Courts will be able to examine any alternative arrangements that could prevent home loss (Stock Image)
A new bill that will enable courts to take home owners' personal circumstances into consideration was brought before the Dáil yesterday.
Kevin 'Boxer' Moran TD said the bill allows courts to consider the circumstances and impact of home loss on residents in the household.
"This bill is about keeping people in their homes. This bill is to ensure there is a correct application of EU law by Irish courts when dealing with home repossession," Mr Moran said.
"On the week before Christmas there were around 25 repossessions taking place in Kerry, 50 in Tipperary, 85 in Athlone and more taking place in Waterford. There were 421 homes repossessed in the third quarter of 2016, according to figures released by the central bank.
"This has led to the unprecedented strain on the State's support housing sector," he said.
He said some 30,000 households are at risk of home repossession, which could cause 100,000 people, including children, to become homeless.
The bill will enable courts to consider the effect of the loss of a home on all the household members, in particular the impact on their physical and mental health.
Courts will be able to examine any alternative arrangements that could prevent home loss.
The courts will also be able to examine the effect repossession would have on children or the availability of suitable alternative accommodation that will allow the household to live together.
The end of the cheap debt era, even for those of us who didn't really feel the benefits, is actually a good thing (Stock picture)
If we know nothing else, its that interest rates are going to rise. Mario Draghi has slashed official rates to zero in a bid to kick start the economy, and the signs increasingly are that it is working.
It is a reality that we need to prepare for - the last credit shock might have come as a surprise, but the next one should not.
When borrowing costs are at an all-time low there is only one way for them to go.
For many borrowers with a cheap tracker loan, the reality of financial normalisation could come as a huge shock. Interest rates for many people could easily double.
That's good news for banks, ironically given all their efforts to strip customers of those same loans. Change will happen faster than expected.
Germany is starting to power ahead. Policymakers and households there won't tolerate low interest rates once things kick into gear. Germany is a nation of savers.
While many people here might see the low interest rates as a benefit, they see it as a tax on prudence.
The end of the cheap debt era, even for those of us who didn't really feel the benefits, is actually a good thing.
The only reason anyone is talking about raising interest rates is because the eurozone's lost decade finally looks like it's drawing to an end. Growth in markets like Germany has never been more important for Ireland. Brexit will hurt our trade with the UK. In the US the economy seems doomed to follow where politics has led.
US President Donald Trump . Photo: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
President Donald Trump yesterday celebrated what he called "a military operation" to round up and deport undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes or caused violence in the United States.
"We're getting gang members out, we're getting drug lords out, we're getting really bad dudes out of this country - and at a rate that nobody's ever seen before," Mr Trump told a group of several dozen manufacturing executives during a policy discussion at the White House.
Mr Trump talked about the trip Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly are making to Mexico this week.
Mr Trump said he told Tillerson, "That's going to be a tough trip because we have to be treated fairly by Mexico."
Trump congratulated Kelly for the work his department is doing to secure the border with Mexico and deport illegal immigrants.
"It's a military operation," Trump said, attributing gang violence and illegal drug trade to illegal immigrants.
Trump's reference to a military operation could raise eyebrows among immigrant rights advocates and even within the Department of Homeland Security.
Federal immigration policy is enforced by several divisions inside DHS, including Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the military has no role.
A leaked DHS proposal last week to deploy Army National Guard troops to help apprehend undocumented immigrants was quickly denied by DHS leadership and the White House as under consideration.
The unions representing border patrol agents and officers have regularly denounced the use of military personnel.
"I do not believe the National Guard to be a good idea," Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, said in an interview.
"We're just setting ourselves up for too much liability with people who have not been trained to do the jobs."
Mr Trump was presumably referring to a series of enforcement actions carried out by ICE two weeks ago that rounded up 683 immigrants purportedly in the country illegally.
Similar raids were carried out during the Obama administration and the department downplayed the significance of the number earliler this month.
"ICE conducts these kind of targeted enforcement operations regularly and has for many years," DHS said.
But immigrant rights advocates have said the directives contained in a pair of memos from Kelly this week would dramatically expand the pool of immigrants who would be targeted for deportations, broadening it well beyond the hardened criminals and new arrivals that had been the priorities under the Obama administration.
Yesterday, Mr Trump portrayed the immigrants targeted as criminals.
"They're rough and they're tough, but they're not tough like our people, so we're getting them out," he said.
President Donald Trump told about two dozen chief executives of major US companies that he plans to bring millions of jobs back to the US, but offered no specific plan on how to reverse a decades-long decline in factory jobs.
In his first month in office, Mr Trump has pressured US companies to hire in the United States but he has yet to publicly propose legislation tackling the big economic issues he campaigned on in 2016, including a job-boosting tax or infrastructure programme.
In his meeting with the CEOs at the White House, Mr Trump said the US had lost one third of manufacturing jobs since it joined the NAFTA in 1994. He also claimed that about 70,000 factories had closed since China joined the World Trade Organisation 16 years ago.
STEVE Bannon, the White House chief strategist, vowed the Trump administration would fight to take the US back from "corporatist, globalist" elites in rare public comments at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Mr Bannon prefers to operate behind the scenes, but his fingerprints are all over President Donald Trump's speeches and policy initiatives, making him an enigmatic, even feared figure in Washington.
But the message was clear yesterday from the former executive at Breitbart News, the Right-wing website.
"If you think they're going to give you your country back without a fight, you're sadly mistaken," Mr Bannon said of the media, warning that relations between the White House and the "opposition party" would only get worse.
Mr Bannon said Mr Trump was intent on implementing policies outlined in his campaign speeches.
The chief strategist said: "He's laid out an agenda with those speeches, with the promises he made, and our job every day is just to execute on that. And he's maniacally focused on that."
He said nationalism would be at the heart of every decision Mr Trump made in office.
"The centre core of what we believe - that we're a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders, but we are a nation with a culture and a reason for being, I think that's what unites us," he said.
Mr Bannon (below) shared the stage with Reince Priebus, Mr Trump's chief of staff.
There has been intense speculation about their relationship, with reports abounding that the insurgent Mr Bannon was "at war" with the more mainstream Mr Priebus, but they insisted they are "dear friends" and partners in enacting Mr Trump's agenda.
"Hold us accountable," Mr Bannon said to the overwhelmingly pro-Trump audience.
Mr Bannon pledged that Mr Trump would doggedly pursue every proposal made during the campaign - dashing the hopes of many establishment Republicans who had hoped that would not be the case.
"We're at the top of the first inning in this and it's going to take just as much fight, just as much focus and just as much determination" as winning the White House, he said.
Rules making it compulsory for sports people who suffer concussion to be removed from play are still being broken, doctors have warned.
Dr Eoin Kelly, specialist registrar in emergency medicine at St James's Hospital in Dublin, said the following of safety protocols was "variable" at amateur sport level.
Dr Kelly is a member of the concussion research interest group (Crig) who will hold a conference on concussion in Trinity College Dublin today on the eve of Ireland taking on France in the Six Nations rugby clash at the Aviva Stadium.
The group hopes to make progress in finding out what causes concussion and also produce the first national Irish guidelines on concussion.
Dr Kelly said people who suffered concussion were not typically admitted to hospital and there were no figures on how many suffered these injuries.
"There would be many more concussive injuries compared to significant brain injuries.
"There are people who have a head injury and ongoing symptoms but nothing shows up in CT scans," he said.
"They get a bang in the head, complain of headaches, dizziness and nausea, poor sleep and concentration. They tend to describe fogginess in their head or balance problems. They may find they are easily upset with nothing showing up on investigation."
Therapy
They may have to rely on rehabilitation such as occupational therapy to cope with symptoms or take medications to help with problems such as migraine.
Dr Kelly said there were very few solid theories about the cause of concussion.
As part of its research, the group is working with a senior rugby team, carrying out immediate post-match scanning.
This includes scans on players who were injured and those who were not, to allow for comparisons.
"Awareness of concussion and its immediate and delayed effects is growing amongst not only medical, educational and sporting organisations but also the general public," Dr Colin Doherty, consultant neurologist at St James's Hospital, said.
"But there is an urgent need to have a coherent set of national guidelines for recognition and management of mild traumatic brain injury that can reach across organisational boundaries and underpin a proper evidence-based approach to treatment."
Assistant Professor in Genetics at Trinity Dr Matthew Campbell said "getting a handle on the molecular networks at play during and after repetitive trauma to the brain is fundamental in progressing our knowledge in this area".
Today's discussion will include a sporting panel including former Irish international rugby players Keith Wood and Fergus Slattery, as well as the Tipperary hurler Seamus Callanan. The event will be hosted by Eoin McDevitt of 'Second Captains'.
In contrast, Mr Varadkar has told a number of colleagues that he intends to adopt a more hardline approach in relation to dealing with Micheál Martin and his frontbench. Photo: Colin O'Riordan
Although the Fine Gael leadership contest is in its embryonic stages, the two leading candidates have already begun setting out their stalls in a bid to garner early support for their respective campaigns.
Leo Varadkar and Simon Coveney have, in private conversations with colleagues, spelt out how they intend to do things differently than the outgoing Enda Kenny.
The pair have outlined - in very broad terms - their desire to take up the office of Taoiseach in order to make the country a better place.
Please sign in or register with Independent.ie for free access to Opinions.
Vietnamese woman Doan Thi Huong, who has been arrested by Malaysian police over the murder of Kim Jong Nam, poses for a photo during a motor show in Hanoi, Vietnam July 16, 2016. Photo: Reuters
A NEW picture has emerged of the Vietnamese woman suspected of helping to kill North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother in Malaysia, posing on a motorbike in a bikini.
Doan Thi Huong worked at an entertainment outlet, according to Malaysian police, who arrested her along with an Indonesian woman over the murder of Kim Jong-nam last week.
Huong is a keen singer whose Facebook pages feature pouting portraits and pictures of parties. Four days before Kim Jong Nam was killed at a Malaysian airport, she appears to have posted a picture of herself wearing a shirt emblazoned with the acronym "LOL", similar to the one on the fleeing suspect caught on CCTV cameras.
The latest picture of Huong to emerge shows her posing in a flowery white bikini and twirling her hair flirtatiously. It is understood she was working at a motor show in Hanoi, Vietnam.
Earlier today, Malaysian police said VX nerve agent, a chemical the United Nations classifies as a weapon of mass destruction, was used to kill Kim Jong Nam.
Read More: Malaysian police say chemical weapon was used in murder of Kim Jong Nam
He died on February 13, shortly after being assaulted at the airport in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur, by two women who wiped the chemical on his face as he prepared to board a flight to the Chinese territory of Macau.
Vietnamese Doan Thi Huong is seen in this undated handout released by the Royal Malaysia Police: Royal Malaysia Police/Handout via Reuters/File Photo
South Korean and U.S. officials have said they believe North Korean agents assassinated Kim Jong Nam. He had been living with his family in Macau under Beijing's protection and had spoken out against the North Korean regime.
Malaysian police were investigating whether the VX - which is believed to be the most toxic known nerve agent and is banned globally except for research - was brought into the country or made there.
"If the amount of the chemical brought in was small, it would be difficult for us to detect," police chief Khalid Abu Bakar told reporters.
The two women suspects - one Vietnamese and the other Indonesian - are in police detention along with a North Korean man. Seven other North Koreans are wanted in connection with the case, including a diplomat at the embassy in Kuala Lumpur.
Malaysia has repeatedly urged the victim's family to come forward to help with the inquiry, while North Korea has demanded the body be handed over to its embassy directly, sparking tension between the two usually friendly countries.
Malaysia's chemical weapons analysis unit found traces of VX, or S-2 Diisopropylaminoethyl methylphosphonothioate, on swabs taken from the eye and face of the victim, according to police.
"Other exhibits are under analysis," Khalid said in a statement, citing a preliminary report.
Police have said the two women were paid to carry out the assault and had been told to wash their hands before fleeing from the airport. They had rehearsed the attack in shopping malls before carrying it out on Kim.
One of the women had suffered from the effects of the chemical and had been vomiting, Khalid said.
Airport camera footage released on Monday by Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV shows the moment they assaulted Kim Jong Nam.
In later clips he is seen asking airport officials for medical help, and rubbing his eyes and stumbling as he entered an airport clinic. Authorities said he complained of dizziness and died on the way to hospital.
Authorities raided an apartment in an upscale Kuala Lumpur suburb on Wednesday in connection with the killing, but no chemicals were found, said an official with direct knowledge of the matter.
VX is tasteless and odourless, and is outlawed under the Chemical Weapons Convention, except for "research, medical or pharmaceutical purposes". It can be manufactured as a liquid, cream or aerosol.
Experts say it has no commercial uses.
"This is not something you make in a kitchen lab. This is something that is made in a very sophisticated chemicals weapons lab," said Bruce Bennet, a senior defense researcher at the California-based RAND Corporation.
North Korea is believed to have the world's third-largest stockpile of chemical weapons, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative project, which analyses weapons of mass destruction.
South Korean analysts have identified sarin and VX as the focus of the North Korean chemical weapons programme.
VX in liquid form can be absorbed into the body through skin or eye contact and does not evaporate easily.
After giddiness and nausea, exposure to VX quickly progresses to convulsions and respiratory failure before death, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
It can be fatal after 15 minutes, according to the U.S. Army's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.
Police chief Khalid said authorities intended to sweep Kuala Lumpur airport, and other locations the suspects had visited, for "radioactive" material.
VX is not known to contain radioactive elements and Reuters calls to police for clarification went unanswered.
Malaysian authorities on Thursday requested Interpol to put an alert out to apprehend four North Korean suspects who are believed to have fled from Malaysia on the day of the attack.
They also want to question the second secretary at the North Korean embassy, though he has diplomatic immunity.
The murder has strained relations between North Korea, which has been increasingly isolated in response to its nuclear and missile programmes, and Malaysia.
North Korea has said Malaysia should be held responsible for the killing of one of its citizens, though it has not acknowledged that the victim is the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Malaysia has recalled its ambassador from Pyongyang for consultations.
