set up a blog about his activities, Guerrillagardening.org and it soon attracted attention from fellow thinkers around the world.

Reynolds now regularly digs with others and has also written a book, On Guerrilla Gardening, about his experiences. You can follow guerrilla gardening in Ireland on some of the social web sites such as face-book, meetup.com and www.guerilla gardening.org

How a mission is planned ❃ Guerrilla gardeners first identify a patch of

abandoned or orphaned land, usually

near where they live.

❃ They plan a mission, usually in the evening. They might announce it on their blog and invite others in the area to join in the dig.

❃ They buy or grow some (usually hardy) plants for the plot. ❃ They arrive at the site, clean it up, remove litter and debris, and create a garden. ❃ Seed bombs (seed mixed with soil) can be used for areas that are difficult to access.

❃ Many guerrilla gardeners upload before-and-after photographs to community websites such as Guerrillagardening.org.

❃ Gardeners check their gardens regularly, removing litter and watering plants

SELINUM WALLICHIANUM is my favourite and most reliable seed head. Its’ season is long, starting in April with its beautiful divided foliage which looks like a fern, then umbels of white flowers follow lasting into September. It then displays the most stunning seeds heads till spring when they are cut down in time for the growth cycle to start again.

The plant needs no staking and is easy to grow in sun or semi-shade. In late summer it is one of the best plants for attracting bees and a huge variety of insects, as are all cow parsley type plants. I sow the seeds in the autumn in the cold and hopefully will have plants for sale next year when the gardens are open.

It has had high praise from some of the most discriminating of gardeners. E A Bowles called it “The queen of all umbellifers, with its almost transparent tender greenners and the marvellously lacy pattern of its large leaves. The most beautiful of all fern-leaved plants”.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 33

Photos: Getty Images

At the movies

Tom Cruise.

Robert Downey Jr.

Mel Gibson.

Catch a fallen star We revel in exposures of troubled tales from our movie stars’ private lives. But it doesn’t stop us paying good money to see their next film, says MORGAN O’BRIEN. FILM STARS are increasingly subject to ‘warts and all’ dissections of their private lives, which challenge the traditionally rarefied and protected atmosphere of stardom.

In his work on the phenomenon of film stars, cultural theorist Richard Dyer says the biographical component – or the star as a real person – is not especially important in understanding the notion of film stardom.

Instead, he says it’s more relevant to examine what he refers to as the ‘star 34

WINTER 2010

image’ encompassing not just the onscreen performance but what’s circulated through promotion, publicity, media stories, and so on.

In this context, stars become recognisably normative archetypes, which the audience can understand and identify with.

For example, in the 1950s and 1960s figures like John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe distilled and presented prominent forms of masculinity and femininity. More generally, stars provide

forms of identification, affinity and escapism for the audience.

Stars used to be carefully produced and controlled in the studio system that prevailed over Hollywood in the early part of the twentieth century. But the proliferation of the media has challenged this monopoly of power.

Lustre Tabloid journalism, for example, excavates areas of a performer’s life that used to be insulated from intrusion, potentially dulling the lustre of stardom.

Contemporary celebrity culture is especially fascinated by the ragged edges of the star image, with celebrity breakdowns and bad behaviour its stock-intrade.

But while we may enjoy watching stars come crashing down to earth, it doesn’t ➤

necessarily change our perceptions of them – or our willingness to see them on screen. Indeed, such celebrity gossip can be seen as just another part of the armature of stardom.

A case in point is the 2005 action-comedy Mr and Mrs Smith, the release of which was prefaced by extensive reporting on the purported affair of the film’s stars Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. The ‘scandal’ was arguably one reason for the film’s strong box office showing, and was also the start of the seemingly inescapable celebrity hybrid Brangelina.

Yet a survey conducted by US television show 60 Minutes and magazine Vanity Fair reportedly suggests that Mel Gibson’s behaviour would have little impact on people’s decision to see a film that he’s involved in.

However, it is the performance of excess that has often best characterised the image of stars. Our relationship to this behaviour is often ambiguous and contradictory. We can revel in the escapism it provides while taking delight in the unfolding humbling experiences.

“Celebrity culture is especially fascinated by the ragged edges of the star image, with celebrity breakdowns and bad behaviour its stock-in-trade.”

Conversely, such exposure – or over exposure – can often be detrimental to the star’s constructed image. Current examples include Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise, whose recent travails have been well documented, and whose careers have arguably stuttered amidst this negative publicity.

Of course, audiences interpret and understand stars in many ways. They are a repository for a variety of emotional responses.

Back to Richard Dyer. He notes that, while stars reflect a particular and unique image, this image is most valued for its typicality. That is, the image must reflect some form of accepted and shared values and meanings for particular audiences.

All this has become grist to the mill of the star image, where even the most public of humiliations can be parlayed into the ongoing construction of stardom.

In this context, the ability of the star to incorporate this public exposure as part of their image is often crucial. So Robert Downey Jr has made a roguish virtue of his personal troubles by appropriating his public image into his on-screen persona.

On the other hand, Lindsay Lohan’s derided personal life is matched with a faltering career, which continues to invite little more than mockery and schadenfreude ●

MORGAN O’BRIEN looks at some up and coming films.

Red (22nd October)

The American (26th November)

Refusing to be withered by age, Bruce Willis stars in this adaptation of a graphic novel series about a retired CIA operative being pursued by an assassin. The strong support cast includes Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren and John Malkovich.

George Clooney is an assassin on the run in this spy thriller from Control director Anton Corbijn, whose past work suggests it will be stylishly atmospheric rather than action packed.

Burke and Hare (29th October)

Megamind (3rd December)

After a lengthy hiatus from directing, John Landis helms this black comedy about the eponymous 19th century murderers, played

by Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis, who provided dead bodies for Edinburgh Medical College.

Still playing catch-up with Pixar, DreamWorks Animation issues this comedy about a supervillian, voiced by Will Ferrell, who is forced to fight for good.

Due Date (5th November)

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (10th December)

Apparently following the maxim that ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, The Hangover director Todd Phillips returns with Due Date, a road trip movie starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach G, which for all intents and purpose looks like a sophomoric Trains, Planes and Automobiles.

Continuation of the film adaptations of CS Lewis’ Narnia books. In this, the third film, the Pevensies embark on a journey with King Caspian to save Narnia.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (19th November) The penultimate instalment of the Harry Potter films, based, of course, on the successful series of children’s books. The concluding film is scheduled for release next summer.

Tron: Legacy (17th December) The long anticipated follow up to the 1980s cult classic Tron, where a man must enter a video game where his father is trapped. Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner reprise their roles from the original.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 35

From the author Castle, where Kieron has worked in the Revenue Solicitors office for over 30 years.

So what got Kieron started on this trail? “I put my early attempts at writing down to the movie Far and Away. I caught a glimpse of the movie set during its production in Dublin. I had no notion of writing, but I was smitten by this and I thought I could do something like that.” Kieron then describes his elimination process, which sounds quite similar to the 1980s Kit Kat ad. “Well I can't act, I can't do film, but I can write, I'll have a go at that.” And he’s gone a long way since then. And no, he doesn’t look awful.

“Six weeks later I had written my first screenplay War Crime.

I brought it up to Noel Pearson’s office on Earlsfort Terrace.

Noel produced My Left Foot and the play Dancing at Lughnasa.

As I walked in late of a wet evening, like a drowned rat, he was there on his own. Looking back, it was terrible. I got my rejection letter, but to his eternal credit Noel gave me advice on some good books to read about writing,” said Kieron.

“By the late 1990s I had started to write a screenplay. I had 10 scenes done, but it just didn’t gel. But a year later, it turned into my first novel Water Signs, which is about love, loss and bereavement. I couldn’t believe Marino Books were publishing it. I went around for about six months in shock,” he says.

“The idea with Harold was to write about humanity. But how do you do this? You could end up in the home for the bewildered,” says Kieron. Paul is the most dysfunctional of the characters, while the friendship between two thieves, Donal and Mickey, is explored. Their relationship is one of pure love, but only in a platonic sense. Of course there is Harold as an old man. And then God decides to pay these Dublin guys a visit. The ghosts of past traumas, abuse, lost loved ones, and extreme violence appear throughout the pages.

Photo: Michael Crean

Kieron has a busy few months ahead. He is travelling to the American Book Center in The Hague for an open mike night, while also giving a workshop and a book signing.

Between the lines There are lots of talented writers among IMPACT's membership. MARTINA O'LEARY caught up with Kieron Connolly as his third novel Harold is published.

SET IN Dublin’s north inner city, like his previous two novels Watersigns and There is a House, Harold is based around one day in the life of five characters – God being one of them.

Tipperary born Kieron was reared in the capital and all his books are written with a heavy Dublin accent. In Harold, you can picture the city everywhere, from the river Liffey, to Dublin 36

WINTER 2010

So what’s next in the pipeline? “I promised myself I would start writing again in 2011. I am very disciplined once I start.

Otherwise you lose the train of the story and the characters.

I will write five evenings for a set period of time. Sometimes I wake up with an idea and I need to get it down. But I’m always delighted when it is finished,” he says.

“Writing is my passion. And the strange thing is it’s a benefit to my day job as I go in happy and productive. There is no occupation better than being a writer. But writing equals hard work. You need to take yourself seriously. But not too seriously.”

Harold by Kieron Connolly, published by Jillbeck Books, is available from good bookstores or www.jillbeckbooks.com, priced €9.99.

Winning ways WE HAVE five copies of Kieron Connolly’s book Harold to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, answer the question below and send your entry to Roisin Nolan, Harold competition, IMPACT, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1. Entries must reach us by Wednesday 1st December 2010.

What city is Harold set in?

Book reviews

Lost boys of Africa

Chip on the shoulder

BLACK MAMBA BOY

by Nadifa Mohamed, (£7.99 in the UK).

THE WOODCUTTER

by Reginald Hill, (Harper Collins, £17.99 in the UK).

IN THIS book, Nadifa Mohamed achieves two things in particular.

Firstly she tells the incredible, personal story of her beloved father, Jama, and she also accounts for the ‘...9,000 boys who foolishly battled for Mussolini on the mountains of Eritrea...’

The story begins in Aden, Yemen, in 1935. At that time Jama was a little ragamuffin, running the streets of the port, while his mother worked incessantly to feed the two of them and save enough money to return to their home in Hargeisa, Somaliland.

Jama was still only a young teenager when his mother died, and he believed that his best chance of survival was to find the father who abandoned him as a baby. After a brief, unsuccessful stay with relatives in Hargeisa, he set off on foot across Eritrea, planning to reach Sudan where he hoped to find his father.

Clearly a clever and resourceful child, Jama survived hunger, loneliness and danger by a combination of willing hard work and sheer luck. His mother believed he was a special child and in moments of greatest fear, the faith he had in his mother’s protection guided him.

The war years in which teenage Africans fought on the side of the Italians were particularly harsh. The Africans did not share any vision Mussolini may have had nor did they have any loyalty to the Italians. But fighting with them was simply a matter of survival. The cruelty and inhumanity meted out by the Italian soldiers to their young African counterparts makes disturbing reading.

Ultimately though, this is a book of hope. Jama’s indomitable spirit carries him on where lesser mortals might have been permanently lost. The adventure of his life does not end with the war and the book follows his journey to Egypt and then, as a sailor, travelling the world.

Jama shines through as a brave, likeable person and the author’s testament to her father, her homeland of Somalia and the lost boys of Eastern Africa is an important and a moving one.

Kathryn Smith

REGINALD HILL has a proven track record in crime and thriller fiction. But this time he has left Superintendent Dalziel and DCI Pascoe undisturbed and headed in a new direction.

Described as a “stand alone psychological thriller”, The Woodcutter is a tale of avarice, betrayal and revenge. Our hero is a man called Wolf Hadda who has managed to pull off the whole rags to riches thing and is now swimming in money, married to a posh bird, and driving home every day in a Bentley to his mansion.

But we experienced readers know that novelists, like tabloids, only build people up so they can see them fall. A knock on the door one fine morning brings the Metropolitan Police, a search warrant, and a whole heap of misery on top of Wolf’s head.

Charged with dealing in Child pornography, and various types of financial fraud. His attempt to escape custody ends in a traffic accident that doesn’t actually kill him, but leaves him disfigured for life.

So now he looks like a monster as well. Serving out his sentence, he meets the most naive psychologist ever to appear in fiction, the beautiful (naturally) Alva Ozigbo, who shepherds him to rehabilitation and eventual release. Then, after Wolf has moved back to his father’s cottage in Cumbria, (his dad having conveniently died in the interim), the revenge part starts.

From this point on, the improbabilities really start to add up. But as long as you don’t pay too much attention to them, you’ll enjoy the ride. The writing is a bit clunky, and the plot has more holes in it than a Tony Blair interview, but the characters are lively and engaging.

I particularly liked Johnny Nutbrown who, despite what you might think, is not a Cherokee shaman but an accounting whizzkid with a public school education. In addition, there’s a whole other subplot involving the secret service that I can’t even begin to get into.

If you like lots of loose ends, a jumbled-up plot, and a very flawed hero, this is one for you. Otherwise, try Harlan Coben.

Margaret Hannigan More reviews on page 38 ➤ WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 37

More book reviews

Slip sliding away

Unexpected love

MY BONNIE

by John Suchet, (Harper Collins, £18.99 in the UK).

THE SWIMMER

by Roma Tearne, (£14.99 in the UK).

READERS, TAKE careful note of the title; note the possessive pronoun. It’s important because it sets the tone, and is the first clue that this book will tell us rather a lot about John Suchet but surprisingly little about Bonnie herself.

This is the story of John Suchet’s struggle with his wife’s slide into dementia.

Diagnosed with a degenerative brain condition in 2006, most likely Alzheimer’s disease, Bonnie was all too quickly transformed from a radiant, loving wife, into a patient in a care home, happily dancing the Hokey-Kokey with strangers.

Alzheimer’s is a cruel disease. It reduces a personality to a series of tics and obsessions and severs the bonds of love and loyalty with callous indifference. Children are mistaken for long-dead relatives and spouses become strangers.

People forget where the toilet is, how to cook, how to use the telephone, how to make love. The essence of a person disappears, leaving a caricature in its place. In the Suchet’s case, it happened in the middle of their lives. Their house in France, her recent retirement, his stepping back from broadcasting, all seemed to point to golden years ahead. But life had other things in mind.

To give the present a context, Suchet uses a twin narrative of how they met (while both were married to other people), married, travelled, and found a dream home in France, intertwined with pages about tests, incomprehension, incontinence, and misery.

He wrestles with depression, anger and resentment, while Bonnie stays placid, unaware, and lost. This device works to a certain extent, but at other times reeks of self-indulgence.

Meanwhile, Bonnie herself remains a mystery. This is the gaping hole at the centre of the book. Suchet does not allow Bonnie to breathe on the page. There is no sense of her as a person, or as anything other than the object of Suchet’s devotion, and it has to be said, lust.

Without a clear picture of Bonnie it’s a little too much of the “poor me” and too little of the “oh, poor her.” To be fair, there is no doubting his love for her, and carers everywhere will identify with his struggle.

Margaret Hannigan 38

WINTER 2010

ROMA TEARNE fled Sri Lanka at the age of ten and has spent most of her life in Britain. In this beautifully written book, she eloquently combines themes of loneliness, love and grief with the hidden hardship and heartbreak of life as a refugee.

Ria Robinson is 43 and lives alone in an inherited home in Sussex. She is divorced and it becomes clear that she has always been alone in a fundamental way. Her one brother Jack is not only irritating but also, somehow, quite treacherous.

The only real love in her life comes from Eric, an elderly neighbour who has cared for her since her unhappy childhood.

Ria is a poet but hasn’t written for some time and this seems to increase the sense of isolation around her.

Her mostly silent existence changes forever one summer night when she hears splashing from the river at the end of her garden. At first she is afraid when she sees a young man swimming there, especially when, she later hears definite sounds of someone downstairs. Soon, however, she finds herself looking forward to the nightly visits of the swimmer.

Eventually they speak and Ria, knowing that the young man, Ben, has been stealing food from her house, cooks for him.

She discovers that Ben has fled from the war in Sri Lanka and is seeking asylum in Britain. Over the next few weeks, despite an 18-year age gap, an unexpected love grows between them.

Then, following one awful act of violence, the course of the story changes completely.

While many authors struggle to draw truly dimensional characters, the people of this book are so real that you can truly feel their pain. The author does not avoid emotions such as irritation or dislike, these are tangibly depicted.

The reader will feel a sense of unease at the growing racism in the village and sorrow at the brutality of life in Sri Lanka.

This is a thought-provoking, enlightening yet engaging read and recommended for anyone who likes good writing.

Kathryn Smith

Union business

Croke Park chair wants staff involved Photo: Conor Healy

STAFF AND their unions must be involved in the implementation of the modernisation measures in the Croke Park agreement at the earliest stages of decision-making, according to the chair of the implementation body PJ Fitzpatrick, who took up the role in July.

In a set of guidelines issued to union leaders and senior managers, Mr Fitzpatrick has underlined the importance of delivering “quick wins” that improve services and deliver verifiable savings that can start the process of addressing the pay cuts of 2009-2010.

He says change will be delivered more quickly and smoothly when the staff involved “are engaged in the process at the earliest possible stage.” And his PJ Fitzpatrick. guidelines say managers should “be aware of and adhere to the consultation requirements” set out in the agreement, including the protections on outsourcing.

The implementation body, made up of an independent chair plus management and union reps including IMPACT general secretary Shay Cody, has sought modernisation action plans from public service departments and organisations by the end of September.

Meanwhile, sectoral implementation bodies are being established to drive modernisation and help ensure that real savings are achieved. Under the agreement, which was accepted by a margin of 77% in a national ballot of IMPACT members, this is necessary to preserve pay and start the process of reversing recent pay cuts.

A September meeting of the Implementation Body ratified the appointments of former PSEU general secretary Dan Murphy as independent chairman of the local government sectoral implementation body, and former North Western Health Board chief executive Pat Harvey as independent chairman of the health sectoral implementation body. Announcements on other sectors are expected soon.

In his July letter, Fitzpatrick addressed fears that some managers would seek to force through changes in spite of the protections agreed in the deal by saying staff should be informed “at a very early stage” of the likely impact of any proposed changes, and that staff and their unions should have the opportunity to “contribute to the development of proposal.”

In areas where staff reductions are likely, managers should “ensure the concerns of the staff directly affected and those remaining behind are considered,” he said.

The implementation body chairman’s intervention chimes with IMPACT’s call for a proper consultative approach on change, with appropriate procedures in each employment and sector.

In an interview in this issue of Work & Life Fitzpatrick outlines the need for rapid progress in implementing Croke Park modernisation measures in advance of a spring 2011 review of recent pay cuts.

It is understood that Mr Fitzpatrick will also ask departments to take note of modernisation measures that improve services, but which don’t necessarily save money – and include changes that avoid future costs in the sectoral action plans.

See pages 12-13 for more.

Local troubleshooting

MOST DISAGREEMENTS over the implementation of public service modernisation measures should be sorted out between managers and unions at local level, according to the chair of the Croke Park implementation body.

PJ Fitzpatrick has told union leaders that his body will only deal with major issues of interpretation that cause blockages in the overall implementation of the deal in any sector.

Under the deal, most disagreements are supposed to be resolved locally within six weeks or referred for binding resolution in the Labour Relations Commission or civil service arbitration within four weeks.

All sides have an interest in rapid implementation of modernisation as the protection of pay rates and future reversal of pay cuts depends on the delivery of verified savings from modernisation.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 39

Union business

More council staff cuts mooted PLANNED CUTS of up to 20% in local authority staffing will inevitably lead to poorer quality services, according to IMPACT. A meeting of the union’s local government divisional council, held over the summer, heard the union’s national secretary for local government Peter Nolan warn that cuts on this scale had been recommended in the recently-published report of the Local Government Efficiency Review Group.

Nolan said 5,000 local authority jobs had already disappeared since June 2008. “Any further cuts to staff levels will lead to very serious service delivery issues,” he warned.

He insisted that no changes would be imposed on local government workers’ conditions as a result of the review group’s recommendations. “The Croke Park agreement has set out

the template on how workers in local government will meet the needs of communities in the sector,” he said.

The report identified a 13% fall in local authority staffing between mid-2008 and the end of 2009. Mr Nolan warned that this, combined with a further projected cut of up to 20%, would make the delivery of services far more problematic.

And he said the proposed staff reductions could not be achieved through compulsory redundancies, which are prohibited by Croke Park.

IMPACT also expressed concern at proposals to introduce joint administrative areas supporting a number of counties.

“This is effectively a proposal to dilute the level of service that local authorities can offer. Combined with the proposed staff reductions, this would constitute an unacceptable risk to services,” said Nolan.

Communities face ‘toxic legacy’ MASSIVE FUNDING cuts in the community and voluntary sector will result in a “toxic legacy” of unemployment and reduced services, which will affect generations in Ireland’s poorest communities. That was new IMPACT deputy general secretary Kevin Callinan’s message to a recent Dublin seminar, hosted by IMPACT, Siptu and community sector employers.

Callinan warned that increased poverty and exclusion caused by the cuts would deepen social problems, putting extra pres-

sure on our public health services and the criminal justice system. “Further cuts in this sector will do greater harm and the vibrant social economy built by the community and voluntary sector will collapse,” he said.

“That means reduced childcare and early education. It means reduced services for homeless people and those who need drug addiction services. It means fewer services for those experiencing consistent poverty, domestic violence and abuse.

But the long term consequences are even greater, because it means that future generations will be robbed of the improved outcomes these services currently provide.”

Tipp branch shells out

Photo: Dylan Vaughan

In a hard-hitting speech, the chair of the Community Sector Employers’ Forum Maureen Kelly said the Government was gambling with the prospects for future generations. “And for what? To protect an anonymous bondholder who plays the market? It is an obscene indictment of how this economic crisis is unfolding,” she said.

IMPACT’S SOUTH Tipperary branch has donated €5,000 to the campaign to save South Tipperary general hospital. Branch chair Ben Grogan said the donation, presented to independent councillor Seamus Healy in August, was a response to the Government’s threat to remove acute services from South Tipp.

In June the campaign presented health minister Mary Harney with Ireland’s largest ever petition on a local issue, signed by more than 70,000 people. This followed a 20,000-strong protest in March in opposition to the removal of services from Clonmel.

“We are not opposed to reconfiguration when it makes sense. Our breast cancer services have moved to Waterford in line with the centres of excellence philosophy. But the plan to close acute services here is ill-conceived and would see €45 million of taxpayers’ money wasted, said Ben. 40

WINTER 2010

She said employers in the sector faced impossible choices when budgets were reduced.

“The effects of those cuts are deeply felt, and we see the effects in the communities where we work. Staff in every organisation we represent have made sacrifices to keep projects going, but nobody in government seems prepared to shout stop,” she said.

A report commissioned by IMPACT’s Boards and Voluntary Agencies branch earlier this year warned that the sector faces a loss of up to 5,000 jobs or almost 10% of the workforce.

Union business

HSE west talks continue

SHORTS

HSE WEST management has confirmed in local talks that their projected budget overspend is now €45 million – down from an earlier estimate of €90 million. The reduction was due to cost saving measures agreed locally between unions and management in an effort to avoid terminating fixed-term contracts. It means that the overrun now represents the equivalent of less than 200 full-time staff, rather than 1,000.

Despite the significant progress in local talks, which took place following an LRC hearing, there is still a substantial gap between the measures agreed locally and the savings required. The parties have agreed to start implementing the agreed measures and continue local talks on bridging the remaining funding gap.

It was acknowledged that “a lot of productive work had been done and innovative ideas had been put forward” to protect fixed term workers’ jobs and protect patient services in the region.

The developments came after a difficult few months during which several hundred fixedterm workers faced non-renewal or termination of their contracts. The fixed-term workers in question cover a wide range of grades, which meant that the job losses would have a widespread and indiscriminate effect on services.

In early July management in the mid-west said they were going to terminate the contracts of fixed-term employees. News that the decision was prompted by a secret report, by consultants Mott Macdonald, added to widespread anger throughout the region.

Hospital campaigns heat up

Photo: Andrew Downes Photography

IMPACT HAS been leading campaigns to protect local health services in Galway, Roscommon, and the north east.

In the west, IMPACT official Padraig Mulligan led protests that saw demonstrators create ‘human chains’ around Portiuncula and Roscommon hospitals. He also called on all local TDs to confirm their positions on plans to run down services at the hospitals. “Cuts in the services will be directly linked to severe cuts in their political support in our communities,” he said. A similar campaign is being developed in Galway city.

Meanwhile, IMPACT and other unions attended a Labour Relations Commission meeting to address the lack of consultation over the decision to end surgical services at Our Lady’s Hospital in Navan. The sudden announcement caused anger among staff and unions, who have been engaged in the process of ongoing reconfiguration of services in the North East.

Aer Lingus action suspended IMPACT’S CABIN Crew branch suspended a planned work to rule in August following the publication of a binding Labour Relations Commission finding into a dispute with Aer Lingus.

The dispute arose when management unilaterally imposed massive changes to working arrangements, supposedly to achieve the objective of 850 flying hours a year as part of cabin crews’ overall working time. Cabin crew had earlier accepted the requirement to increase flying hours to 850 a year, but they didn’t accept roster changes imposed by management in July.

The new rosters were based on minimum legal protections, which would have seen cabin crew working 60 hours over a seven-day period, including long shifts without breaks.

Branch members had voted to work within their existing contracts of employment by a margin of 96% to 4% before the matter was referred back to the Labour Relations Commission.

Mortgage debt BANKS SHOULD be obliged to write off up to €200,000 of mortgage debt in cases where families lose their home but retain negative equity, according to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. In a submission to the Central Bank and Financial Regulator, ICTU also called for a cap on mortgage interest rates and the establishment of an independent office of debt resolution.

CDVEC win THE LABOUR court has backed IMPACT’s interpretation of the employment status of 19 workers in City of Dublin VEC. Management had argued that they were fixedterm workers whose contracts could not be renewed because of the recruitment embargo and Croke Park agreement. But IMPACT won the case.

Mums will share MORE THAN half of Irish women would split their maternity leave with their partner if they could, according to new research by Quinn Healthcare, which tested 1,000 Irish women’s attitudes to motherhood and the workplace. They also found that two-thirds of women would prefer to stay at home following baby’s birth, while half have difficulty integrating back into work on their return from maternity leave.

Earnings gap action wanted OVER 90% of people want the Government to take active steps to reduce the gap between high and low earners according to a new equality survey from independent think tank TASC. It found a big increase in the number of people who believe wealth is unfairly distributed. It also found that 35%, or 47% in Dublin, would be willing to pay higher taxes to fund improved public services.

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 41

Play it loud Benny Hill was famous for his comic ditties.

I don’t see anybody else Photo: Getty Images

g n i h g u la

Is there anything more certain to wipe the smile off your face? RAYMOND CONNOLLY gets his laughing gear around the fearsome phenomenon of the comic song.

THERE ARE some things that just don’t mix. Water and electricity. Politics and sport. Banks and responsibility.

But even in my very young days, I developed an abhorrence of the confluence of events that mixed music with comedy. Of course there are notable exceptions, usually taken from films.

Remember Laurel and Hardy’s superb delivery of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine in Way Out West?

My intolerance largely comprehends those ‘funny songs’. Oh what a barrel of laughs they really are!

My earliest encounter with the funny song was Benny Hill’s Ernie: The Fastest Milkman in the West, but at six years of age my cynicism and intolerance hadn’t fully formed.

It had two years later, when Ray Stevens tickled us all with The Streak, prompting monotonously regular solo naked pitch invasions across English football grounds. The malaise had set in.

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It got worse. Coinciding with The Streak was the re-release of Bobby Pickett’s Monster Mash, about, er, monsters. Superbly described by one Elvis Arron Presley as “the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

But the 1970s Barrel of Sneers award must go to Londoner Billy Howard for the toe curling King of the Cops. This farce centred around a debate between a number of US TV cops (Steve McGarret, McCloud, Columbo, Kojak, Frank Cannon et al) as to which one ruled the roost. All to the background noise of King of the Road.

Howard’s masterful delivery was done by way of impersonation. Mike Yarwood really does have a lot to answer for. Watch it on YouTube. Take a warm cup of Horlicks, go to bed and sleep it off.

The shameless seventies hadn’t finished yet. This balderdash continued to be facilitated with the likes of Somerset’s finest The Wurzels who, amazingly, are currently on a UK tour. Our dungaree wearing icons smashed the charts with Combine Harvester, a song about a farm implement that was championed by Radio 1 DJ Noel Edmonds. Wouldn’t you just know it?

The Barron Knights chipped in with a couple of ear splitting ditties. There was the one that incorporated the time Rivers of ➤

Babylon which went something like “There’s a dentist in Birmingham, he done my crown.” Such comic greatness.

Ray Stevens tickled us all with The Streak, prompting monotonously regular naked pitch invasions across English football grounds.

Incidentally and incredibly, the Barrons are the only band to have toured with both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles. Never underestimate the power of 1960s hallucinogenic substances.

I blame all of this on the variety show concept, a staple of Anglophone TV from its early days, which peaked in the 1970s and has now, mercifully, been reduced to the level of the dreaded occasional ‘special’.

Variety The original concept was based on British music hall and US vaudeville. On British TV, The Good Old Days ran from 1953 to 1983 and featured modern performing artists dressed in Edwardian costume. The audience was also encouraged to dress in period costume. Oh what fun we had! And you think Morris dancers and LARPers are bonkers?

The obsession with variety hit manic heights over the Christmas period. Every now and then some unknown quantity like newsreader Angela Rippon would be unveiled in front of the watching millions amid the shocking revelation that she actually had legs. I don’t lie when I say that variety was pandemic. Even Heinz had 57 of them, a tally that has remained static for over 60 years. That company needs a shot in the arm.

OLIC

ITE FR

FAVOUR

With people at their most vulnerable in this never ending recession, there is a real fear that variety could make a comeback.

2 3

Atmosphere. Russ Abbott (1984) Ironically, this attempt at a serious song, albeit pathetic, is funnier than most of the gags.

5

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1

Eat it.

Weird Al Jankovic (1984) “Have some more yogurt.

Have some more pie. Just eat it.” Parody of Michael Jackson’s hit. Now do exactly that Al and beat it.

I am a cider drinker. The Wurzels (1975) Scrumpy and Western version of the 1975 George Baker hit Una Paloma Blanca, also covered by Jonathan King. Lots of cider required.

Winter Solutions (From page 46.)

7 6 1 3 2 5 9 4 8

4 5 2 8 9 1 3 6 7

8 9 3 7 4 6 2 1 5

9 1 6 4 3 7 8 5 2

5 4 7 1 8 2 6 3 9

2 3 8 6 5 9 4 7 1

Soduko solution

1 8 5 5 6 3 7 9 4

3 7 4 9 1 8 5 2 6

6 2 9 5 7 4 1 8 3

G O D P A R E N T

R J A U N T I L Y

E H I C K W A R M

Y P R O F A N E D

C A V E R N O U S

H D O G U I T A R

A M U I B F L O P

O E C R L S H I N

Word soduko solution

S N H T E P U C K

The Hare Krishnas are already doing it. I recall one incident during a 1980s free concert in Dublin when the compere, a well known presenter, announced from the stage that the Hare Krishnas were handing out free oatmeal at the back. “So, if you’re hungry Harry will look after you.” Woefully hackneyed I know, but a classic all the same.

That was one highlight from a presenter I find generally irritating, mainly because of his relentless execution of the breaststroke up U2’s collective derriére.

Speaking of U2, I note that Bono has been nominated as a possible Greatest Irishman Of All Time in the company of, among others, the genuinely great James Connolly. Now that’s a bit like a best comic duo competition between The Krankies and the aforementioned Laurel and Hardy. A couple of bars of ‘ Fa n d a b by d o z e e ’ anyone? ●

4

Leap up and down (wave your knickers in the air).

St Celia (1971) The BBC banned this for 14 years until Noel Edmonds aired it in 1985. Jonathan King had a hand in this somewhere.

Enough said.

5

The Laughing Policeman.

Charles Jolly (1922) Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha / ha ha ha ha ha / Oh ha ha ha ha ha ha / ha ha ha ha ha. Now that’s variety!

Summer/Autumn 2010 Crossword Solutions See page 46 for the competition winners from Issue 10.

Across: 1. Lalor 5. Aesop 9. Neman 10. Dirge 11. Average 14. Uonan 17. Rowan 20. Leitrim 21. Mars 22. Elba 24. Derry 28. Ant 30. Everest 32. Mamba 33. Dante 35. Stain 36. Yarns.

Down: 1. Loner 2. Lemon 3. Renan 4. Brer 5. Adder 6. Shrew 7. Preen 12. Exit 13.

Auditor 15. Oscar 16. Allstar 18. Oddest 19. Arabian 24. Dumas 25. Rumba 26.

Yearn 27. Story 28. Anner 29. Tress WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 43

Sport KEVIN NOLAN looks at two young Irish sporting talents that look set to become household names in the next few years.

Blue

It’s very much a symptom of the modern game of Gaelic football that when everyone from All Star selectors to bar room experts try to pick the team of the season, the half-forward line is the one that generates most debate.

The modern half-forward is expected to be all things to all men and a bit more besides. They must have the stamina to get up and down the field, the instinct to win breaking ball, the pace to play on the counter-attack, link defence and attack, and, oh yes, to score repeatedly from play. A tall order.

The Rebels’ annexation of the Sam Maguire this summer did little to console the Dubs as they know only too well that when opportunity knocks so loudly one year it won’t necessarily come knocking the following season at all.

Conor Counihan’s Cork defeated Dublin primarily because they have greater strength in depth. It was a characteristic that was match-winning again when they overcame Down in the decider.

So, as Pat Gilroy and his Dublin management team sit down to frame their gameplan and blueprint for 2011, strengthening his options will be high on his ‘to do list’. Bernard Brogan almost carried the Dublin attack to the promised land this season but it’s up front where the Dubs need to discover new talent.

The name that springs to mind is 19-year-old St Sylvester’s clubman Gary Sweeney (pictured left) who is likely to feature on Gilroy’s radar in 2011.

In 2010 Dublin won their second ever All-Ireland under-21 football title. Throughout their campaign Sweeney delivered for his county; from their ignominious opening against Louth to their dramatic All-Ireland final success against a highlyfancied Donegal two months later.

Against Louth, in their Leinster first round clash, the Dubs trailed by three points and were a man down of late in the second half.

But Sweeney’s pace forced the wee county to concede a number of frees, which saw Dublin force extra time before progressing to face Carlow on their home turf.

Again against the Barrowsiders the Dublin attack was at its most potent when Sweeney was running at the opposition’s defence.

It was a trait of the Dublin team that continued throughout their campaign with Sweeney himself scoring the Dubs’ only goal of the All-Ireland final and the only goal Donegal conceded in their entire run.

While names like Brendan Murphy (Carlow), Michael Murphy (Donegal), Rory O’Carroll (Dublin) and John Heslin (Westmeath) copper fastened the esteem in which they are held during the

44 WINTER 2010

2010 All-Ireland U21 championship, it can be argued that Sweeney has the ability to emerge from left-field and make the most telling impact at senior level over the coming summers.

This year was no flash in the pan for the young Malahide man either as the successes of 2010 came following back-to-back impressive minor campaigns with him playing a leading role for the under-18s in claiming a Leinster title for the Dubs in 2009.

There are those who feel he is still too young and Dublin must show patience before introducing him into the senior panel. If Dublin had adopted that policy in 1995 Jason Sherlock would have been kept in reserve and arguably the All-Ireland winning opportunity would have passed them by yet again.

Aussie born Sam Coghlan-Murray is already part of an elite group. This season he was the only player to emerge from the u

stars rising schools rugby system and progress immediately into the Leinster Academy.

Even other hot young prospects, like dynamic out-half Cathal Marsh and centre Alex Kelly (both graduates of St Michael’s College), have started out in the Leinster Sub-Academy. You have to have something special to convince academy manager Colin McEntee you have what it takes to bypass that starting point of entry.

stones, he is not the biggest teenager in the world. He will need to bulk up and build up his frame for the collisions of senior rugby. However, he certainly follows both Conway, and Luke Fitzgerald before him, as a potential star of the future.

Young, gifted, and green.

Born in Brisbane, halfway up the Australian east coast, CoghlanMurray is blessed with that uncontainable edge of magic in his feet, operating at greater speed than most, switching direction in the blink of an eye and sending panic across three-quarter lines.

Even as the Ireland under-18 schools struggled for air in their 41-17 beating by all-powerful England at the five nations festival in Llandovery, south Wales last April, he cut open the opposition at will on the most meagre rations of possession.

At just 18 years of age, 5’9” and just under 13

A young Wizard from Oz but now most certainly a potential Irish senior of the not too distant future l

Photo: sportsfile.com

The former Newbridge College wing wizard is a two-year Ireland Under-18 schools international with a style of rugby close in appearance and effectiveness to Wales record try-scorer Shane Williams and another Irish young gun Andrew Conway.

Work & Life: The Magazine for IMPACT Members

45

Win Win Win

win0 5

€

Prize quiz Just answer five easy questions and you could win €50.

YOU COULD add €50 to your wallet or purse by answering five easy questions and sending your entry, name and address to Roisin Nolan, Work & Life prize quiz, IMPACT, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1. Send your entry by Wednesday 1st December. We’ll send €50 to the first completed entry pulled from the hat.* You’ll find the answers in this issue of Work & Life.

1. Where will the 2012 paralympics take place?

A. Delhi B. London C. Dublin 2. Which League of Ireland club is part-owned by a local authority?

A. Sporting Fingal B. Croke Park Rangers C. Health Harriers 3. The only band to tour with both the Beatles and the Rolling Stones was: A. Chas & Dave B. The Barron Knights C. The Who 4. The 12th July is: A. The anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne B. The day PJ Fitzpatrick wrote to public service bosses C. Both of the above 5.

A. B. C.

Metsu was: A Japanese puzzle A seventeenth century Dutch painter A club in Temple Bar

The small print* You must be a paid-up IMPACT member to win.

Only one entry per person (multiple entries will not be considered). Entries must reach us by Wednesday 1st December 2010. The editor’s decision is final.

That’s it!

46

WINTER 2010

S UD OKU

HOW TO PLAY:

9

1

3

3

Fill in the grid so that every row, column and 3x3 box contains the digits 1-9. There is no maths involved.

You solve it with reasoning and logic.

3

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3

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5

1

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9

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WO R D S UD OKU

1

9

6

2

2

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9

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7 4

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R P A

HOW TO PLAY:

G

Place all the given words in the grid so that every column, row and block only contain unique letters and all cells contain a letter.

ACROSS: Admen, Air, Ani, Chaos, Girt, Grey, Not, Pad, Ruble, Vouch, Wan

5

N

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DOWN: Cavernous, Dog, Flop, Godparent, Guitar, Hick, Jauntily, Profaned, Puck, Shin, Warm

ACROSS 1. Head gear for Scar Face? (5) 5. Tough ostler displays spirit (5) 8. Clean the clothes or money (7) 9. Foolish and vain (5) 10. Meet with 100 in ruin (5) 11. Settled the shape (7) 14. New and novel (5) 17. Remain with r and wander (5) 20. Young Cuchulainn (7) 21. Joke or jest (4) 22. The famed young duckling was supposed to be (4) 23. Questioning Quinn round point with rig (9) 24. Flintstone takes on a and becomes Female (5) 27. Continues to support (5) 30. Turkish fancy (7) 31. Follow the cur with small mother for tenet (5) 33. I join tune to consolidate (5) 34. Saluted ET round greed (7) 35. Weirdly strange (5) 36. Surrender the right of way (5) DOWN 1. Rigid (5) 2. The west is always (5) 3. Tissue and fat (5) 4. Dane changes his name (4) 5. Your are looking at lots of them (5) 6. Happen (5) 7. The ad midst the try could be late (5) 12. La tuna run is not normal (9) 13. Scheduling duties for the gin storer (9) 15. Habitual (7)

PRIZE CROSSWORD 1

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Crossword composed by Maureen Harkin

16.

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Hang upset States before you shell out (7) Hot thug starts an idea (7) Yon gala will turn for smile (7) Avoid the sweet (5) Keen to include e in rage (5) Old wise saying (5) Read the den (5) Gale and I are nimble (5) Velocity (5) Thought (4)

win 5

€

0

Win €50 by completing the crossword and sending your entry, name and address to Roisin Nolan, Work & Life crossword, IMPACT, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1, by Wednesday 1st December 2010.

We’ll send €50 to the first correct entry pulled from a hat.

Winners!

The winners from competitions in the summer/autumn issue were:

Crossword: Matthew Parkes, National History Museum. Quiz: Briege Kelly, Louth.

Empty Promises: James Lunch, Agriculture No. 1. Survey: Monica Voignier.

Lots more competitions to enter in this issue!

Your view

n i w100 €

How do you like Work & Life?

WE HOPE you enjoyed this issue of Work & Life, the magazine for IMPACT members. We want to hear your views, and we’re offering a €100 prize to one lucky winner who completes this questionnaire.

Simply complete this short survey and send it to Roisin Nolan, Work & Life survey, IMPACT, Nerney’s Court, Dublin 1. You can also send your views by email to rnolan@impact.ie.

We’ll send €100 to the first completed entry pulled from a hat.* And don’t forget, we’re also giving prizes for letters published in the next issue.

See page 19.

The survey

4. What were your least favourite articles?

1 __________________________________________________ 2 __________________________________________________

1. What did you think of the articles in the winter 2010 issue of Work & Life ?

Excellent

❏

Good

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Okay

❏

Bad

❏

Awful

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Comments ________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ 2. What did you think of the layout, style and pictures in the winter 2010 issue of Work & Life?

3 __________________________________________________ 5. What subjects would you like to see in future issues of Work & Life ?

1 __________________________________________________ 2 __________________________________________________ 3 __________________________________________________ 6. What did you think of the balance between union news and other articles?

The balance is about right

❏

I want more union news

❏

I want less union news

❏

Excellent

❏

7. Any other comments? ______________________________

Good

❏

__________________________________________________

Okay

❏

__________________________________________________

Bad

❏

__________________________________________________

Awful

❏

__________________________________________________

Comments ________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ 3. What were your favourite three articles?

Name ________________________________________________ Address ______________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________

1 __________________________________________________

Email ________________________________________________

2 __________________________________________________

Phone ________________________________________________

3 __________________________________________________

IMPACT branch ______________________________________

The small print* You must be a paid-up IMPACT member to win. Only one entry per person (multiple entries will not be considered).

Entries must reach us by Wednesday 1st December 2010. The editor’s decision is final. That’s it!

WORK & LIFE: THE MAGAZINE FOR IMPACT MEMBERS 47