Annual event held to commemorate missing people and their loved ones.
Searchable Unidentified Human Remains database launched.
The twelfth annual National Missing Persons Day will take place today, (December 4th 2024), at Croke Park, in Dublin.
On December 4th 2013, Ireland held its inaugural national Missing Persons Day with a commemorative ceremony which took place at Farmleigh House, Dublin. The inaugural ceremony was attended by the families and friends of missing persons, as well as many of the organisations working in the community on their behalf. This ceremony incorporated musical and personal tributes and reflections, followed by a tree planting ceremony in the grounds of Farmleigh House.
Missing Persons Day complements the existing International Missing Children’s Day and has a number of objectives. It commemorates those who have gone missing and recognises the lasting trauma for their families and friends. It also draws attention to open or unsolved missing persons cases, and creates an opportunity to provide information on available support services.
Missing Persons Day, hosted by the Department of Justice, is an annual commemorative day for families and their friends to remember missing loved ones. Missing Persons Day also provides a nationwide platform to appeal to the public for information on missing persons.
To mark the event a commemorative ceremony will be held, which will feature spoken contributions from family members of missing persons, as well as other contributors who work to resolve missing persons cases.
Missing Persons Day is an all-island event and families from Northern Ireland will also be welcomed along with their support organisations.
This year’s Missing Person’s Day also marks the launch of an enhanced, searchable database of Unidentified Human Remains(UHR) reported to the Department of Justice by Coroners around the country.
The Unidentified Human Remains Forum, comprising officials from the Department, members of An Garda Síochána, Forensic Science Ireland, the State Pathologist, and the Coroner Service, has committed to developing an effective database with the capacity to evolve as new information becomes available. Anyone with information, which could help provide answers for families regarding any missing person, is encouraged to please contact, any Garda Station (Thurles at Tel: 0504 25100) or call the Garda Confidential Line at Tel: 1800 666 111.
Thurles Municipal District Officials; Councillors together with other unsuspecting drivers are being asked to take great care when travelling on Upper Kickham Street, (N75), in Thurles, Co. Tipperary tomorrow. Due to recent frosts, a section of the road surface, which had been dug up, has now totally disintegrated leaving huge craters directly opposite Aldi(on North side) and close to the entrance to Monakeeba housing estate(on South side).
State of road surface on Kickham Street, Thurles, Co. Tipperary.
Four living craters now currently exist on both sides of this traffic infested roadway, and have done so for the past two weeks. Despite being invisible to travelling motorists, these craters, as expected, have received absolutely no maintenance attention. But then again, it’s cold and Thurles Municipal District Officials don’t get out all that much in this type of weather.
The only reason I mention this tonight is because Thurles Councillors could be travelling into Thurles as expected tomorrow, to rubber stamp the planned Phase 2 upgrade for Liberty Square etc.
Thurles Town centre traders already having lost at least 40% to 60% of former footfall, under the Phase 1 upgrade, are expected to also be in attendance; to protest against these planned illogical and fallacious changes, same formulated by Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII) and expected to be supported by aforementioned officials and some recently elected, unqualified councillors.
We will be looking at this matter more fully and in greater detail after tomorrows decisive meeting, which will no doubt be demanding immediate resignations.
Food Safety Authority of Ireland’s new five year strategy to ensure continued trust in Ireland’s food systems
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) today (Tuesday, 03 December 2024) published its new Strategy for 2025-2029, setting out an ambitious strategic roadmap to safeguard consumer health and assure continued trust in Ireland’s food systems. At its core is a commitment to protect consumers in Ireland and consumers of Irish food in more than 180 markets across the world. The five-year Strategy seeks to ensure that Ireland’s food safety regulatory system is robustly equipped to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented to food safety, within an evolving global food supply chain with new innovations and changing consumer preferences and tastes. As the central competent authority, the FSAI will continue to lead and support Ireland’s food safety inspectorate to implement a fair, consistent and effective system of enforcement.
The strategic actions include an evaluation of the evidence to inform policy relating to a hygiene-rating scheme for food businesses across Ireland. It identifies the roll-out of targeted supports to assist with compliance by food businesses and making greater use of technology platforms to share communications on food safety and compliance. It will continue to advocate for food safety and authenticity nationally and internationally, as food systems innovate, embrace technology and transition to become more sustainable. The FSAI also commits to increasing collaboration with European and international partners to further enhance its preparedness to manage food safety risks.
The Four Strategic Goals Are:
Advocate and Engage: Advocate for the importance of food safety and authenticity in engagement with all stakeholders to better protect consumers’ health and interests and increase compliance. Actions include a commitment to streamline communications to food businesses using technology platforms and examining the evidence surrounding a hygiene-based rating scheme and its potential role in Ireland’s food control systems.
Reduce Risk: Enhance the ability to protect consumers’ health and interests by anticipating, assessing, and managing risks that impact on the safety and authenticity of food. Key commitments include the adoption of a multi-agency agreement on the management of incidents based on best practice. It also identifies the importance of strengthening capabilities to manage risk, through increased participation with European and international partners.
Enforce Food Law: Ensure and verify compliance with food law and take appropriate action to protect consumers within a national regulatory framework. Priority actions include continued improvement in official food control systems; working on a cross-agency basis, with partners across Europe and globally; leading and supporting the national food safety inspectorate.
Drive Organisational Excellence: Deliver better food safety outcomes for consumers through empowering staff, aligning systems, and demonstrating adaptive, value-driven leadership. Key commitments include maintaining a best-in-class approach to governance and improving efficiencies through maximising the use of digital technologies.
Dr Pamela Byrne, (Chief Executive, FSAI) said that the FSAI’s new Strategy 2025-2029 provides a clear five-year roadmap to guide how it will work to achieve its strategic goals.
She stated, “Our new Strategy reaffirms our commitment to our vision of safe and trustworthy food for everyone. To realise this, we have developed a strategic roadmap, which accounts for the contemporary challenges and opportunities posed for food safety and food safety controls in Ireland and internationally. These have been considered within the context of a rapidly evolving global food system, influenced by a host of factors, including the drive towards more sustainable food systems, the development of new food products and the utilisation of technology.”
“As an organisation, our core objective is to protect consumers’ health and assure continued trust in our food systems, by ensuring that the food consumed in Ireland, and Irish food consumed globally, is safe to eat. This new five-year Strategy will continue to develop a culture of food safety in all food businesses and thereby, improve food safety overall. The Strategy is underpinned by actions, anchored in an evidence and data driven based approach. We will continue to oversee a robust evidence-based regulatory system, which supports the food industry to thrive and develop with food safety at the core of how it operates. We will continue to build our organisational capabilities and deepen engagement and collaboration with our stakeholders, including our European and international partners. Combined, these actions will allow us to continue to protect consumers’ health and interests to the highest of standards,” added Dr Byrne.
Local Authorities must effectively prioritise enforcement resources to protect and improve the environment
The prioritisation of enforcement resources on waste activities delivered improvements and positive environmental outcomes, such as the detection and cessation of illegal waste activities.
Local authorities did not adequately prioritise their enforcement resources to water, air and noise in 2023, with poor inspection rates and follow up actions.
Farm inspection rates are far below the level required to drive compliance and improve water quality.
Local authorities need to ensure that only approved solid fuels are available for sale, to protect public health from harmful air pollutants.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has today published its report on the environmental enforcement performance of local authorities in 2023. The report shows that the scale of environmental enforcement work carried out by local authorities in 2023 was significant. Across the 31 local authorities, 547 staff handled over 70,000 environmental complaints, carried out over 212,000 environmental inspections, undertook 17,000 enforcement actions and initiated 470 prosecutions.
Environmental Enforcement Activity & Performance. Tipperary sadly well down the list.
The EPA’s Local Authority Performance Framework measures and reports on performance against National Enforcement Priorities, focused on improving environmental compliance and achieving positive outcomes for water quality, air quality and waste management.
The EPA’s assessment of local authority environmental enforcement performance in 2023 found that eight local authorities achieved a Strong or Excellent score in 17 or more of the 20 National Enforcement Priorities (NEPs). These were Kildare, Meath, Dublin City, Monaghan, Carlow, Cork County, Donegal and Wicklow County Councils. For the second consecutive year, Kildare County Council were the only local authority that achieved a Strong or Excellent score across all 20 NEPs. Meath County Council achieved an Excellent score in 15 NEPs and a Strong score in 4 more NEPs, which was the highest level of Excellent scores of all local authorities. Dublin City Council achieved a Strong or Excellent score in 16 of the 17 NEPs that apply to their functional area.
Six local authorities failed to achieve a Strong or Excellent score in 10 or more of the 20 NEPs. These were Westmeath, Galway City, Waterford, Wexford, Sligo and Kilkenny County Councils. This level of performance is not good enough and needs to improve.
Commenting on the findings of the report, Dr Tom Ryan, Director of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “The effective enforcement of environmental law is essential to identify polluters and non-compliant operators, and to hold them to account. Local authority leadership is critical in delivering better environmental outcomes through the prioritisation of environmental enforcement and the appropriate allocation of resources.”
Water Enforcement: Agriculture continues to have a significant impact on water quality, resulting in excess levels of nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus) to enter our waterways. Mr Patrick Byrne, Programme Manager of the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement said: “While the number of local authority farm inspections increased by 9% to 1,137 in 2023, the number is still too low. More farm inspections and follow-up enforcement is needed to reach the National Agricultural Inspection Programme target of 4,500 farms inspected in 2025, to improve water quality. We’re calling on local authorities to use their full suite of enforcement powers to drive compliance with the Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) Regulations and improve water quality.”
Air & Noise Enforcement:
In 2023, local authorities assigned a much lower level of resources to air and noise enforcement (8%) than waste enforcement (63%) and water enforcement (29%). Whilst Ireland’s air quality met EU standards in 2023, it did not meet the health-based WHO guidelines and there were concerning localised issues which led to poor air quality. A strong inspection campaign of solid fuel producers and retailers is needed by local authorities, to make sure only approved solid fuels are available for sale and to protect public health from harmful air pollutants.
In 2023, many local authorities made little progress on implementing their Noise Action Plans (NAPs), aimed at reducing people’s exposure to transport noise. Greater action is needed to reduce the impact of noise pollution on people’s health and wellbeing. Local authorities, in collaboration with transport infrastructure bodies, need to focus implementation of NAPs on the priority areas identified using strategic noise mapping.
Waste Enforcement: Waste generation continues to grow and recycling rates for municipal and plastic packaging waste streams need to increase urgently to achieve 2025 targets. For household & commercial waste, waste collectors are required to provide a 3-bin waste segregation service. Local authorities must target areas with low use of the 3-bin service where provided, to maximise waste recovery.
Local authorities need to target waste enforcement actions to drive compliance with the new national by-product criteria for greenfield soil and stone and waste recovery levy regulations, to reduce construction and demolition (C&D) waste.
The Local Authority Environmental Enforcement Performance Report 2023 is available HEREon the EPA website.
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