 An opposition amendments to the redress scheme for the survivors to limit time for the chief deciding officer's decision at making. Deputy Pringle says time cannot be wasted in putting the unequipped legislation in place. As soon as practical words when you see them in legislation, that just sends a chill down my spine because I know that that's as soon as practical for people in the real world and as soon as practical for people in the legislative world and in the world of government and dealing with it are two very different things. God knows most always people are known to say and should be known to say and so that should be much deciding in terms of what's needed in relation to it. Whether or not I dry today with some sunny spells, high as temperatures off seven to nine degrees. That's all from Highland Radio News for now, we'll be back with news again at 10 o'clock. Until then, good morning. It's not just that Sarah can't rely on the reins to come this year. It's not just that the only water left could cost her her life. It's not just that she has seen all her crops destroyed and she is struggling to feed her little boy. Like thousands of parents living in regions devastated by drought, Sarah is living in fear and it's not just. This lends your help can make all the difference. Visit trocra.org or call 1-800-408-408. Trocra. Together for a just world. The county's number one talk show, the 9 till noon show on Highland Radio. And a very good morning to you. This is the 9 till noon show on Highland Radio. Donald Kavanaugh with you on the show this morning on tail 12 noon. It's Monday. It's the 27th of February and it's a chilly enough morning but hey, it's day dry. So if you were out walking this morning, it was a nice morning for a walk and if you're thinking of going out, well, it's still nice out there at the moment. So get on those walking shoes and out you go, it'll do us all good. We start with the newspapers as always but before we go there, let's just talk about contacting the show because as we always say, we have a long program lined up for you today with a lot of very interesting items. But most importantly, the show is here to take your views, listen to your opinions and listen to your perspectives on the events of the day, both in the northwest and further afield. If you want to call us, you can do so on 0749125,000. Donna Marie is producing and taking your calls on you, taking your calls outside as well. You can also text or WhatsApp us on 0866025,000. You can contact us via social media. It's at Highland Hub on Facebook. It's at Highland Radio on Twitter. We're also on Instagram and Snapchat and all the others. You can watch the show live, by the way, on our Facebook pages and also on our Highland Radio Ireland YouTube channel as well. So if you want to watch the program, you can do so. And a very good morning to all of you who are watching today. We begin, as I said, with the papers. It's a Monday, which means we have the Monday edition of the Donegal News main story starts at a concert marks 50 years of ornagy, 300 guests attend a celebration at Ertland, Gwydor to celebrate rally on the Gwelford. There's 50 years on the air and congratulations to them. They provide a great service for the Gwelford parts of the county. They had the cream of the crop in a keogel from Donegal to Rhone Derry and Belfast as well. Lovely picture of Alton and Nimuni on stage in Gwydor there. Also on the front of the Donegal News story, we are going to return to a little bit later in the program. And that is the story of Falkara Hospital to get an upgrade, refurbishment work that will bring the hospital to 100% capacity will begin before the summer. The HSC has published its tender documents. A section of the unit's actually been closed since early last year because of the condition of the building. Good news there. In Falkara, that work is set to begin later this year. We'll, as I say, be returning to that a little later on and speaking to one of the local councillors in that area. Derry News this morning. Zero Waste Northwest withdraws support from Council. The Zero Waste Northwest organisation has withdrawn its endorsement of Derry City and Sturrand District Council's Zero Waste City Region status. The organisation says it lost confidence in any real ambition on the part of the council to become a Zero Waste City. However, the group hasn't closed the door to the possibility of a real partnership between the council and itself in the future. And also 50 years in show business, Felix Healy makes a presentation to Willie Barrett to mark his 50th year in show business at Celebration Function held in the Abercorn Bar in Derry. And that story covered in the Derry News as well. Moving on to the Nationals, Irish Independent. Former Thesha Gendikeni on the mend after cancer op-hies in robust good health and well on the road to a full recovery, we're told. And that's Gendikeni, their big photograph. Also on the front of the paper, the great fixed rate mortgage Cliff Edge. Borrowers warned they could face repayment hikes of €500 a month following spiralling interest rates. Thousands of homeowners, Charlie Weston writes, coming to the end of fixed rate mortgages have been warned they face hikes of almost €500 in their monthly repayments. Around 50,000 homeowners will roll off fixed rates in the next three years. Those who have their rates fixed at 2.5% over five years could now be facing a 5.9% interest rate instead. Front of the paper also has that horrific story that we saw over the weekend. Children among dead as nearly 60 migrants perish in Italy shipwreck. Almost 60 people including children died after a boat carrying around 150 migrants crashed into rocks in rough seas off the southern Italian coast. Front of the Irish Times this morning. Soon I could to sign an N.I. protocol deal with EU. You've been hearing the story with Michaela on News All Morning of course and over the weekend with Jade as well. The British Prime Minister is expected to seek cabinet approval and make a statement with regards to a deal with the EU on the protocol. The focus now shifts to Donaldson's reaction and the potential restoration of power sharing. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the President of the European Commission Ursula van der Leyen will meet in the UK today with a view towards signing that new agreement on the Northern Ireland protocol. It follows months of negotiations but everyone is warning. While we're close we haven't signed on the dotted line yet and there's many a slip, twist, cup and lip and know her is that phrase more appropriate than in Northern Ireland and when it comes to discussions on things like the protocol. Also a really stunning photograph on the front of the Times. A photograph of breeding frogs taken in the Dublin Mountains ran a temporary or the common frog is Ireland's only native species of frog they breed in early spring. Now I have to confess I am looking at that picture this morning and I suspect some other people of a certain age maybe 50 plus shall we say we're all doing the same thing in our heads we're all going bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum and Donna Marie is looking at me because she is a a rather younger person than I am. Donna Marie is looking at me going what is he doing? Donna Marie trust me anyone over 50 knows exactly what that means I'll tell you later I promise. Onious looking at me weirdly as well for exactly the same reason because you know what yeah it's probably true that Onious and Donna Marie's age combined still doesn't come close to mine that's the truth. Irish Daily Mail this morning relief for renters as vacant properties targeted measures designed to avoid a cliff edge on homelessness as eviction ban set to be ended new measures to protect renters are being planned by the government and it fears that thousands could face homelessness if the eviction ban is lifted Christian McCashen writes the moratorium on evictions is due to lapse at the end of March and while the government hasn't yet decided if it'll be extended a range of measures are being explored to avoid a cliff edge scenario. Now we know at Donegal County Council level locally certainly the council has been looking at this whole issue of vacant properties and how vacant properties can be used for homing people and indeed letter Kenny municipal district millford municipal district recently had a very lengthy discussion about the fact that the area and in particular the town now qualifies for this latest round of urban development funding and there's a big emphasis there on vacancy and dereliction and taken vacant and derelict homes and buildings and bringing those back into use so that there is a huge push on this both locally and nationally it seems as well and I know certainly Donegal County Council over the course of the past year there hasn't been I would I would confidently say there hasn't been a plenary meeting of Donegal County Council that issues of vacant buildings and dereliction and housing have not been raised and obviously there is an added dimension to the whole housing issue in Donegal because of course we now have the prospect over the next five years plus and probably five years and quite a few years added on to that we'll have the prospect of defective block homes being demolished and rebuilt and people having to live in alternative accommodation while their homes are being demolished and rebuilt or being restored to their proper and I think in most cases it now appears if we're to be realistic it now does appear that in most cases it is going to be demolition and rebuilding so we have that added dimension to the housing issue here that as well as your standard level of people who are homeless you also have people who are going to need temporary accommodation because of the circumstances they find themselves in and that's an ongoing debate and discussion modular homes one of the issues being discussed of course whether that's going to come to anything remains to be seen but right at this point in time the government does seem to be blowing cold on that particular idea but I know a lot of councillors locally are keeping up that pressure let's move on to the Irish Daily Mirror, pals pay tribute, stabbed teen loses fight for life, tributes have been paid to a teenager who died last night following an alleged knife attack Marius Mamalagia apologies for that pronunciation by the way passed away three days after suffering a neck wound in a car in County Dublin pals raised over 10 and a half thousand euro for his family and that's the front of the Irish Daily Mirror the same story is on the front of the Irish Daily Star forever in our hearts one of the phrases on that post put up by friends of Marius after they raised over ten thousand five hundred euro for his family and one friend said he will be forever in our hearts also on the front of the Irish Daily Star a really horrible horrible story find the callous mob who drowned my dogs a distraught man has spoken out of his heartbreak after sick thugs drowned his two pet dogs in a barrel during a burglary at his home Ciaran Gunnar Cunningham said he wants the evil burglars to face justice for the callous killing of his two pets Penny and Poppy it happened at his home in Artvinan in County Deborary on February 11th and and that is a indeed a horrendous story let's look at the front of the Irish Sun a cork woman in spite claim unmasked Russian agent Indole a picture of an Irish citizen who's been accused of being a Russian spy by Australian officials Marina Soligub 39 who worked in the doll is being booted out of Australia following a security operation by intelligence chiefs down under a former finagle TD Bernard Allen for whom she worked said I am gobsmacked Connish to me Hall Martin has revealed that she is seeking Irish consular help that's the story of Marina Soligub who previously worked in the doll and it's now it appears being treated as a potential Russian agent by the Australians and is being kicked out of that country well that's the way it's looking on the 9 to noon show for the moment we're going to take a short break back after these the newspapers are courtesy of Kelly Centra mountaintop letter Kenny the 2022 seastore national off-license of the year in changing times you need the right support to take the next step in building your business at Bank of Ireland we're here to support the financial well-being of your business as it grows with faster easier loan applications and dedicated business teams when you need them search Bank of Ireland business Bank of Ireland begin lending criteria terms and conditions apply over 18s only Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland the great value menu at Kelly's diner in Hedder County is packed full of family favorites try one of the famous jakes burgers a mouth watering pancake stack or an all-day breakfast bring a friend or bring all the family and enjoy the midterm kid's deal for just 650 with free ice cream to top it all off great food and great value at Kelly's award-winning diner mountaintop letter Kenny we at Highland radio love Irish music and we want to show our support throughout Irish music month this March in partnership with hot press magazine we're asking you to support the irish musicians artists and bands who make every party every drive home and every day magic that's right to celebrate irish music month on Highland radio we're asking you to support iris artists and musicians by buying irish albums irish tickets irish t-shirts and irish music merch irish musicians have shown that they are right up there with the best in the world so let's support them by buying irish proudly supported by Highland radio hot press ibi and the bai sound and vision fund this is the nine two noon show on Highland radio just as some of your comments uh texts and queries that have been coming in i got a text message from esp saying i was eligible for a discounted electricity uh under the energy support scheme you can apply here and then there was a link i opened it and it showed a government dot ie page i then started to fill it in until they asked for my bank details that's when i got suspicious i'm wondering if that's a scam and if any of your listeners got that text now i'm not aware of that particular one poll it does sound a bit suspicious and i'll tell you the reason i say that because to my mind if someone is offering you um discounted electricity surely the first thing that they're going to either ask for or give to you is your account number now i and i mean your account number with your provider so to my mind if someone is is is offering you a discount with the esp my thought on it would be that you know your esp or be it whatever provider be you energy or board gash or or whichever provider you're with i would have thought they would number one know that and number two they would ask you for your account number if they're asking straight for your bank account details without anything else that does sound fishy to me but what i would do is i would contact your electricity provider whoever that may happen to be and and run it by them um it it may be genuine and certainly if there's an opportunity to get some sort of a deal i wouldn't give it up but it does a there is a distinct quiff of macro of that one to me but i am naturally suspicious of that sort of stuff and i know i've actually missed on messages because i refuse to open anything that i do not know what it is and i have actually missed genuine messages from friends as a result but i would always play these better safe than sorry game and if i am not familiar with the item in question i will not open it i'm going to go to adan on line one adan good morning to you how you doing adan you your son has asked burgers and is reliant on bus airing to get around but there are inconsistencies in the service that are causing problems that's right yeah my son currently attends the national learning network um employability skills program in letter county um he's dependent on getting the bus we live rurally um and the only way for him really to attend this education is to be reliant on on a bus service um as you've mentioned there he has asked burgers which means he finds it extremely difficult to be in crowds he finds it very very difficult as well to deal with uncertainty so um what he's been faced with um is is proven extremely challenging to him um i suppose if we go back to september of last year when he when he started with national learning network um i would have because of this was such a big step for him um literally until that point he would have been getting a minibus from his home taking him to school and the minibus would have been taking him back so all of this idea of going getting a bus was a completely new thing to him so for a few times i would have went on the bus journey with him uh in order you know that he knew what he had to do um and on all of them occasions the bus was so lit it was ridiculous um it you know like we're talking about a bus that's meant to leave at half past three yeah that's never left at the earliest point before quarter to four um and frequently consistently past that time um and really we we found that the only way to deal with this was that um i needed to organize alternative arrangements for my son yeah that worked that worked for uh up until about a week or so ago and really it became clear that he needed to um be attending a longer period of training which meant that he needed to to get this half past three bus home and um on the first day which was this which was monday there last week and the bus didn't leave until um four o'clock on on tuesday the half past three bus left letter county at half past four um and you can imagine the distress that my son was going through um you know not knowing when the bus was going um he was dependent on um get my left as well from where the bus would drop him off as well so i just presented him with an awful lot of anxiety yeah i can give you we we we put your case to to busserin um and we do have a statement from them adan and the statement just says and i'll read this for you um busserin fully appreciates the importance of reliable bus service to all passengers and apologizes to customers where this is not delivered we recognize that uncertainty around departure times can be stressful through the month of january fewer than 20 of services on the route in question uh were delayed however there have been particular issues around the afternoon services which are impacted by the extensive roadworks around letter kenny this is unfortunately not always predictable and is outside busserin's control and is likely to continue for a number of months in relation to any other delays that should not happen and we encourage customers to contact us in the event that such issues arise when provided with specific dates and times we can address such matters as they arise and then details of contacting and i'm sure you have the details of contacting the customer supports and the complaint lines and so on so effectively what they're saying is this is all down to and we know there have been big roadworks on on on the four lane route going into the town at the moment and that has been causing issues uh is is that uh do you accept that excuse or do you think that's just something busserin is using as an excuse absolutely flap trap um is is my answer to that um first of all the bus is consistently left the bus has never arrived something the bus actually has been at the bus depot this is the thing and the bus has been on site at the bus depot well before half past three yeah and so for busserin to suggest um that that that you know maybe it hasn't arrived at the bus depot it's a complete fiction an absolute lie yeah i i i in fairness in i i i i i i i cannot stand over that word um and i i don't understand we have read a statement from the company i i i would rather not stand over that word if you don't mind so i would ask you to withdraw that particular well please i would i would point out my observation yeah that's that's that's that's that's that's been consistently left the next thing is the bus has not left you could not arrive on time um and the third point being that the the inconsistency of this bus service yeah um is is um has implications for a lot of people for example for my son if you know if this continues i can see him giving up his education and and that is the last thing anybody wants adan thank you very much indeed for speaking to us this morning we people will hear what you've had to say hopefully busserin are going to pay attention to this as well and and they will take a look at what's actually been happening uh with regards to the the situation uh on on that project thank you very much thank you very much indeed that's adan they're speaking to us now uh we were speaking earlier during the newspaper review about issues of housing delighted to say that i am now joined on zoom this morning by ono brinn who is the shin fane housing spokesperson at debbie o brinn good morning to you uh good morning debbie uh hang on are we on the uh debbie o brinn good morning um i do i do have debbie o brinn on zoom but i can't hear him i'm not sure if he can hear me uh debbie good morning no i i don't hear debbie o brinn at present so if you bear with me what i'm going to do is i'm going to take a very quick break with apologies to to debbie o brinn particularly if he can hear me uh i just don't have contact at the moment i want to take a very quick break and we'll be back after these watch the show live now on youtube facebook and at highland radio dot com hey uh 11 years sir 11 years oh my god is everything okay you and paugh no oh jane there's plenty more fish in the ccpc money too breaking up with your bank quick find another match with ccpc's free independent current account money tool find your new account now at ccpc.ie forward slash move from the competition and consumer protection commission change is happening in letter kenny and for the better letter kenny medics is a new private clinic opening soon offering private health care dr. mohammed and dr ripu welcome new patients to their clinic conveniently located on the port road open seven days per week from 10 a.m to 10 p.m offering full medical checkups including a full cardiac screening with echo assessments of minor injuries and the facility to complete minor surgeries without the long waiting times to register visit letter kenny medics dot e or call 085 867 5341 letter kenny medics we listen if you want to talk keep out the cold cold cold and ring flaming for their full range of garage doors agri doors insulated doors milking parlor doors flaming 91 48 234 the annual general meeting of the irish natura and hill farmers association dunigal county executive will be held in the clanry hotel letter kenny on monday the 27th of february at 8 p.m mr charlie mcconnellog td minister for agriculture food and the marine will be in attendance members and non-members are welcome and you're welcome back to the 9 to noon show now sadly we did have a zoom link with uh ono brinn today but we do appear to have lost it so apologies for that hopefully we will establish contact with w brinn because obviously we were going to discuss homelessness and issues of the eviction balance one and so forth and its potential extension and their important issues which we want to discuss with him just looking at some of your comments before we move on um we did that one that's the esp one uh yeah another caller actually has has come in saying i got a text scam from someone pretending to be the esp i rang them to check it out so if you're in doubt just ring them up absolutely i would say that uh caller says donal i'm 47 the song was the frog chorus by paul mccartney it absolutely was well done i absolutely love that piece of music i have to be honest and a lot of people will look at me various scans for this if i were to sit down and do a list of my top five favorite songs that paul mccartney has recorded certainly as a solo artist the frog chorus is absolutely up there in the top five if not the top three uh when it comes to the Beatles it would be a little bit lower down in fairness but no when it comes to paul mccartney the frog chorus absolutely loved if you don't know what i'm talking about look up paul mccartney frog chorus on youtube an absolutely wonderful piece brilliant absolutely brilliant now let's move on uh we didn't get uh deputy ono brinn but uh we can go to different deputy uh joining us online one deputy thomas pringle uh thomas good morning good morning donal however yeah very well indeed um in the doll recently deputy pringle uh and you can hear this recording on our website highlandredio.com you have been reading the statements from some mother and baby home survivors into the doll record and you're expressing grave concern that once again uh promises of redress are going to be delayed and cans are going to be kicked down the road and survivors are going to be left hanging in limbo yeah i think it's jacqueline donal however the government has handled this whole redress scheme in relation to the mother and baby home survivors over the house seemingly picked this arbitrary um six months cut off points where basically if you had been in a modern baby home up to five months and 30 days old you wouldn't be entitled to redress whereas if you were there to your six months old you are entitled you are entitled to redress and it seems to be only um a rather brutal way of trying to save money that the state is doing because we can't get any assets from the department as to why they've they've come up for this figure or what's the right now for a right and what this figure was so it seems that it is only to try and save money and that seems to be the only way and it's just shocking that it continuously the abuse of the mother baby home uh survivors continues on and the state continues to do it and i do believe that we probably will have to be uh back addressing this again and making uh conversation claims available to everybody right regardless of how long it's been in nursing home now i know you you did back opposition moves last week to actually have that time limit scrapped and to have the the process uh sped up we heard uh very very interesting testimony that all actually from debbie richard boyd barrett who himself was adopted and himself is one of those who went through that system as a baby so he was able to give his own very personal perspective but uh the fact that you then read into the record the testimony of many of the mothers as well as some of the children that that added another dimension to that debate that did need to be heard yeah i think it was very important that i do that because we were receiving a lot of contact from people who had gone through modern baby homes and given their own personal testimony and they wanted they wanted to have their voices heard and they wanted to know that they were being asked into and then so the state wasn't wasn't interested so i thought it was important to put that on the record and you know and some of them were quite harrowing the stories as well and um you know i think it's important that those would be on the record so that um we know what we're what we're dealing with and we know that the people that they're the state is targeting them being so doing such a wrong to begin and and that's that's the thing that's that's really main problem about this is how the state decided to do this again but i think it's i think it's probably symptomatic of this when you have a state that decides everything on value and money and one has the value of every wrong and every thing that the state does well then this is what you get yeah now i i don't want to get ludicrous sort of too semantic on words with you but there was one uh phrase that you sort of said sent a chill up your spine and that phrase was that the government will will act and put measures in place as soon as is practicable now one of the things with that phrase is many people sort of confuse the words practicable and practical and now there are actually two very different words practical means whenever it's convenient practicable means whenever it's possible now you seem to be suggesting that the government is using the word practicable but what it actually means is practical well it's it's it's been nice it's been practical but i think it's i think the government is a way of putting it on the wrong finger and you know and and people's understanding like the minister is adamant that the government is intent on moving quickly and then solving all these issues but the warden and the legislation doesn't provide for that and you know and if he was intent on doing this he would have had no problem with putting in the time frame that the that the opposition was proposing that they would deal with a certain period of time whatever that would be but that's not there and that's warden and the legislation allows it to be basically how long it's been and we've got the government to say it's as practical as not as it could be could be 10 years from now as well you know and that's that's the warden thing and that's that's the thing that shows that they're wrong it's going to continue on and that has been done to people it sort of begs the question has nothing been learned from some previous schemes because when you look even look right back to Bridget McColl and and the hepatitis scandal and and things like that it appears that history is repeating itself in in a way that one would have thought surely someone be it in the political government or in the permanent civil service government has learned from the past no i think i think the only thing they've learned is that they need they want to cut out and they might want to pay it out and they want to make it more difficult for people to get compensation for you know that's where the state has completely wronged people and done terrible things and it's about the state being responsible and and making sure that the people know that the state is responsible for this and you know and you need to combine what was happening this legislation with what the teacher has been saying over the last couple of weeks you know that it's a choice between we'd pay for this stuff or we pay for childcare now the manager we pay for the health services now at the moment you know the reality is that the state did this the state has to pay for it because that's the only way that the state actually recognizes that it's done any wrong and it's not a question of either or it's a question of that we have to do both do you believe the government is trying to kick this into touch until after the next election yeah i think it's going to say that i think the government is trying to kick this into touch some other government can deal with it might even be the same government again it'll be but they don't they don't care about it it's just a short term thinking and short term working you know and that means that we'll have to constantly come back and read that the decision to get in the future and that's not fair on the people that have had suffered for so many years through it and and indeed it's not fair on the citizens that are here now as well they're living under a new system supposedly new system where this wouldn't happen but it's not fair on them either but the company has to be addressed another issue that you have been addressing in the dull in recent days is that of the eviction ban that ban is due to end in in the coming weeks there are strong calls which i i believe you are supporting to have that eviction ban extended we're reading this morning in papers that the government is now looking at utilizing vacant homes as a potential answer to the housing crisis um you i take it wouldn't have too much confidence in that strategy now i mean vacant homes have been there for an awful long time and the government has been talking for a long time about trying to do something with them now it's going to be a solution to the eviction ban um of vacant homes i'm hardly going to actually take control of them to uh have people who have been evicted in the event of them i don't see how that's going to work um and the eviction ban is a necessary tool in the crisis that we have at the moment um and i don't think anybody would in that you should have been a permanent banner and you got there but it is necessary and um you know because people are being evicted into homelessness and it's happening right across the country we have we now have 1400 children living in homeless and as homeless across the country and that figure has been consistent it's gone up slightly over the last couple of years but the some of those children have moved out of homelessness and other children come in so it's actually probably maybe four or five thousand children that have been being homeless at some period over the last three or four years and that's that's shocking figures and we can't allow that to continue and unfortunately the only thing we can do is at the moment is make sure that there's no eviction eviction ban and make sure that the families aren't evicted into homelessness uh i think that has to be the that has to be the greater good at the moment and um and that has to be uh has to be worked on and pursued by actively by the government but i don't want the government are going to do that and as we've said uh and added dimension to the the housing question in this county as you yourself have indeed reflected uh in in recent speeches in the doll the um demolition and reconstruction of homes affected by defective blocks means there's going to be a lot of people looking for temporary accommodation and that's going to put an extra pressure on the housing market and presumably the rental market as well here in Donegal yeah that's right and it's going to make it even more difficult and indeed maybe a lot of the houses that that may be available our second rental properties would be affected by uh make it as well you know so they wouldn't be available either like you know and this is going to be a huge problem and i think the council should have been should be a lot more proactive and should be actually at the stage now of dentifying sites for um temporary housing like the like the the um i can't remember the name now but the basically the modular housing sorry the modular housing should be a density now because that's that's what we're going to have to have and future to ensure that there's enough houses repaired and that people will somewhere to live while their houses are being repaired and i think that system could be used um and to be quite quite successfully if they get done the road now and actually identify sites and make sure that those sites are serviced with water sewage and electricity so that when the modular homes come that they'll actually be moving very quickly because that's the delay i think in a lot of the modular sites is that the services aren't there and aren't ready for the modular homes on the commandant it's the only option that we have at the minute because where are the families going to go at the moment who are going to be moved out of make a home to whether they're repaired because the reality is like if we're going to deal with this make issue we're going to have to be repairing a lot more houses annually than have been done at the moment and you're going to be even if we if we repair 200 houses a year we're still going to be at least 15 years dealing with the make issue you know so we have to do something and we have to be prepared to do something and unfortunately i don't think that don't think all kind of council are actually doing that i think they're waiting for the department to tell them that they want to go with the modular housing option and then provide money for them to do it and then the council then will start the ball rolling out which will be meaning that they'll be losing another year and a half two years but in in in fairness to the council i mean i think there's potentially an argument to say the council is really stuck between a rock and a hard place because on the one hand the council is being told by government implement this scheme you manage it you run it you do everything that needs to be done but the government at the same time is limiting the amount of money it's giving to the council and if the council isn't being given money by the government to progress the modular homes idea the council is going to have to take that money from other areas from its own housing budgets from its own roads budgets or whatever and then the council is going to be falling short when people start demanding where's our services yeah but then the council can make the case to the government that this is what's happening and you know but the problem is that the council starts waiting for the government to say that they're going to actually do something on it too much time it's going to be lost so you you've done a good concert should effectively take the lead and you use its own resources to start on the modular homes and then try and claim that money back from government well at least start preparing the site yeah so that when the modular homes are actually the problem is like the government can decide tomorrow oh yeah well you can have a modular homes but the problem is that the sites have to be prepared and you know it's and from the government from the point of the government saying it to the actual sites being purchased sites being prepared and you know water sewage electricity and everything but then you can look in it probably a year and a half before all that's in place before actual modular homes or if they go on site and people can be ready to move into them now and that's that's unfortunately that's right I think it's a reality on this situation now there may be land that the council owns already that's available and they can start working on but I think they should be doing the groundwork now to make sure that when the government actually gets our act together and makes a decision in relation to modular homes at the council in a position to deal with that and respond very quickly W. Thomas Pringle thank you very much indeed for speaking to us this morning thank you thank you indeed W. Thomas Pringle there just a call from a person saying redress should be for everyone shame on our government another caller we were speaking about the potential of scams caller says please warn the public there are fake 50 euro notes in circulation at the moment we are a charity we just found one in one of our collection areas so fake 50 euro notes in circulation at present please to be aware of it you will recall over the past few weeks there's been a lot of discussion about pedestrian crossings in the Balaba Faye area one in particular close to Glenfinne Street in Balaba Faye we've had a note from a man saying I was approaching that road and there was a man crossing quickly in grey black attire on a black and white crossing he was very difficult to see this is an accident waiting to happen the crossings need to be lit to save lives and injuries now we know there is a pilot program with these crossings that don't have lights attached to them and that's happening around the country now it seems from chatting particularly to councillor Patrick McGowan in the Finn Valley area that's what's happening is there are pilot areas in I think if I recall it's Limerick Dublin and Balaba Faye and Stranora but what they're doing is they're doing different things in each so they can assess and compare and contrast so they have big signage before the crossings in Limerick but they don't have signage in Donegal and they don't have lights on the ones in Donegal and certainly from what this caller is saying a person sees the road marked out as a pedestrian crossing and may well assume I can absolutely cross here with impunity this is a crossing and people will know it's a crossing the motorists approaching the crossing either doesn't know there's a crossing there because there's not enough signage but also you know can't see the person because you've got a person dressed in gray dark clothing on a black and white marked crossing that doesn't have any lights on it so that is as our caller says an accident waiting to happen and thanks indeed for the call and please do be aware on those crossings now just got a note saying the road from convoy to refoe is very slippy especially on corners now I don't know if that's to do with frost or if it's to do with something else but please if you're traveling on that road between refoe and convoy very slippy we're told particularly on the corners and please do be careful local enterprise week is back and 2023 is all about finding that spark to inspire you to start grow or scale your business running from monday the 6th to friday the 10th of march local enterprise week is organised by local enterprise office Donegal this year's events will stimulate creative thought motivate action and encourage you to be brave in business booking is essential to see the lineup of events and speakers and to book visit local enterprise.ie forward slash Donegal or call 7491 60735 the groundbreaking series is back march first exclusively on disney plus you have removed your helmet you are a mandalorian there's nothing left kid you're ready for an adventure oh yes this is the way the mandalorian season three streaming march first exclusively on disney plus 18 plus subscription required tason c's apply. Donegal town hardware is having a massive doors and floors two-day sale event check out their brand new doors display with huge discounts on all floors doors handles locks architrave and skirting that's the massive doors and floors sale event for two days only this friday the third and saturday the fourth of march at Donegal town hardware green shoes at market square letter kenny are proud to announce that they're now stocking riker footwear riker blend fashionable styles with incredible comfort striking the perfect balance between fashion and practicality all riker shoes are made using unique anti stress and anti shock technology to provide the essential support and comfort the brand is known for try any of the new season riker shoes now at green shoes market square letter kenny highland radio weather updates with irland west airport fly dilly to london hayster with our lingus and connect to 80 plus destinations worldwide including boston and new york irland west airport don't just take off take it easy and looking at the weather forecast midair and tell us it will be dry today with some decent sunny spells top temperature seven to nine degrees celsius in light to moderate easterly or south easterly breezes tonight generally dry with just a chance of some showers temperatures falling between minus one and plus three degrees celsius coolest inland with some patches of frost expected winds very light and the variable tomorrow tuesday it'll be partly cloudy but stay generally dry in top temperatures of seven to nine degrees celsius in light north easterly breezes so that's how the weather is looking on this monday so uh i like those words um dry with some decent sunny spells by the way if you're in western engal or uh around about the the fanat area or even even close to torii i was looking at my facebook page this morning and all i could see all over facebook and social media was pictures of the northern lights it seems there were amazing scenes of the northern lights particularly around west engal and presumably up around the fanat area as well some lovely shots i saw taken uh by maria friend of mine in lox salt and some great shots taken by trevor and by lisa and by carlin and others out in west engal as well around about gedor and the ross is really amazing and we're going to be talking about that a little bit later on but the northern lights by all accounts last night um really looked phenomenal now uh we said during the paper review that falcaro hospital is to get its upgrade it's been um awaiting that since last year's part of the nursing unit is now effectively closed because the building isn't fit for purpose joined on the line by council michael mclaverty from the area michael good morning to you good morning to one of us now uh michael good news from your point of view long awaited for this to be announced and to happen great news doing long way to yes long way to the community just to have a like there um the manager and everything else in the home there um i think i think going forward it's going to be great when it's going to be started and it gets finished there um it's article steps there it's going to be the towards the end of the year should be completed as the plan and hopefully that plan all carries to play in sailing this time to be fair but i think as well here don't want the bigger picture as well this is going to help a lot you've got a 20 plus space and so on there uh the patients are going to be able to get in there both between temporary and and respite and so on that wasn't happening now this last number of years and i think this will be a great asset as well to help the likes of the kennie hospital or possibly elsewhere or even indeed just people people would love ones at home that are struggling to manage on their own alongside the home helps and everything else and it is important for that reason yeah it's important for that reason because as as we always know that one of the biggest challenges that that letter kennie university hospital and other hospitals are facing and and that was acknowledged by the health minister when he was on with greg on the show some time ago that one of the biggest challenges is actually discharging people and knowing that you can discharge someone from the acute hospital into an appropriate setting and if they don't have the appropriate setting at home then you're going to need some form of community respite setting uh temporary bed in the community hospital and the more they can be provided in places like falcara that's the quicker people can leave letter kennie university hospital and it's a win win situation it gets them closer to home it gets them closer to their families it gets them in a sitting where setting where hopefully they'll be more comfortable and their recovery will be more better assisted and it gives the hospital more scope to bring new people into acute beds to give them the treatment they need so this could potentially be and should potentially be a win win situation for all 100% don't like i said when this is when this is completed now it should go in one situation to definitely a game changer such total game changer for at least 20 odd patients whoever they may be at the time and that's all to be welcomed because they're at the moment like any hospital is totally jammed up there at the moment the staff are on the pressure the hospital's on the pressure um there's there's big delays there i'm hearing in the last couple weeks of getting the patients and so on uh there's not enough staff there just the the facilities is not there to deal with everything and and it is when you see the likes of us here now i suppose until this is open to getting now towards the end of the year start of 24 probably only then alone will we see the benefits of this type of situation here that's what you're going to experience now going forward and indeed anywhere else known as well some other type situations that are that are in um there or there about sitting in the same kind of hovering pattern here they need to see need to just do with the can hurry up and get them shorter because then the day we're here in Dunnegal and also obviously we're the forgotten county but we are the forgotten county because all we're looking for we're not looking for anything extra we're only looking for a fair share a fair slice of cake and what's happening here at the mental care they're all they're doing they're getting their slice of the cake at the minute but they should have got along though i appreciate okay covid did knock a lot of things in the head and that's certainly the disrupting there to be fair and we all accept that but covid's waters it's not gone away but we're living alongside it and i think just in general we need to move on forward and um get things done where possible and just stop the the red tape stop and everything else that seems to be cropping up from time to time uh we don't need it it's not it's not it's not well we don't need it for example we're sitting here as well almost what is it i think it's around 80 probably around 80 years now speak at the minute here don't so we talked first spoke to yourself i believe we've heard about it uh the health centre in Nafani we're still nowhere near hand on the health centre primary care centre in Nafani a game whenever i think if and when this gets better in Nafani that's gonna be another game changer but at the moment sadly we're sitting eight years later just got an email there last day a standard email there on on Thursday it was there um i'll talk to her i'm going to talk to her i'm going this last eight years talk to her i'm going since the night that dr steward uh stood up on the holiday in Nafani requesting help i mean talk to her i'm going since that it's no different if i'll get out of home here talk to her i'm going there too how much talking do they need to do to get things somebody to sign off and get things moving like and i think right across the board from vulgar home the primary care centre in Nafani um to get that hurried up and hopefully touch wood hopefully it will come to pass eventually although i'm skipped to you well at the amount of time that i was taking uh living in a hospital we need to get things signed off on quicker and the HSE need to really that and as well as that the HSE need to listen as well both to the patients to the families to the people in the ground don't take from them what's going on hear the experience of what's going on to be fair no matter manager in the hospital or manager wherever they can't be looking at everything 24-7 that's impossible we all appreciate that but when they can't do that they need to be listening to the families even as their suggestion box is there outside the door in the yard throwing your suggestions if you're not comfortable going talking to the manager and as i said i don't remember either before just wanted to uh phone me back to go on with youtube and i would appeal to people appeal to families i know it's difficult situations when you have somebody sick in the house at the moment or somebody sick in hospital but i will say to them please if you are having bad experiences as i'm here in the last number of weeks as my fellow colleagues are as well in the fellow countries are as well on at different times please left the phone send a text write a letter send an email to yourself say a video or whatever to get the word out because until we get the word out people's not going to know what's going on here and when people don't know nothing's going to change and i think that's the big thing we have to beat on the drums bang on them drums do we get done we go all up the scratch here in our health service well certainly when it comes to fulcara certainly when it comes to fulcara the government doesn't necessarily need to be told what the situation is by families because hikwa its own agency the quality authority for the health service has made it quite clear after its last inspection inspection in fulcara that the premises is not up to scratch and it needs to be upgraded and we've seen plans published by the hsc to upgrade those areas indeed we know part of the premises as it stands at the moment is now unusable and is sealed off because it can't be used and and that's been the situation now for the guts of a year and possibly more so it isn't as though the government needs to be told by the families or by the councillors like yourself the government has its own quality agency telling it exactly what the problem is yeah a hundred percent don't have yes the likes of fulcara yes okay that's what happened there but there is other things going on here through our health service that's not getting out there such and that's the things we need to get out there because until everything's out there until all the washing's out there like you know it's just going to get sorted like for example there's there's clearly clearly don't want to be fair many many problems with the monoclonal of the kenning hospital there whatever there may be but no i'm not picking anybody here but i'm just saying whatever there may be and that's where you need the government then to step in no step in there for example send in managers see what's going on if it's no obviously money's clearly going to venice you give them more money give them the resources give them more staff whatever is wrong get it sorted because there's clearly a breakdown in the system there and clearly our health system is breaking down as such and that's just the way i see it from from my point of view don't anyway at the moment and and as you would argue the health you cannot sort of look at the health system and take one element of it in isolation and maybe part of the problem is that we have a system which looks at individual projects and you get funding for x you get funding for y you get funding for z and x proceeds and y doesn't and z is put on the long finger and a goes ahead whereas the actual truth is everything from a to z is interconnected and one development in one area impacts either positively or negatively on another and sometimes you get the feeling you don't get joined up thinking what you have is you've people thinking about hospitals thinking about hospitals people thinking about gp practices thinking about gp practices and people thinking about primary health centers thinking about primary health centers and sometimes they're in the joining offices and it seems they're not talking exactly don't and that's what that seems to be the key here and that seems to be the big problem i i see a lot of the time and hear a lot of the time it's just the joined up thinking is the problem here and certainly you say there one office probably not speaking to the other office and indeed that is the case i know that's for a fact i'll call the speed speed that's what actually what actually is happening in some cases and that's what needs to be needs to be ruled out going forward like these things need to be clarified going forward they need to get talking they need to find a different a different model than what they have at the moment is such yeah because clearly there's a lot of things not just not just not just materialism as they should at the moment to be fair about it and as i say look everybody in health and health service the workers and the front liners they're doing their best but again as the management it's the voice of the top of the government need to take a long hard look at things here and just realize we need to get we need to get common sense going here because unfortunately in some cases that's not happening and certainly in terms of that hospital in fulcara once this work is done it'll open up more space it'll get 20 plus more people able to go to fulcara for that vital care be it rest by care or be it in in step down beds from the acute hospital i know certainly last week we were in the newsroom looking at latest figures from hickaway and one of the hospitals covered in those was the community hospital in carndonough which is due for some some major works and i noticed on its figures the hospital the actual number of people in the hospital at the time of the last inspection was about 20 less than its actual capacity so hopefully you know if you could get 20 more people into carnd get 20 more people into fulcara that's an extra 40 if you can get the long-awaited community hospital built in letter kenny just below the current little angel school site there between little angels and and synconnals if you can get that community hospital up you're talking close to a hundred more beds plus you know some of which will be rest by it and step down so you know the more the more you can provide in the community and then as you say if you can start looking at your your health centers like the one the long and you're correct me and the very first conversation we had was when you were campaigning about the dispensary in dunfana here that's the first conversation i recall having with you and that was as you say quite a while ago and you know if you can get those sorted then they too will take the pressure of the acute hospital and if you can take the pressure of the acute hospital then hopefully that will mean the treatment and the experience in that hospital will improve and it'll be to everybody's benefit council michael mclaverty thank you very much indeed for speaking to us this morning uh we'll take this as a piece of good news for fulcara and hopefully that work will be progressed speedily in the meantime michael thanks very much indeed this is the mountain noon show on highland radio donal cavern with you until 12 midday it's uh one and a half minutes to 10 going to take a short break news and obituary notices with our next new trainers from your favorite brands of bryan mccormick sports brooks asex on running and hoca new hoca clifton nine has a wider 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at the atlantic technological university in letter kenny the event will highlight the opportunities the challenges and the government supports that can help you navigate your green business journey and boost your business performance through digital transformation come along and build a better business to register and to find out more visit enterprise dot gov dot ie change is happening in letter kenny and for the better letter kenny medics is a new private clinic opening soon offering private health care dr. mohammed and dr. repu welcome new patients to their clinic conveniently located on the port road open seven days per week from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. offering full medical checkups including a full cardiac screening with echo assessments of minor injuries and the facility to complete minor surgeries without the long waiting times to register visit letter kenny medics dot ie or call oa five eight six seven five three four one letter kenny medics we listen if you want to talk live on air online and on the highland radio app this is highland radio news good morning i'm a killer clark with the news at 10 o'clock the irish government is hopeful a deal on the northern ireland protocol can be reached this afternoon sources say there's a good chance of an agreement on the protocol later if the meetings in the uk go well british prime minister rishi sunak in european commission president or slavondah lion meet in wednesday at lunchtime former thomas jerry cocklin has called for a sense of respect to return to political life miss cocklin told a recent see her elected event in dunigol that more support is needed for women to become involved at decision-making tables tarjan has more a see her elected event on friday in dunigol town heard that a sense of respect needs to be brought back into political life mary cocklin says we were able to get a woman to outer space before we could get a woman elected to the county councils in the northwest miss cocklin says politics is changing and being from a political dynasty or political family was not necessary in today's society as politics was becoming more inclusive she spoke about the need for women supporting each other and highlighted the importance of resilience and well-being for women in the political arena the former tarnish says she feels respect needs to be brought back into political life respect for those who put their name forward for those who are elected and within the chamber for each other's point of view the justice minister is to face renewed pressure to set up a special task force to deal with violence against gandhi today minister simon harris is to sit down with the garden representative association later following a spate of assaults against members of the force in recent months dunigol based garden brandon o'connor is the gr8 president he says the increased danger is adding to the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis he believes minister harris needs to take urgent steps well the first thing you can do is address the recruitment and retention crisis and get more members uh attested and out on the street so that one guard they're in trouble or when they're out walking there's enough of them there to provide a safe environment for those who are on duty because as we see unfortunately that the trend at the minute is downward in relation to numbers and we seem to be struggling to meet government and targets in relation to recruitment and we also have the retention issue where we have experienced members exiting the exiting the organization of the others on the other side dunigol deputy thomas pringle has warned there must be no delays in mother and baby homes redress decisions in recent days deputy pringle read statements from mother and baby home survivors into the dull record he supported opposition amendments to the redress scheme for the survivors to limit time for the chief deciding officer's decision making deputy pringle says time cannot be wasted in putting the adequate legislation in place as soon as practical words when you see them in legislation that just sent the chill down my spine because i know that that's as soon as practical for people in the real world and as soon as practical for people in the legislative world and in the world of government and dealing with it are two very different things god knows most always people are known to sit and should be known to sit and so this should be much deciding in terms of what's needed in relation to it works to upgrade fulcara hospital is set to begin in the coming months part of the nursing unit is currently closed and raspied admissions paused as the building is not fit for purpose the upgrade is expected to be completed by the end of the year counter michael mccloughby says once fully operational the hospital will provide relief for other areas such as letter kenny university hospital which is under significant pressure the bigger picture as well this is going to help a lot 20 plus beds and so on there uh the patients are going to be able to get in there both between temporary and and respite and so on what's happening now this last number of years and i think this will be a great asset as well to help the legs of the kenny hospital or possibly elsewhere indeed just people people would love ones at home that are struggling to manage on small businesses in the northwest are set to benefit from a new 5.4 million euro european digital innovation hub the hub is to be established to help sms apply cutting-edge technologies and digital skills to their businesses it will support businesses over the next three years and offers expertise in research and development in areas such as artificial intelligence robotics and blockchain technologies whether night dry today with some sunny spells highest temperatures of seven to nine degrees that's all from highland radio news for now we'll be back with an update again at 11 o'clock until then good morning the obituary notices for this monday morning february the 27th the death has taken place of sheila boil ney green fawns termin and formally glasgow remains will repose at her home from three o'clock this afternoon funeral mass on wednesday morning at 11 o'clock cremation in necklands crematorium cavern at four o'clock funeral mass can be viewed on church services dot tv family time please from 10 p.m. until 10 a.m. and on the morning of the funeral the death has occurred of barry clerkin four wolf-torn place glen car letter kenny and balli buffet black rock reposing at the eternal light chapel of rest mountaintop letter kenny from half past two until half past five today concluding with removal to sinjunan's cathedral letter kenny for reception prayers at six o'clock reposing overnight for 11 o'clock requiem mass tomorrow morning which can be viewed on church services dot tv cremation in necklands crematorium cavern family flowers only place donations in lay of wish to brindley manor residents comfort fund care of pascal black funeral director the death has taken place of john doherty 35 bomb main carray road carndonna remains reposing at his home family time please from 11 p.m. to 10 a.m. funeral mass will take place tomorrow morning at 11 o'clock in the sacred heart church carndonna full by cremation in necklands crematorium cavern at half past four family flowers only donations if desired to the dunagal hospice care of any family member john's funeral mass can be viewed live on carndonna parish dot com the death has taken place of bridget bid fletcher nae freel 124 ar patrick glendies and formerly west end bonkrana removal from her late residents this morning going to st connell's church glendies for requiem mass at 11 o'clock with burial afterwards in the local cemetery funeral mass can be viewed live on church services dot tv and the death has occurred of patrick joseph mckelvey rushy hill crossroads killy gordon funeral evening from his late residents this morning at quarter past 10 for requiem mass in st patrick's church crossroads killy gordon at 11 o'clock in term and afterwards in the adjoining church yard the requiem mass will be streamed live on st patrick's church crossroads killy gordon youtube channel donations and leo flowers if so desired to the oncology ward letter kenny university hospital care of any family member for more details including any family health guidelines for wex and funerals please go to hind and radio dot com like to eat well all week at amazing al d prices i like the sound of that feed your family for five euro with a delicious chicken casserole and from february 2nd enjoy super six fresh meat offers like specially selected irish angus steak mince five percent fat now only 3.99 and try our al d savers offers like mummy a mini size two nappy 60 pack save 32 percent now only 179 i don't like it i love it al d every day amazing welcome back to the second hour of the 9 to noon show here on the highland radio with the donal cavena until 12 midday coming up in the next hour we have a a chart with an expert on how to see the northern lights and a very appropriate one as i said we have a lot of pictures on on social media across the northwest this morning of people getting fantastic pictures of the northern lights i will be discussing that with someone from astronomy irland and by the way if you have pictures that you wouldn't mind sharing with us here on highland video why not send your picture into us you can send it via facebook or indeed whatsapp to it to us on 086 60 25 000 and you can of course use that uh 086 60 25 000 number for your whatsapp and text messages to us as well you can also call us on 07 4 60 25 000 donal reproducing and taking your calls and on you taking calls out there as well also coming up in the next hour everything you need to know about the menopause if you have any questions you can send them into us here on highland as we say either via text or whatsapp or indeed you can call us on 07 491 25 000 if you're outside the dialing area by the way it's a double 3 5 3 7 4 9 1 25 000 just a few more of your comments um call us as with regards to that crossing in uh balaba fei i think the crossing is in a good location before you'd have had to walk down to megalohanis to get across i don't know why people are complaining i've seen people for years walking halfway across the road and stopping before continuing on at least now you just cross now i think color in fairness no one is complaining about the crossing per se i think the issue with the crossing is number one it isn't very well signposted so a lot of people are kind of slightly confused as to what its status is is it a legal pedestrian crossing is it an optional crossing are people required to stop now people should stop obviously if you see someone uh standing at a crossing waiting to cross the road uh one would have thought common courtesy and manners would suggest you would stop you don't have to be legally told to but that that is um one question that people ask the other question then is uh the question of lighting it isn't the the location the issue isn't necessarily the location the issue is basically how well is it lit and do people who are on the road know the crossing is there if you haven't got a warning sign and you haven't got good lighting then people may very well be unaware there is a crossing there and suddenly stumble across it and that is something you do not want to happen uh another caller says with regards to uh the hospital in fulcara caller expresses concern it'll be the same as done low it got a big renovation and the space was used for nothing except storage now that does of course raise the next question if you have something like a new extension to a hospital and a potential for um new um services what you also need is the beds the equipment the staff and the ancillary resources and supports to make sure that that space is filled so it's one thing developing space it's another thing and we always say you know there's going to be 20 more beds and sometimes it can sound like that means just going out and buying 20 more beds but that also means 20 more support systems at each bed 20 more oxygen connections 20 more uh connections for various um equipment that may be needed for monitor monitoring or whatever 20 more appropriate power points 20 more areas that can be viewed easily by a nurse and most importantly adequate staff to ensure that the 20 extra patients are cared for in a safe professional and appropriate setting so it isn't just a matter of getting beds it's a matter of getting all the ancillary equipment and supports and staff around those beds so you know it's it's great to build an extension that's not the end of the process that's the start and hopefully that will be recognised by all involved of course it's well done to the term and drama group over the past two weeks at the Kilmachrellen Hall four nights of pure laughter just what people needed well done to all and indeed hats off to all involved in that show in terminates great to see that there's lots of smaller groups around the county that are putting on shows in small community halls in rural areas and it is wonderful to see um i salute you i take my hat off to you and uh congratulations to all callers is why can't people in in a show and get x-rays in carndonna hospital instead of letter kenny that is a very very good question and it's a discussion we've had here before because i mean as and i've said this on numerous occasions and i'll say it again because it bears repeating when the hsc was first inaugurated many years ago and they had the very first meeting of the hsc west regional forums it was called at the time that forums that exists today indeed we have a dunigold chair at present councillor jerry mcmonigold the very first meeting of that forum took place at merlin park in golway and i was at it and it was addressed by the then chief executive of the hsc indeed he was the first chief executive of the hsc a man called brendan drum and brendan drum said at the day that his priority and the hsc's priority was to get people out of acute hospitals and get them treated assessed and diagnosed where possible in their own community setting that is the whole point when we talk about primary care centers in places like newton conningham and there's a very good primary care center just opened there the idea isn't just that the primary care center is a brand new place for your gp to have their base it's also a place where you should be able to go for your x-rays you should be able to go for your tests it you should be able to go for if you need certain treatments you should be able to get them there rather than have to go into the hospital and the idea is that you're keeping people out of the hospital as much as possible and the more you can keep people out of the hospital the more the hospital is then freed up for the people that need it now you also have this situation and i've told the story before where several years ago i had a bad i'm i'm going right back to the 90s i had a fairly bad bout of salmonella and a required hospitalization and i went to my gp and my gp took one look at me and said you need to go to hospital my gp made one phone call and then said to me present yourself on i think it was medical two she said present yourself at medical two at two o'clock this afternoon and i went into the hospital i went up to medical two i was in a bed i'd say within 20 minutes because medical two knew that donal cavern was coming had a report from the gp everything was there i walked in i was processed i was in the bed bang 20 minutes from walking in the hospital door to being in a bed now everything is funneled through the emergency department and there must be more effective time effective and staff effective ways of doing it than that quarter past 10 going to take a short break um obviously if you play highland radio ncbi radio bingo grab your books grab your pens because very shortly we'll be handing you over to come the county's number one talk show the nine till noon show on highland radio it's time for ncbi bingo on highland radio it's monday the 27th of february you're playing on the green sheet the reference number is s one it's game number nine the numbers are 30 37 10 55 4 44 60 14 1 and finally 46 phone your claim to nine one zero four eight double three before eight tonight leaving your name contact number and the name of the shop where you purchased your book and we'll call you back the next working day get all your ncbi bingo information at highland radio dot com are you tired of waiting for treatment or surgery did you know you can receive immediate treatment across the border under the new n i planned healthcare scheme at potentially no cost dunig all patients are still being treated with us at kingsbridge private hospital northwest post brexit the process is easy and our dedicated team will help guide you through it so why wait contact us today to find out how you can skip the waiting lists and receive treatment in northern ireland visit kingsbridge private hospital dot com because life matters do you have a stoma coloplast ireland's free stoma review clinic comes to the radison blue hotel in utter kenny on tuesday the 28th of february registered stoma nurse eileen lim june will review your stoma access your requirements and offer any training or ongoing support you may require for more information or to register for an appointment call coloplast on 019 190 190 forward emphasis international based in malinhead and belfast are actively recruiting for customer service advisors and experienced motor claims handlers with both in-office and hybrid opportunities available fully funded insurance and financial service qualifications delivering attractive career path opportunities are available please visit their website forward emphasis dot i e and apply via their careers page this is an international on the highland radio don't look happen with you on till 12 midday as i said this morning before going for a stroll i was leaving through my facebook page and i just saw friend upon friend upon friend in west dunigal and up in fanat basically anywhere along the dunigal coast that doesn't suffer from light pollution posting some amazing photographs of the northern lights and they were phenomenal photographs of the northern lights and it seems that a dunigal really got a spectacular show last night i'm joined on the line by david more of astronomy ireland david good morning to you good morning david certainly we in dunigal have been getting some phenomenal views of the northern lights has that been shared across the country or are we in a privileged position because of our geography well you're a little bit closer in dunigal but it was seen as far south as tipperary and i'm delighted to say our aurora alert service completely free did predict this yesterday afternoon we told people to go out we were sort of expecting it after midnight but it arrived a few hours early which was great because everybody was awake and around about ten o'clock we started getting reports of people seeing it and it really exploded into view before midnight with rays i was watching it myself shooting a pathway up the sky a fantastic display and we could get more because it's happening right now we can see from satellite imagery that the aurora is extremely active right now hopefully it will last until sunset the sky will get dark over ireland and we'll be treated to more displays that we want people to send us their reports and photographs for astronomy ireland magazine i had the pleasure of visiting tromso in northern norway last summer i did a trip up up the arctic circle with my better half and and we actually got to go to the northern lights museum at the attach the science museum in tromso i'm sure it's a place you've been yourself they have a an international research center there for the oriole boroughs and i was i was looking at sort of some of the pictures and some of the stuff they've got there which was phenomenal but it i have to say what i was seeing a pictures taken from west on the goal last night weren't far off the pictures i was seeing in tromso yes i've been lucky to be there a few times myself we've run tours up to the north of norway to watch the aurora well you'll see it practically every night and we'll be starting those tours again come this winter because the sun goes through an 11 year cycle and we're expecting the maximum activity 2025 and the aurora peaks usually a bit a few years after the sunspot peak so we're coming into sort of the next decade or so it'd be a very good season to see them and what people should remember is that the photographs are excellent because the cameras can take exposures for several seconds and that's more than the human eye can do so what i saw initially was just a band of light low on the horizon couldn't see that it was green get your camera out take a long exposure picture for a few seconds even camera phones could do that these days and you see the band of green you know it's not light pollution or something else going on it's the aurora and then when it got more active you could with the naked eye see the rays shooting up i counted seven of them at one stage they only last a few seconds they're changing all the time it's tricky to get a camera picture that will show the event because you need to make several seconds exposure and they've moved during that time i remember in in norway seeing them and even in a pair of binoculars and you could see them moving in real time so it's an incredible sight to see i mean the thing that struck me from my best tour ever in 2012 was that they say a total eclipse of the sun is the most spectacular sight in nature we haven't had one of those in ireland since 1724 and i've seen a couple myself around the world but i have to say an angry aurora is even more impressive than a total eclipse of the sun so we're hoping we're going to get that tonight we only get an island one percent of the time arctic circle you get a practically every night yeah well i was in the arctic circle in uh june so obviously we saw we we were in the land of the midnight sun so you got a vague dust between a vague dusk between 1am and 3am and actually i was on the tour in the the museum and we did the planetarium as well which is if anyone's ever in trauma so the planetarium is the extreme aurora show is really spectacular uh but i mean there was people asking oh will we see them tonight and she was saying well they're there but you won't see them and and and that that i suspect is the case in ireland most of the time they're there but you just can't see them but what is it about the current weather conditions then that means we can because we know don't you go at the best of times can be misty and murky and cloudy at night and very often things that you get to see further down the country we don't get to see here because almost inevitably what happens is we see astronomy ireland says there's going to be an amazing thing in the sky tonight and mid-air and say cloudy and you can forget about it what what is it about the current weather conditions that makes it so much an optimum situation for the aurora in one word look in ireland the weather forecast for astronomers is really simple it's two words mostly cloudy it turns out on this island about three out of four nights are cloudy you see nothing so we we issue these aurora predictions all the time we've had actually several seen in the last year but you need somebody who's got a clear patch at the right time you have to be in the right place at the right time and as i said in ireland usually it's just a small glow on the northern horizon the island is so small it doesn't really matter where you are you have a lot of reports in denigol and the north coast northern ireland because you're looking out over the ocean there so it's guaranteed to be no street lights in that direction if any glow happens it's almost certainly the aurora but you could see it in cork as well probably you'll have a few towns and cities you'd often send us pictures and there's nothing more than sports and fixtures lighting up the clouds yeah to its people's north and there's i think those conditions with the ocean have attracted a lot of photographers uh in on the north coast but also over on the west coast mail uh looked out nicely into the atlantic as well to get fantastic reports there but we want people to send us their pictures for publication of astronomy on the magazine don't send them all thousands of people took pictures just send your best one and we try and put them into astronomy on the magazine it should happen again tonight do follow us on our social media twitter and facebook especially and we'll when we predict them we'll be able to get you ready for them and then you have to battle with the clouds after that so for instance this one on friday night saturday morning there was a huge explosion on the sun and material was hurled at about two or three million miles an hour towards the earth that takes about two days to get here so we knew it was coming it's not an exact science we can't predict it exactly how strong it's going to be sometimes we predict nothing happens sometimes we don't predict it and and we get in a roar but what's it's fairly good now with all this space weather prediction satellite that that we have the professional astronomers run where we can get a prediction like this so at least 50 percent of the time we're right we did expect a big one last night the word of use was strong a roar in our prediction yesterday afternoon and that's definitely what we got and there there's a call asking me is there any indication as to what would be the best time to see them tonight what it's actually happening right now that there are such like the monitoring the radiation in space and they give us about a half an hour to an hour's prediction of what we should expect on the ground that's really accurate yeah and the interpreting can be a bit tricky but just follow astronomy on social media go to astronomy.ie you'll see facebook and twitter symbols at the bottom definitely follows there we also predict those things that Venus and Jupiter are getting extremely close this week this aurora's come and stolen their thunder and there's also a bit of a space chase happening in morning skies that we've been following as well involving manned spacecraft but everyone will focus on the aurora we know it's happening right now i can see clouds out my window but it's too bright to see it during daylight but it's definitely happening and if it just holds out keeps going for a few more hours until we get the phone setting the sky's are dark and hopefully it's clear looking at the satellite picture check out met dot a our friends and met here you'll see that the west of Ireland is completely clear and if that holds they should get great views but it could move across the country who knows and i tell people just ignore the weather forecast anyway all you need to break in the clouds checking the sky all night long i stayed up till dawn just in case the clouds broke it'll be clear early on then clouded in we know there was another big surge around two o'clock in the morning and it's surging right now so it's very exciting follow social media and keep checking the northern sky David Moore astronomy Ireland thanks very much indeed for speaking to us today so the advice is go to astronomy dot ie and you'll get all the latest there and hopefully we'll all be able to get a glimpse of the northern lights tonight of course David presumably i mean you're you're you're going to have to get out of the big towns i mean i live in a housing estate on the outskirts of letter kenny i mean i'm presuming i need to get out of there and and get out into the countryside and away from the lights that's a good point there's a strong moon up at the moment and it was brightening the sky so unless you're in the middle of a big town or city actually being out the country like won't make that much difference the suburbs will do so a lot of people will have the right conditions the one thing you really need is a good clear view of the northern horizon so you want trees or buildings in that picture you might have to go to a local park or a hill or something like that but you can get out of a town or a city even better even the moonlight you'll still get a slightly better view but don't give up just because you're in suburban locations and you know the next issue of astronomy is indeed packed full of these pictures i took over a thousand yeah and so people are welcome to join the club follow us on the social media free and just you'll see the magazine there on astronomy.ie if you want to see a report of all this if you missed it last night and nothing appears tonight David Moore thank you very much indeed so we we got some great shots as we said of the aurora borealis last night and hopefully more to come tonight just want to remind you that our glasgo trip which is going um is starting to fill up we're down to our last 30 places for glasgo it's been a very popular trip with a continuous stream of bookings a huge number of inquiries from people as well if you want to secure your place you can call us today on 07491 25 000 100 euro per person non-refundable deposit will hold your spot now i know there are at this stage multiple buses going on that glasgo trip and we're down to the last 30 places so if you want to uh if you want to do that trip just get on it and let's let's just take a look at what it actually involves um the trip goes in um it goes from the first to the fourth of may you'll be staying at the four star crown plaza hotel uh you'll have music from among others uh david james the ryan turner band deklin nerney and guests and robert mezell uh lots of others there as well you'll have luxury coach transfers return journey on the ferry your breakfast and dinner is included three nights of musical entertainment and it's all for a total of 575 euro now let's be honest 575 euro is a steal when you're getting entertainment of that quality and accommodation of that quality as well so uh get on it now last 30 places and as the old ad says when they're gone they're gone watch the show live now on youtube facebook and at highland radio dot com long coms bonus time promotion is back at macklehenny's simply purchase two long com products one to be skincare to receive a free gift of seven beauty essentials plus when you purchase a third long com product receive a full size bonus gift visit us in store or shop online at macklehenny's dot com to enjoy this exclusive offer available until march 11th we can all see how conflict affects energy supply and prices more than ever we need to be mindful of how we use energy by reducing your use you can save money and lessen the impact here's how only heat your home to the temperature you need use appliances efficiently and where possible outside the peak hours of four to seven p.m consider walking cycling or public transport for short journeys drive at lower speeds where safe to do so government advice and supports are available for homes and businesses to help you meet this challenge find out more at gov dot ie forward slash reduce your use brought to you by the government of ireland tfi local link operate over 1300 door to door bus services nationwide if you live on or near one of the routes just pre book the day before you travel simple then off you pop from your front door off to the shops off to training or even off to the chipper and fares now cost 20% less find the door to door bus routes in your area on transportforireland.ie if you're on our route we're on our way tfi local link is part of the transport for ireland network keep your car or van running smoothly with the service at hegerty's forward in utter kenny not only will it minimize the risk if a major repair expense but it will be logged in your vehicle's service handbook and help its resale value hegerty's also offer everything from new and free owned car sales to parts and body repairs in their approved body shop book a service online this month and save 30 euro when you use the code forward 30 you're always in good hands at hegerty's forward turn a mug a letter kenny see hegerty's dot com earlier in the show we were talking about age and i was joking about the fact that i i knew what pull mccartney's drug chorus was and uh my production team who are all considerably younger than me didn't have a clue what i was on about and uh age brings with it a number of challenges and it brings with it a number of benefits and uh when you're of an age and particularly if you're a woman then you potentially are facing the menopause and when you're facing that it brings up a whole raft of questions that many people have as we said at the top of this hour we do have an expert on menopause joining us to uh to discuss the issue uh kathryn O'Keefe is the author of a new book all you need to know about menopause and kathryn joins us on zoom kathryn good morning hi donal how are you thanks for having me it is absolutely my pleasure um one thing i want to say is um i'm i'm a married man and uh i'm in my my fifties as as is my beloved and i have had this conversation both with her and with her sister and what i what i will say is i'm not going to go into anyone's personal details but i will say is both of them had very different experiences very different experiences now there are two women who who are of the same pair and screw up in the same family had the same had the same upbringing up and well they they obviously things diverged when they were in their 20s but you know two people same genetic makeup but two very different experiences once they hit that age is that typical yeah um i always say no two women will have the same experience of menopause and i think that just like as you explained there with within your own family that is what makes it so unique and that's what donal makes the whole empowerment and knowledge around menopause so important because what could work for me versus what might work for your beloved or you know your sister-in-law is going to be completely different so it's really important that we are very respectful around the conversation around menopause and that we empower and support women with information and at the same time realizing that look you know what can work for one may not work for the other and that was one of the underlying the underpinnings of my book really was to try and guess as much information out there as possible but also make sure that we are being respectful of the variation of experiences that we see for example like in my own situation i'm 52 now donal i'm still going through perimenopause i haven't finished yet and i haven't yet had a hot flush now i have had anxiety i've had loads of brain fog so there's so many symptoms that many of us won't have and it's going to be very individual in the experience and you know that is why it's so important for every woman and every partner and family to really understand that that you know it's not going to be the same for everybody and and this is one of the problems because and i think sometimes we as men are guilty because we have we have an idea in our minds of what something is and and it's nicely compartmentalized and it's menopause i know what menopause is it's this and here's my nice handy two three line explanation put a full stop on us file it away and what's this none of no you're wrong it can't be like that because my my understanding is what i know it's completely different to that and we have expectations sometimes as men that we completely and utterly utterly fail to appreciate how far off the mark we are i i so love that and donal can i read you two lines from the book so there was a lovely man pat i wrote a chapter for partners because just like you said i wanted partners to really understand how how complex how deep menopause is so i'll just read this for you one thing i've learned about menopause is that you can't fix it and your relationship shifts or changes its dynamic when my wife talks about menopause i used to jump into what can i do mode how can i fix it now i know it's all about listening and having my ears open making the cup of tea at night time goes down very well too you know throughout the book i include stories from people but particularly from partners it's so important in terms of understanding menopause is way more than hot flushes it's way more than night sweats you know there's a lot that happens on the psychological and emotional level and the majority of women will say that's where they struggle the most that in the early peri menopause years which can start from 45 onwards many women don't expect this anxiety that comes out of the corner and it's like what's that about you know so it's really just making sure that women understand what does perimenopause look like what does menopause look like so that you you're armed with the information so that then you don't fear this inevitable natural stage in your life and really that we flip it so that we actually think okay look i know what's going to happen i'm going to tackle it head on i know what my choices are this will work for me and you try different things etc and that you know we're i'm seeing now don't a lot of fear and overwhelm around menopause and i think that's what i'm trying to kind of say look let's just calm it all down and understand there's loads of treatment options there's loads of lifestyle aspects that come into play here it's all about just having a trusted sources that you can go to and actually get the right information and that's what the book is all about evidence-based information in relation to supporting and presumably part of that process is the fact that if people have expectations and those expectations aren't met or the experience is different the next sort of thing a lot of people will do is they'll go oh there is something wrong with my experience when the actual reality is there is nothing wrong with anyone's experience and and it's just it's not wrong it's different but if we go into something i say we if women go into into this with with fixed expectations they're they're on a hiding to nothing on that one yes big time and you know one thing that i see i would hear a lot from women so we know that one in four women will go through menopause with no symptoms are they're so mild they don't even realize but you know what they're now beginning to say i'm getting emails and phone calls and women are saying to me oh kathryn i'm here wondering what's wrong with me because i don't have symptoms and i'm like you're fine you know it's not not everyone is going to have the symptoms so it's really once you have the knowledge that you know what the symptoms could be it all of a sudden puts you on a different trajectory donal and the other thing is you'll then go in you'll be thinking ah yeah menopause i know what'll happen that's fine i know what my options are and it takes away the fear i mean ideally we do want it to be brought into the sphe classes and secondary school so that the education starts there because the one thing about menopause like you will know in your own home situation it doesn't just impact the person going through it it impacts everyone you touch off of whether that's at work whether it's at home your family your friends etc so shattering the taboo of menopause is imperative in in us supporting women to be empowered so that they can actually thrive through these years and understand that they don't have to suffer in silence ever there's no need for that anymore the other the other thing is people will start anticipating we have a message in asking when can i expect to experience menopause i'm now in my 40s i want to be prepared for when the symptoms may start yeah and i love that because you know what if you start preparing beforehand donal you make your experience so much more positive and the average age of perimenopause starts at around 45 now i started 44 myself i would kind of say you know from your early 40s have a good understanding of what does perimenopause look like so that means when you start to see any of those little changes creeping in and there isn't you know another reason for it that then you might start think okay well things are starting to move which means that your hormones are basically starting to decline and fluctuate and until they eventually settle now i was talking to a lovely man last week who was telling me that he taught menopause last three weeks uh no it actually that that that whole period from perimenopause into menopause like there's years in that and menopause itself is really it's like a birthday an anniversary it's 12 months without a period so but the perimenopause years is where it's like you know the ground starts to um unsettle you know there's ripples in the water until it becomes more obvious if it's going to become more obvious and it's really important to remember that that's not the case for everyone and what i also cover in the book is the fact that you may not have symptoms but what should you be doing to protect yourself in these years like looking at your bone health your brain health your heart health so i always think about menopause the menopause years that they also offer a window of opportunity because we can start to think about okay well i'm taking a pause here how can i now start to think about looking after my health not for just the menopause years but for my 70s 80s and 90s uh caller how does one know when they're going through the menopause if they don't have any symptoms if yeah if they don't have any symptoms the only way you can confirm that you've hit menopause is you go to your doctor and your doctor will take a blood test and the fsh the follicule stimulating hormone that level goes really high and that basically confirms to your doctor that you have at some point hit menopause so that's the real confirmation but as to if something's going on you're always looking at the symptoms but if you're not having symptoms then you're one of the lucky 20 percent but but presumably there'll be disruptions to the menstrual cycle and i mean if someone is regularly menstruating as they always would have done then presumably they're not in menopause if if that cycle is disrupted or has stopped then that that's obviously the going to be the first hint yeah well it's the first i always kind of say the first thing to look at is how are you how are you feeling because the cycles aren't necessarily the very first thing to start but if you've no other symptoms what will happen at some point is they'll start becoming very sporadic there'll be a few weeks apart a few months and then until eventually they stop altogether and when you've gone 12 months without a cycle then you know you've hit menopause and you're into post menopause which isn't a defined chapter many people think it is it's the rest of your life and the symptoms if you're having them you can still have them after you hit menopause but you know if you're not getting symptoms then fantastic and you know so many women don't so it's important that we keep that as a very relevant part of the conversation just very conscious i use the word obviously there is though i have a clue so please feel free to absolutely pull me back because there is nothing worse than a man who thinks he knows what he's talking about on issues like this so i mean you know if i start talking rot do please pull me back absolutely um a caller is asking about home hormone therapy and asking you know yeah should i consider a hormone therapy should i take natural supplements to treat my symptoms or is it going to be different for everyone oh i love that i did an instagram um on friday i think it was a saturday morning donal oh my god it just went viral because i was basically saying just that that we've got to be very mindful of the fact there's many different treatment options in menopause and it depends on your individual situation i think one very easy way to look at it is are your symptoms mild moderate or severe if they're mild then certainly you should be you know rolling up your sleeves looking at the lifestyle aspects that you can put together look at i always say take the symptom at a time so like for example if sleep is an issue will focus on sleep get that right you know don't overwhelm yourself by trying to do too much at one time so look at the severity of the symptoms and how much they're impacting your life if your symptoms are severe and they're impacting your life then you definitely want to go and have a conversation with your doctor and discuss your options now you have medical options and you've non-medical options as well like the complementary therapies have a great role to play particularly acupuncture the use of herbs which is is very common um you know but again you've got to take into account the severity of the symptoms and how it's impacting your life so it really is it is never one size fits all and it's very much looking at from an individual perspective the one common the most common question i'm asked donal is what are most people doing most women doing and i can tell you most women you know are doing a bit of everything you know it can be someone's doing acupuncture that may be on hrt they may not be on hrt or they may be simply doing other forms of medication or lifestyle so it's very mixed and that's what the book delves into because it gives you the options if your symptoms are mild well there's loads of practical steps you can take you know and again if you need to look down the medication route there's a very detailed chapter on hrt hormone replacement therapy but it's not it's the whole thing is it's not for everyone just like acupuncture isn't going to be for everyone so it's just very very individual and personal now the book is called all you need to know about menopause by Catherine O'Keefe Ireland's menopause expert um and it's an important one Catherine it was published uh earlier this month and and important you know that women can can read this book and just get themselves you know in the right headspace perhaps to deal with their own situation just a couple of comments that have come in one color says i spent a fortune on pregnancy tests during perimenopause uh me too don't know me too i i also actually i i once did hear the opposite story where a lady whom i know uh was in her shall we say mid mid forties uh assumed she was going through menopause let's just say she wasn't okay quite the opposite it was a little bit of a surprise a bit later on when she went to the doctor to get tested uh what the doctor actually told her was not what she was expecting and i'm sure that happens to it does happen and and because the because the cycles yeah start becoming erratic you're like and then you're like oh god oh maybe i'm feeling a bit nausea maybe have a headache and you're nearly convinced i thought i'm pregnant i i certainly i certainly don't tons of pregnancy tests myself when i was in the perimenopause years yeah i mean i call her asking is it typical to start menopause at 42 i feel like i'm getting the symptoms i thought i would be older okay yes the average age would be around you know 45 now what i would say there if you feel like you're getting symptoms of 42 yeah depending on what they are the very first thing that i would want to rule out is i'd want to look at your thyroid and also your iron level so it could be speak to your doctor and get a blood test done because the symptoms of a thyroid imbalance particularly if you're hypothyroid they actually look very similar to the symptoms of perimenopause and the same can be said for low iron low iron you get palpitations you miss your periods you can get panic attacks you can have tiredness so there's a lot of crossover so certainly at 42 you want to rule out that there isn't anything else going on so your doctor with your doctor would definitely help you with that now i seem to recall an ad featuring lorraine keen some time ago where she was thinking about going into perimenopause in her 30s yeah yeah you can so there's there's there's earlier forms of menopause and you know the youngest woman i've ever met donal started when she was in third class in primary school she was nine years of age so that's a more unique form of menopause but early menopause is really when it's going to happen you know before 40 and again again we don't have statistics in Ireland but i will say to you from what i'm seeing i definitely think it's on the increase again another caller asking are you likely to conceive while entering menopause my cycle is so erratic i have so much anxiety that i'm pregnant i've entered the menopause quite young i mean again that that same that that same question coming up again and again yeah it's because because you you your periods become erratic and then you know you might be having other symptoms like the anxiety and so forth and you don't know is it is it am i pregnant or is it hormonal so many women will do pregnancy tests as they go through menopause certainly if you feel that you know you have many of the symptoms like you know the more common symptoms like urinary issues hot flushes brain fog etc then i would certainly say talk to your doctor because you know depending on your age it's whether have you hit it already you know yeah caller asks and this is an interesting practical question if i enter a menopause should i get my contraception removed i have an iud okay yeah now that's a really good one because if you have like the marina coils that is actually giving you a steady supply of progesterone the main hormones we talk about in menopause are estrogen progesterone and testosterone so that's actually probably giving you a little bit of support to towards menopause so it's really personal i mean depending on how long you've had um the marina coil in then it can be replaced every five years and then as you get older it's seven years um but certainly there's nothing to say you need to take it out but you know that's really you know have a conversation with your doctor and discuss it but it is probably helping you and there is a related question i mean and a caller asking how would i know when i've hit menopause i have the coil in and never have periods anyway as a result yeah yeah what'll happen there what generally tends to happen now again you could be one of the lucky who don't get symptoms but what generally does tend to happen is that as you get closer to menopause the more estrogen like symptoms start to come forward so you might start the hot flushes the night sweats you might have internal vaginal dryness different things like that might start to come into play so it's really just again it's just being aware of the symptoms and watching what's happening in your body again caller says i've been suffering from restless nights and interrupted sleep is this normal i suspect from from you're nodding the answer is yes it is and and you know donal i always say like if you can get sleep right you can really start to work on changing you know the symptoms that you're experiencing during menopause to me i always say sleep is the bedrock of thriving through menopause if you get sleep right because it impacts all of us right that's why it's a form of torture to be sleep deprived and so it is very common it's it's one of the most common symptoms that women will experience and what i would say to your listener there is i would definitely say you know if it's restless sleep you know you could certainly look at something like magnesium but also just you know take into account what your sleep habits are at night time and prioritize good deeper stars of sleep on my website i have tons of blogs and interviews on sleep because it's such a big subject and it's it's probably one of the bigger chapters in the book because it's so important now caller says finding comprehensive care in donal it all feels impossible any suggestions i mean obviously your gp is going to be your first port of call and maybe reading your book might might be another way of just getting the head in the right place and then maybe the person will find that they don't necessarily need medical intervention as much as just you know to know what their own particular individual pathway is exactly so i would definitely say grab a copy of the book i would for sure because it will give you all the options now there isn't any specialist menopause clinics in donnie gall at the moment the nearest probably to you is gallway i think is probably the nearest but what i so what i would say though is you know get informed and look at what your options are and i am a huge believer donal i know we do have a lot of work to do in relation to educating our gps but i'm a huge believer in relation to community care and i do you know i i do you know i really want the day to come that every woman can just walk down to their local doctor and get the right standard of care you know the government are working on that we knew we know we've got a way to go but but certainly you know i there are some fantastic doctors up in donnie gall so i think it's just trying to find a doctor who has a special interest in women's health and at the same time if you read the book and you read the treatment options you'd go into that appointment and you'd be very informed which changes the whole experience catrin it's been a pleasure and all you need to know about menopause is the name of the book published by o brian press available as they say in all bookshops and it's a vital read for women who find themselves in that situation and maybe a vital read for their partners as well so they can try to navigate the situation that they're in catrin it's been an absolute pleasure thank you very much indeed for speaking to us this morning thank you thanks donal take care join all fucked up live at the abbey hotel donnie gall this saturday the fourth of march that's all fucked up live at the abbey hotel donnie gall this saturday march the fourth tickets available from event bright the little baby event is back and you won't want to miss these great offers like our new organic baby snacks from only 189 as voted by you ireland's favorite award-winning loopy loon at least from 139 keep them safe as houses with our quick close baby gate only 2499 and there's so much more go on shop without compromise go full needle today i've just had the eclipsed cinema's experience wow they truly have taken a night at the movies to a whole new level amazing recliner chairs directors lounge vap rooms pizza and hot food served to your seat have a glass of wine and enjoy the film on the big screen try it for yourself at eclipsed cinema's bundorn and leford's treban where the stars shine brighter by the way the pizzas are amazing you can book your seat anytime at eclipsedcinemas.ie highland radio weather updates with ireland west airport from march 26th airline is will operate a daily service to london haythrow providing onward connections to any plus destinations worldwide ireland west airport don't just take off take it easy this is an international on the highland radio don't look have no with you as we say on tail 12 noon today um quality i had a total hysterectomy at 48 menopause was terrible for years another callers as i know an old lady who only started getting hot flushes when she was 70 the hot flushes i could hardly breathe and i had broken sleeps as another caller and i mean as katrin said there the experience of menopause is going to be different for everybody and i think there is no right and there is no wrong here so it isn't a matter of oh you know i'm i'm wrong or there is something wrong with me because this is happening or this isn't happening or you know everyone's experience is going to be different i think when it comes to menopause and you know it's uh you know something that uh women will will experience and you know maybe if you read katrin's book and just the more you learn about something like that i think maybe the better situation you'll find yourself in and the easier you'll be able to to actually deal with with with the situation you're in um just remember from what katrin was saying there is no right experience there is no wrong experience everyone is going to have a different experience and sometimes it can be if you think when two people are sitting down and they're having a conversation because you know person one will have one set of symptoms and one set of experience and person two will have a completely different one and you know one may believe oh uh and the reality is there there is you know it just the experience is going to be different and it doesn't mean there is something wrong it doesn't mean that you're somehow strange or different uh you're not um color has been in touch with this uh lost a gold earring with a diamond inset in dairy between three and five on saturday it was a birthday present and the the earring was made specifically for this um color by for by by made for her by her parents are ordered by by her parents so it's of obviously high sentimental value it's a lost gold hooked earring with a diamond inset lost in dairy between three and five on saturday if anyone can help please do get in touch i'll put that to one side happy birthday a few birthday requests coming in happy birthday to bridget cairns in rafau that comes from daughter rosemary son-in-law Liam and grandson adams and also happy birthday to sarah clark and that comes from catherine shawn anmarie and murn mac bride a very happy birthday indeed to you sarah color's been in touch uh to say another scam warning uh what looks like a uk number uh called trying to sell stock and get our our caller uh involved in the stock market he was asking the caller what they do what type of phone they use what type of bank account they use and was being very pushy it seemed like he was trying to keep me on the line for some reason asking questions that were irrelevant um yep red flags all the way and in a situation like that i i think you're absolutely right to hang up um if if in doubt i will always say it if it's a strange number and if you're in doubt do not engage and as often as not i will not answer my phone um if i do not know um who that caller is uh we were speaking earlier to aiden about his experience with bus siren and one particular route in donnie gall where the bus is consistently late and his son has asked burgers and uh has difficulties uh waiting in crowds and waiting for buses and has difficulties with uncertainty and uh was looking like they were going to have to actually give up on their uh training courses uh as a result of issues with the bus another caller has been on to say look there is always a problem with buses particularly in the evenings and i am tired of asking questions about it it's approaching minute two eleven we're going to take a short break news headlines with mekella after these super value makes saving money as easy as one two three one we match alde and the products you love two great special offers like selected fairy pods 38 wash and velvet quilted 24 roll and e2 for 16 euro exclusive to real rewards members only and three money off vouchers every week so follow the one two three and save money at super value your next move matters so why not move better start your move to permanent tsp today apply in app for our award-winning current account so don't just move bank move better apply in app today applications for explore current account in app for over 18 personal customers qualifying criteria fees and charges terms and conditions apply awarding bonkers dot ie best current account 2022 permanent tsp plc is regulated by the central bank of island when you need help with natural gas or lpg appliances or pipes don't take any chances stay safe and always use a registered gas installer for installation servicing repair all the removal otherwise you're putting yourself and others at risk and breaking the law find a registered gas installer at or gi dot ie at u donnie gall's open day takes place on saturday fourth of march from 10 a.m to 2 p.m on the letter kenny campus if you're a leaving certificate student a mature student a parent or guardian thinking on a postgraduate degree or interested in upskilling or reskilling then come along and discover all that atu has to offer special guest on the day will give a talk on leaving certificate guidance and study tips bring the family along and enjoy fun games music and a complimentary burger bar on the day saturday fourth of march don't miss it see atu donnie gall's socials to register this is the national news show on highland radio it's 11 o'clock time for news headlines good morning mckayla clock thanks tonal good morning a final agreement on the northern arnan protocol could be announced by the end of the day european commission president or slavander lion is in london today to iron out the final details of a post brexit agreement with u k there's concern among unionists the north could become further detached from the u k if e u trade rules are maintained to avoid a hard border former tony john mary coklin has called for a sense of respect to return to political life miss coklin told a recent see her elected event in donnie gall that more support is needed for women to become involved at decision-making tables the maximum sentence for people who assault emergency workers could be increased to 12 years justice minister simon harris is said to bring the new proposals before government shortly representative bodies have been calling for tougher measures to deter people from attacking the likes of guardian paramedics and hospital staff over 19 million euro is being invested in the northern and western region with the launch of two new funding programs aimed at supporting innovators and researchers the innovators initiative is designed to develop five immersive needs led innovation training programs while kt boost is a four-year knowledge transfer program focused on increasing research commercialization outcomes in irish universities and technological universities meanwhile small businesses in the northwest are said to benefit from a new 5.4 million euro european digital innovation hub the hub is to be established to help sms apply cutting-edge technologies and digital skills to their business works to upgrade fulcara hospital are set to begin in the coming months part of the nursing unit is currently closed and respite admissions paused as the building is not fit for purpose the upgrade is expected to be completed by the end of the year and 53 vacant pubs across the country will be developed for housing figures from the department of housing it showed they will provide a total of 169 homes and in all three pubs are to be converted into five houses those are the latest headlines we'll be back with an update again at 12 noon morning brothers have landed in mcdonald's happy meal mix your favorite characters like batman and scooby-doo and ignite your imagination and now get a free world bookday token with every happy meal some fun some food it's all inside this happy meal until the 21st of march from 11 a.m while stocks last token valid 16th of february to the 26th of march terms apply it seems like only about half an hour ago that i was saying good morning and welcome to the show but now i'm saying welcome to the final hour of the night to do show on this monday morning and as it's a monday morning it means it's time to preview tonight's dl debate i don't have the pleasure of brendan diveni in studio with me this morning but i do have the next best thing brendan joins me on zoom brendan good morning good morning brendan a honors shared between donnie gall and gallway in odonal park yesterday very much it seems it was a game of two halves yeah i don't i suppose you know we can look at it a few ways the home venue i think definitely definitely helped us um in the latter stages i think when we were we had to dig deep but certainly in the first half when we went five up uh after gallon's pound it was probably looking as a as a possible one for us but of course if we can say to the goal a minute later that's probably where the game swam in terms of uh us only taking a point out of it but listen i thought our our defence which was under pressure in the last few weeks coped admirably you know man for man they're all getting better as each game goes on which was a possibly take out the game um we were quite wasteful and found the goals which is unlike us so gallway was coming with a bit of a reputation particularly after how they beat tarone um last week i know they were missing players though but all in all listen we can look the ways we could have possibly won the game but in the end probably the fact that they had a late chance to won it that we survived with a point that could be vital you know certain teams around us struggled in the morning our good neighbours to roam as well so listen we still have a fighting chance down and i suppose that's all we can hope for and i suppose really 2023 was always going to be a season of transition and a season of change for donny god there's a new management team betting in there's some new players betting in and of course it's now the the first year of the post michael murphy era it was always going to be tough to get through 2023 and this is the year that we're going to learn perhaps more than we've learned in the past couple of years with regards to donny gold football yeah don't yeah there was a certain period of transition coming um for us you know and i think no matter who took over the team and what was happening we obviously the projected management situation and then you know that we've had issues with the academy lately and there seems to be a lot of i suppose almost consternation in the background around what's happened with the team you know you know with the monaghan second half against monaghan the other week left a lot of headscratching so that's where you know people like mark corn mccole mccolgan all these lads you know not household names i suppose and in donny gold terms this last you know we could really stepping up this season and making the mark and it's at the back uh don't we've had to tighten up but we did that yesterday i mean it was low scoring game but you'd have to say our defense did their job it's the other end of the pitch which were normally more efficient than we didn't but certainly it's been a difficult time for donny gold we're just looking i suppose if we could stay in the division don't this is a huge thing first and sort things out i suppose with our academy and and get on the right foot again because at the minute don't there seem to be a lot of messes out there for a long time with their with their ga you know where where things is happening what's happening it certainly wasn't a good news story so i think if we could survive in the advising be number one and build into challenging because most of our team are young and aged so it's it is like a new time as you say it is a transition so there's always going to be a few stumbling blocks and learning processes in there but i certainly think there seems to be a good vibe between the lads and like a spoke to part of me birdie after the game his interview will be in there too and that's another as i say the the bad news was coming and that was part of it i say Patrick's injury or captain and our and our main man inside so listen we hope we wish him much better recovery too absolutely um not the best of days for the donny gold lady he said they took the long journey down to cork and uh defeat there for them and i suppose no more than the men when we talk about transition we talk about change you know it's a tough time for them at the moment yeah it is done certainly and um there's only one team gets relegated from from that division so you know it seems even though we've lost uh five in a row like that there's still is a chance we could we could technically claw out of it but yeah and and no more maybe than our man uh maxi not that there's a the same level of interchange but there was a lot of our star players being rested he's tried a a load of new blunt to to i suppose re-energize the squad but so don't think all will be better come the championship they'll have a more experience sided but for now certainly finding the going tough in in the top flight uh guests on the dl debate tonight john haran since you're in this chairman you've got a irish news columnist caro cain uh also speaking as he said to patrick mcprty and also speaking this week to dr james mcdade who had a something of a singular honor uh at the weekend yeah great to catch up with jimmy and uh we had a bank you can probably hear my voice don't it was a bit of a late night it went on a bit um yeah yeah listen you know as the music gets louder you're shouting even louder so i hope the voice comes back for for for the show tonight right but yeah um great great fun out the park we want to do it was done i mean we got up yesterday and the sun was shining and uh it was one of those uh really beautiful spring spring days and uh big crowd at the park and um jimmy's reception i just looked at the video i had in the phone of him coming down you know the the the warmth of applause in that and you know i interviewed him and said you know everything he's done you know as a doctor first of all they're a candidate in a td and became a minister and he helped so many sports clubs around the county in that time and and i think he received some of that warmth back and of course unions he had so many roles in unions over the years um you know such a man he was about the club so the the warmth of it as i say coming down got a wee bit emotional as he was coming down they cut the ribbon it was a real nice moment for him and uh some huge history there for him so it's nice for the club to to honour him with the with the name of the dr. mcdade stan and indeed that that that's a legacy that will live on and i'm sure that conversation that's going to be on the program tonight brendan would be uh as you are saying it's an emotional one but also one that's going to be filled with history because jim mcdade no doubt has many many stories to tell and i'm sure he's shared several of them with you for this one yes indeed yet we just we caught up it was just um after the game so this and it he was getting pulled probably posted at that time and uh there was a raucous uh golly crew in there actually don't and uh the crack was great i obviously my mom's from golly so there was a there was a lot of crack there's a good few good few guys from chumman and mount belion that were a big connection so this thing that was a it was a brilliant evening now we all had to take sister sarah's then and uh the fun continued as the man says but um yeah it was a great day and um a great crew out there supporting dr mcdade and uh well deserved excellent well sister sarah's obviously the sponsors of the dl debate and dl debate uh live on hide and radio tonight just after the seven o'clock news it looks like it's going to be a good one in the meantime brendan thanks very much indeed thank you brendan that's brendan the money there the presenter of the dl debate as we say the deal debate will be on uh just after the news tonight at seven o'clock and that will be live as we said the guests will be uh john haran who's the chair of sinjunas uh irish news jay column minister carol kane also uh dunigal captain patrick mcbrearty uh on the program and as well as that we will have that interview with dunigal um well former dunigal td and minister dr james mcdade uh after whom the stand in odonal park was formally named uh yesterday uh looking at some of the commons coming in um causes i keep getting calls from a tax company i tried to sort rebates with them i've emailed to cut off services but they won't stop calling any ideas now that that is an interesting one because i mean there are some of these companies who will um who will sort of offer to do this for you and i suppose they are they are private commercial companies who are making money and as soon as you give them your call you're on their database and they're touting for more business um i i don't know i mean you know if there's a as you say you've emailed in a bid to cut off the services um i supposed basically maybe block the number if you feel you wish to do that i i can't personally offer any more um perspective on on it than that now we spoke earlier on about the fact that there are roadworks um on the fore name and the foreign is that road that connects basically uh the dry arch and polestar roundabouts on the outskirts of letter kenny now kevin is is online one and kevin wants to raise an issue with regards to the uh area around the dry arch itself kevin good morning good morning i'm very well indeed kevin the dry arch we have on the one side of the road we have a very busy uh petrol station shop we have a bar and we have a number of services going down the side of the road there at bonagy on the other side of the road we have a very big hotel there's a very often a constant stream of people trying to get from one side of the road to the other it's a four lane road it's a busy road pedestrians are taking their lives into their hands yeah and uh the initial was i thought at the beginning of all this that there would be no brakes in the central barrier that everything was going to be divided this concrete barrier so my thought on it would be putting my foot up a pedestrian footbridge over that at that particular point which would be the safest thing health and safety you know that would be the safest thing for pedestrians going from one side to the other have you raised this issue with uh any of the counselors or are with with with donny gold contact it does certainly seem to be a good idea um certainly you see bridges like that around dublin i will often stay at a hotel close to the red car roundabout and there's a one of those pedestrian bridges if you go walking in the morning there's a bridge that goes over what is effectively the the end of the uh the next year carriageway as we call it heading for heading for the m50 and it's uh you know it's a very effective bridge um it would seem that donny gold doesn't have the capacity to have such a bridge here uh i don't think we have joined up sunken here in donny gold because uh as you'd probably be well aware the the whole mismatch of roads yeah and their crossings and things like that but this would be something that would be health and safety it would be uh really something uh to think about and do and i didn't think about this until i was listening to the program on was it thursday or friday uh it was on what was gray and i just ran caroline and then like that now there's a nine one thing and if you go further out the dual carriageway there is an underpass for cattle to cross from one figure to the other yep right now if we can do that for the cattle surely we can do a safe and uh product a product a safety thing for pedestrians to cross from one side of the road to the other especially a dual carriageway like i mean dual carriageway and it's name there should be no crossings on it unless they've gone by either roundabouts or traffic lights and you know it's very simple we spent the fortune on on things that on that road that probably when they look about it could have done without that but we couldn't do we can't do without this dual we're past you know and and and as you said maybe maybe it's slightly ironic but one of the big things they're doing actually is putting much improved footpaths on both sides of that road um you know and and in fairness and it's a it's a good thing and i'd have to say as someone who would do a bit of walking i absolutely welcome that because it's not been the easiest place to walk on uh up to now so we're going to have good footpaths that seems on both sides of the road that's that's a tick mark but as you say particularly and i mean you know when people want to cross from the hotel over to the shop i mean even that in itself is going to generate quite a lot of um people crossing the road and certainly if there's a function on in banagy if there's a match on in banagy and someone wants to report over to the hotel or whatever you know you you certainly do have demand for for a crossing there now i suppose what donningall county council are going to tell you is that road isn't under their control that road is under the control of tii transport infrastructure at ireland so you know it's kind of out of the council's purview uh to a certain extent to actually get that done but maybe if the council and the tii had a now chat they might get something sorted well look there's going to be an odd councillor listening to us uh discussion about the month total and uh that the come on board and say well look that's a good day i'm not looking for any uh uh pat in the back for bringing it up but you go you go anywhere and you see jewel carries where you see foot bridges right it's going over jewel carries and motorways you know it's kind of one of them ones that somebody should have should have been built in uh as i say the central ireland was supposed to be not broken this concrete barrier what to put the whole work is all about so that it'll be a safe section of road and then we're expecting passengers or foot pedestrians to to take our lights on our hands going across the road yeah and particularly given travel that's coming down from say lurky brak from the direction of uh don't you go town albert festering or and so on you know traffic coming down that you come down lurky brak you're turning left and you're pretty much on top of the hotel immediately and you know if someone is crossing there it's going to be very late before anyone coming down from lurky brak direction it's going to be able to see them well we see what happens to the at the at the roundabouts where this crossing is so close to them the roundabouts and around the times get clogged up you know uh uh and also and i come start here what is it somebody says it's a total dreadlock for the period of time until the passengers are across the road yeah uh you know it's uh now after knocking all the work that was done that bit of work it was done up around the the screws the one my system right there pat in the back to a fantastic mm-hmm yep i i live not far away from it i think actually i do think that is working i really personally do think that is working um and i know there was a number of people were skeptical about it at the time um but it does um no we've just had a we've had a a note in from from a caller that says planning permission was applied for for an overpass for pedestrians 20 25 years ago but it was rejected back then uh it's uh look 25 years ago hopefully we've moved on or our thought process right well not only has our thought process moved on i think over the past 25 years the level of traffic in that letter kenny has moved on considerably as well i mean there's a hell of a lot more traffic on that road than there was 20 years ago definitely so because i mean i've done some work in that road we've been out uh in the manholes in that road yeah and the difference in the traffic level is on unbelievable looks like but uh no i think it's something that sports taking on board and that's there's anybody listening that can do something about it i think that's the way to go forward kevin point well made and thanks indeed for making it uh you take care and remember if you want to react to that or any other issue that's on the program you can text us or whatsapp us on 086 60 25 000 call us on 07491 uh 25 000 003537491 25 000 if you're outside of the dialing area we're uh at heiland radio on twitter we're heiland hub on facebook and we're also on instagram and all other manners of social media don't forget by the way please do keep sending a senior pictures of the aurora borealis the northern lights we got some great shots last night and uh as david war said to us there could be opportunities to see the lights again tonight um astronomy Ireland dot ie is their website and if you subscribe to their social media you'll hopefully get the uh get the forward not in advance as to when the best time would be to see them get yourself in an area where you can see the northern horizon and you're not too affected by light pollution in the way and you could get to see one hell of a show the county's number one talk show the nine till noon show on heiland radio stop heiland radio are going to scotland from monday the first of may to thursday the fourth of may with the very best of music and we would love for you to join us stay in at the four star crown plaza hotel in glasgow we are bringing with us some of the biggest country stars including myself david james jecklyn ernie and robert moselle to name a few you will enjoy luxury travel to glasgow three nights dinner bed and breakfast with music and entertainment each evening join us on the heiland fling to glasgow this may for only five hundred and seventy five euro per person to book call heiland radio today on zero seven four nine one twenty five thousand early booking is advisable single supplement applies need help designing or understanding plumbing requirements for your new bathroom is not a problem our experienced staff are equipped to handle any type of bathroom installation from a simple tap replacement to a complete bathroom overhaul call in and see us and view our checklist to make sure you have everything in order it could save you money and a huge amount of hassle mcdade's bathroom plumbing tiles bunkrana making things simpler for you sixty seconds to plumber skin almost nine out of ten women say they have dehydrated skin new generation hydro essential from clarence formulated for 24 hour hydration it helps skin naturally boost its hyaluronic power by day it hydrates and plumps at night replenishes moisture levels hydrated skin is radiant skin visit your local clarence stockest for a complementary skin care consultation and hydro essential sample while stocks last clarence bingo every monday night at the halfway house burn foot doors open at seven thirty with ice down at eight thirty two thousand five hundred euro must go snowball is now one thousand eight hundred and fifty euro on forty five numbers are less if you're not in you can't win that's halfway house bingo tonight at eight thirty this is the nine two noon show on highland radio uh corner says don't allow us listening to uh paul and jimmy last week and really enjoyed the horse lips tribute band i know you're going to be with them in baller buffet i'm jealous uh yes indeed thank you color i will indeed be in baller buffet at the batter's theater on friday night swords of light the new um horse lips tribute band as endorsed by among others barry devlin and jim lockhart at the horse lips convention in belfast in november of last year so there they're playing the batter uh on friday night and it is going to be one hell of a gig we were speaking earlier about services outside of the acute hospital um corner says my son got a chest x-ray in carndona hospital last year he was three at the time there are many hsc and hsc funded services out there but very often the gps aren't aware of referral pathways or are reluctant to refer to community services such as mental health or social prescription hsc eco therapy day service wellness cafes family centers there should be a greater emphasis as well on social or green prescriptions and i think anything that improves people health is to be looked at and you know and utilized as best as possible another corner says we have a brand new hsc center in bunkrana and indeed i've seen it and it is an excellent center we've heard it was for x-rays but so far it's just a doctor's surgery um now hopefully what will be done is that um we will in the course of time see these um new centers reach their full capacity there's equipment issues there are staffing issues there's radiographers to be brought in and so on and so forth so as we said it isn't just a matter of sticking a machine into a room and starting doing your x-rays tomorrow you have to make sure you have your staff and your support services in place and very often that can be the sticking point but hopefully we're moving forward um let's put a few comments to one side and go to zoom because we are going to take a little trip through the barnesmore gap down to the abbey vocational school in dunigold town where we're joined by rowan bucanon claudit lacan and freya burton uh ladies good morning good morning how are you very well indeed can i just ask just um so that uh people aren't confused which is rowan which is claudit which is freya uh so i'm rowan yeah freya right and uh it's it's great to have you on on the program this morning the reason you're with us is you've been involved in ysi which as i recall is young social innovators um and uh it's it's a project called the greenest link looking at public transport in dunigold tell us about the project so basically ysi is obviously a national competition that we take our school takes part in every year and so this year our first goal was to pick a project and we were talking amongst ourselves and sort of putting it towards the group and we came to the idea that we wanted to work with something in the community specifically with the global goals and sustainability and we realized that the local link in the transport wasn't maybe as good as it should be so we came to that idea that we wanted just to fix some minor issues in it for our community is the problem with the service is the problem with the vehicles is the problem with the timetable is the problem with the community where are the problems that you identified well we find we did a survey and actually we find that in school among students people find it very hard to find and read the timetables find and uh get to the stops where the local link arrives and also that the local link is usually maybe late or they don't show up Freya from from your own point of view obviously that community interaction was really important sorry i said from your own point of view that that level of of reaching out to the community and actually getting the community's views and speaking to people uh was very important as part of the project it isn't just your opinions it's actually what people are telling you when you communicate with them yeah definitely so where where to then once you'd you'd spoken to people you'd you'd got your findings together what what was the next step coda next step was to come up with our plan about how we would take our project to the next level so last week we were speaking with the ysi then and we received 500 euro funding to help with our project so one of the things that we would love to do is to print off leaflets um with the timetables of the local links so that we can pass them around to members of our community such as the elderly to make the timetables more accessible and we also have an idea to improve the local link app they already have it in place and we hope to add a gps tracking feature so that we can see if the buses are running lit or if they're on route so that we can plan our journey ahead and allow for any delays so this would be a huge benefit for everyone when they could see it on their phone and do you believe that if people have a clearer idea of the timetables if people have better access to the timetables then more people will use the bus because it seems to me a lot of people that could be using it aren't using it because they don't know it's going to be there yeah you're definitely right on that i think whenever we make more awareness about the local link and we make sure that we do everything we can to make more reliable then more people would use the buses which would be great for our environment too as it's better to everyone be in one bus than everybody in individual cars fray you've also been reaching out to the local primary schools and trying to get those involved yeah um we're running out of poster competition for the term of school kids just to get them more involved in our project and to educate them a bit more on importance of sustainable transport and we plan on just um once the poster competition is over we want to put these posters just around shops in our local community and uh going back to yourself Rowan in terms of what you've achieved so far i mean are is this making a difference do you believe well we believe this project is more than just for the ysi we hope that if we can get this change then it will benefit the community in the future after this competition is over and that is our overall goal to make sure that there is a working local transport system now what ysi is as i recall a competition uh young social innovators and you will be going i presume shortly to Dublin to actually present your your project and and your findings at the national finals yes well we have the speak out before that so the speak out is on the 30th of march and that's in slago and that's basically where each team is about two minutes to present their project um and then if we get through then after that we'll be presenting in Dublin and obviously you you're going to be going and saying look we didn't just have an idea we actually went into the community and we spoke to people and cloded that that's going to be important when you're presenting because you're not just saying uh you know this is our idea what you're saying is this is the community's idea this is coming from the people exactly you're completely right the more people that we have behind us supporting our idea and the more successful that will be what what's the scope of of the project i mean how how far are you reaching is it just Donegal town and its immediate environs or is this a model you believe can go further well at the moment we're just trying to get the surrounding areas in Donegal town so killi bags and chamele, brookless, frosts, etc and but hopefully if that works and if other parts of Donegal are are the same they have similar problems then TFI which we're hoping to work with we're waiting for them to get back to us currently at the moment and but hopefully we'll be able to work with them then to make it across the whole county and in terms of local link and working with them i'm sure you're finding a very receptive ear in local links management because they want to improve their service as much as they can yes they've been a great help we are again waiting for their response we have gotten back in touch with them and but in the meantime we're getting on with our poster competition and the workshop that we're hoping to hold Rowan Buchanan, Claude Lacken and Freya Burton now all three of you thanks very much indeed for speaking to us this morning and we wish you all the best to have the speak out in Slego and if things go further we wish you all the best in Dublin as well and most importantly we wish you all the best with the project and hopefully when you're in a few years time walking down the road and you see the local link bus pass on time you can think to yourself I helped make that happen thank you so much thank you very much indeed it's been a pleasure girls take care bye bye now and that is the local link project in Donegal town part of YSI the greenest link and and that was Rowan, Claude and Freya there speaking to us from the abbey vocational school and it's great to see a project like that that's going to hopefully make a very real and tangible difference in their community now a caller has just asked have you heard anything about road works in Balabafe, Stranora they're meant to be outside potentially outside the chapel or perhaps work on water mains I don't want this to be like the crossing square things just happened very suddenly I don't know is the answer to the question so what I would suggest is maybe contact if you want to count the council they should know but in the meantime if anyone out there does actually know is are there works planned for Balabafe Stranora I mean I know in fairness Balabafe Stranora got torn up again and again and again and that area suffered more road works over the past four or five years than any area you know really should so you know hopefully there's not going to be too much disruption there if you know what the situation is give us a shout there's some potentially very important discussions taking place on the protocol more on that after these watch the show live now on youtube facebook and at HighlandRadio.com the annual general meeting of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association Donegal County Executive will be held in the Clannery Hotel Letter Kenny on Monday the 27th of February at 8 p.m. Mr Charlie McConnlough TD Minister for Agriculture Food and the Marine will be in attendance members and non-members are welcome with 231 well underway are you calling in for a look shall call in for a cup of tea or a coffee and let our sales executives show you the options available in our new Nissan range with an unbeatable range of vehicles there's only one garage to visit for your next purchase and that's iMotors visit us in Letter Kenny or Malin or visit iMotors.ie are you thinking of changing your car then look no further than any shown credit union for your finance it's simple a car loan from any shown credit union means you borrow the money to pay for your car and the car is yours no hidden fees or balloon payments apply online at www.initioancu.ie or contact us on 074 93 61017 membership of any shown credit union is open to anyone who lives or works in the initial financial loans are subject to approval terms and conditions apply any shown credit union is regulated by the central bank of Ireland Hi folks, Paul McDevitt here inviting to join myself and Jimmy Stafford this Monday night for another edition of the Monday Night Sessions on the show this week we welcome the brilliant George Houston we also say hello to dairy singer-songwriter brother Ray and from Ghidor we say hello to Owen Ferry so that's the Monday Night Sessions this Monday night between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. right here on Highland radio always a great listen always some great music Paul and Jimmy truly doing their bit for local and Irish music great to see it happen and always as I say a great listen that's the Monday Night Sessions tonight now as we know Ursula von der Leyen is meeting with Rishi Sunak potentially today to discuss the Northern Ireland protocol and a potential breakthrough deal however there are a number of outstanding questions the two main questions being number one will the Euro skeptics in Rishi Sunak's own party accept it and perhaps for ourselves in the northwest of Ireland an even more crucial question will the DUP accept it we're joined on the line by a good friend of this program Labour MP Pat McFadden Pat good morning good morning Pat you're obviously watching this very closely what's been happening over the past number of days the mood music all seems to be correct the choreography seems to be in place everything is looking like there's going to be a big movement today do you believe that's going to happen it looks that way and if Ursula von der Leyen is meeting with Rishi Sunak you know everyone is assuming that that's to sign something off that's already really been negotiated and completed it's not likely that they would meet and not come to a deal and I think it would be a good thing if it did happen because the protocol in the way that it's been operating has caused significant problems in certainly between Northern Ireland and GB but it's not this deal is not just about how the protocol has been operating I think it will have wider significance because it will show a different way of doing business between the UK and the European Union we've had several years of you know quite harsh rhetoric we have a Northern Ireland protocol bill which was going to see the UK government unilaterally opt out of a deal that they reached and all of that was going to cause considerable bad feeling even if it had been possible to go down a different track and try to resolve problems by agreement and therefore to build goodwill is a much better approach and that's why if Rishi Sunak does reach an agreement today the problems he'll have in parliament won't be with the Labour Party who are overwhelmingly likely to support this deal if he has any problems it's likely to be on his own back benches and as you said possibly with the DUP and that's what makes this a very unique situation because I mean his problem really for the past while hasn't been Labour, Keir Starmer has made it quite clear that he will be supportive of a deal we're hearing certainly from the the Stormant parties that the non DUP Stormant parties they're receptive to the idea of a deal now it then comes down to the DUP because Rishi Sunak did make it quite clear last week that if the DUP doesn't accept the deal he won't accept the deal so can we take it that there are back channels open between the DUP Rishi Sunak and his people and that those discussions and negotiations are taking place between Rishi Sunak and Jeffrey Donaldson and his colleagues or is this going to be Sunak accepting and then going to the DUP and saying what do you think because one would presume it'll be the former he would presume that would be the former but you know I can't speak for the DUP or what their response might be all I can say is he won't have a problem on Labour's side we want to have an adult positive relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union we're not proposing to rerun the Brexit argument because I think everyone in the UK is being exhausted by it but we do want to get the relationship in a better place than it's been in recent years and the way to do that is when there's a difficulty to try to reach agreement on that through negotiation rather than simply saying you're going to take a lot of action and everybody's going to go go to court and all the rest of it because we need goodwill and the other reason that we need goodwill is you know events elsewhere in Europe like Russia's invasion of Ukraine has put into perspective some of the things that the UK and the EU have been disagreeing about and I you know I think people have realised through those awful events that we've got far more in common as fellow democracies than some of the things we've been arguing about in recent years when you look at what's happening there. A lot of the talk obviously has been about trade but it would appear that one of the main stumbling blocks is the issue of European law and whether the European Court of Justice will have any jurisdiction in Northern Ireland and what the relationship between the European Court of Justice and Northern Ireland would be and that's one element of this whole debate that in the general conversation tends to be overlooked. How big an issue is that in your view? It is a very big issue for some of the people in Rishisunak's bike benches now I've not seen the details of this deal but I would expect that given that for trading goods Northern Ireland is effectively part of the single market rule book that ultimately there will be a role for the ECGA in policing that that is they are the you know they are the court that makes rulings on single market rules so that's something that Rishisunak will have to sell to his bike benches now it may be that they have steps before that involving courts in Northern Ireland that might make the ECGA more of a if you like a distant prospect but I would expect it to be there somewhere in the background in reality it would probably be in very limited cases that something gets that far so I don't think it will be a big problem in a day-to-day sense but for some of the people who've got very deep-seated feelings about sovereignty and who should decide what rules it is a big issue and he might find out when he's trying to sell this deal. Effectively what you're saying is it's going to be an issue of principle rather than an issue of practice? I think so you know in practice I suspect that you know the ECGA is not going to be camped in Northern Ireland making rulings on this and the next thing every day but there are some politicians in parliament for who any role in any circumstances no matter how rare is simply unacceptable now my sense is that Rishisunak has said to his party look that the greater prize here is to get this resolved by negotiation this is something you're going to have to accept and my sense is also that even for some of the traditional Brexiteers that he'll manage to do that so it's difficult to know in advance of publication but it feels like any rebellion on the government side will be containable for you know we'll see if that turns out but as of this moment it does feel like that. The next question obviously on this side of the Irish Sea is what happens at Stormont if the DUP accepts the deal then the barrier to the DUP re-entering an executive is theoretically removed and we can see a situation where Stormont convenes an executive is voted in and we see a government formed at Stormont with Michelle O'Neill as First Minister and a DUP, W First Minister be it Paul Given or whoever it may happen to be obviously Jeffrey Donaldson will be at Westminster so it won't be him. One suggestion that's been made is that effectively the DUP will move hell and high water not to be in government with a Sinn Féin First Minister and that in itself is one of the stumbling blocks that the DUP simply does not want to be in a Sinn Féin led government even though politically the First and W First Ministers are of equal status give or take so from that point of view is that going to be an issue or do you believe the DUP can overcome that and actually go into a Michelle O'Neill led executive? It's harder for me to speak with any certainty on that the only thing I would say is you know we want the institutions to be up and running these were the you know we're approaching the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement these were the institutions that system that you've just described was at the heart of the agreement and the heart of the agreement was Noel and I would have devolved bodies to make decisions on those things that that should be decided there and the longer the institutions are in a bay and that's not happening big decisions aren't being taken you've got this sort of holding pattern of civil servants having to make decisions without proper ministerial involvement so you know I think it's in the interest of the people of Northern Ireland to have proper government there and that's that's you know that's what's supposed to happen so I hope that if there's an agreement it paves the way for that to happen but I'd be less sure about making predictions on that than I have on other parts of what we talked about. Absolutely yeah and certainly there are issues certainly on this side where we're seeing weekly statements from various political parties saying we want to implement X but we can't because there isn't minister at Stormont to sign off on it and even there's a very important strategic rail review which is awaiting publication and at this point in time it hasn't been published and one of the reasons it hasn't been published is we don't have a transport minister to sign off on it so certainly there are practical issues that maybe Rishi Sunak and his supporters and people you know in England, Wales and Scotland aren't seeing which are very real on the ground in Northern Ireland and impacting on the border countries as well where you actually have situations where things can't move on and things can't happen we saw for instance electricity benefits and subsidies that were passed on across the rest of the UK are only being rolled out in Northern Ireland now because they didn't have an actual mechanism to get them paid so you know even something as key and important as that in the current financial circumstances you know that that was delayed so from from yeah and I think the longer it goes on yeah and the longer it goes on probably the more examples you could you could rack up there are certain things you can do administratively but it's better to have elected politicians to whom civil servants can give advice get authority get decisions get direction that's what democratic governments supposed to be about uh and it's been in abeyance for too long but you know nobody can force these things and it takes the parties to to to want to participate I hope that's an outcome of today if we get the result that we're expecting but you know it's difficult it's difficult to predict we'll see what unfolds in the coming hours in the meantime pack McFadden Labour MP thank you very much indeed thank you and good morning to all your listeners thanks very much thank you indeed Pat pleasure as always that's McFadden their Labour MP um and uh as I say a long standing friend of this program just looking at some comments say with regards to that crossing close to um the bank of Ireland there in Balabafay callers says I think the crossing is a good job the traffic stops for you I was in yesterday it saved me walking down the town absolutely the location is is not the issue and I think at fairness our earlier callers did say that the location isn't the issue the issue a lot of people have with that crossing in Balabafay is the fact that it's not signposted and it's not lit and and and the specific issue was at night certainly by day if there's a clear view of what's happening it's a very good crossing indeed and and I think the feeling too is that the sort of the the twin towns were used as a well almost um you know as part of an experiment where in one area they did put up the signs in the other area they didn't put up the signs and the twin towns was the area they got the short straw and didn't get the signs so you know it's it's hopefully all going to be resolved over the course of the coming months right this is the line to an intro it's uh 30 minutes to uh 12 o'clock we're gonna take a short break back after these a public interest message from dunig all county council dunig all county council would like to remind farmers to follow good agricultural practice for the land spreading of slurry from the first of February farmers and contractors should pay attention to the weather forecast and not apply slurry or digested to land which is waterlogged flooded likely to flood or if rain is forecast within 48 hours avoid spreading within five meters of any drain or 25 meters from a well spring or borehole used for drinking water as of this year all peak slurry must be applied using low emission slurry spreading equipment dunig all county council protecting your environment the world awaits you make that dream your next adventure cruise the caribbean sail from crete to corsica soak in san terrini sunsets dine on the shores of the indian ocean stroll through cobbled streets for hidden gems or bring the little ones to a magical wonderland trust the award-winning atlantic travel to guide your next adventure step through our doorway to the world atlantic travel letter kenny local enterprise week is back and 2023 is all about finding that spark to inspire you to start grow or scale your business running from monday the 6th to friday the 10th of march local enterprise week is organized by local enterprise office dunig all this year's events will stimulate creative thought motivate action and encourage you to be brave in business booking is essential see the lineup of events and speakers and to book visit local enterprise dot ie forward slash dunig all or call 07491 60735 highland radio weather updates with ireland west airport lanser body is back check out our new summer flights to lanser body with ryan air start in march 28th ireland west airport don't just take off take it easy looking at the weather forecast from met air and and met air and are giving us a reasonably positive forecast for today they are telling us that as far as the forecast is concerned today it's going to be uh it's sunny actually with um mainly dry weather a little bit of cloud about but not all that much and we can expect one or two scattered showers and temperatures today in around about the six or seven degrees mark tonight the temperatures will go slightly below zero temperatures set to hit tonight in or around about the minus one to plus three degrees celsius possibility of a few showers tonight but not many and by and large it should be clear and uh referring back to earlier conversation with david moore from astronomy island that means we may get to see the northern lights tonight now there was announcements about aquaculture at the weekend and some announcements for donnie gall but a call are not happy saying farmed oysters are not environmentally friendly they destroy beaches and the native fish flora and fauna you are giving credence to onboard ish gawara in a bid to give farmed oysters a good name go back to all the opposition to the oyster farms in donnie gall coastal communities in recent years to see the spin that bim are putting on the situation also oysters are flown to china and singapore do they count this into their carbon emission projections so asks a caller and uh we just got the um in mo's trolley watch figures in uh letter kenny university hospital this morning 27 people waiting beds 16 of them on emergency department trolleys that's the figure from letter kenny nationally the total 575 waiting beds and of those 449 on emergency department trolleys now i want to go to barry murphy of body wise and thank you barry for your forbearance know you've been in that waiting room on zoom for a while and body wise looking in particular at the issue barry of men and boys with eating disorders it's an issue we've discussed before but it's an issue you believe needs to be discussed more yeah certainly i think men's experience of eating disorders have often been overlooked both i think by the field of eating disorders and kind of the public's awareness of same so they would say potentially one in four eating disorders are affecting men and boys in particular and and for that group you know there is that heightened stigma around what's been historically framed or called quote kind of a female illness and it very much is something i think families as well kind of sometimes struggles to get their their head around that boy or a man can experience an eating disorder too one in four that's that that's 25 percent i mean i must be honest and say i would have not expected as large a figure as that yeah i mean it's a it's a it's a common question i suppose well from journalists you know why men and then secondly you know why the increases in men and i suppose it's it's a it's a couple of things happening in parallel i think in my opinion so we know from the australian experience that risky behaviors around food weight and exercise being on the increase in men for a couple of decades and that's by no means unique to australia we know from research carried out from the invader city of gallway there was a statistically significant increase in young people trying to diet or lose weight and particularly boys in the 15 to 17 range and so that's a risk factor we know that i think boys and men's bodies are a kind of more objectified than they they have been in the past and then also we know sometimes there's a big piece around steroids it's not necessarily something we see directly in our work but i think it is there again from the australian experience and then there's a piece around this idea of protein and this is something you should pay attention to and scrutinize and so kind of out of all of that i think that's sometimes why boys and men fall down there the dark path of an eating disorder is the link then potentially to to gyms and places like that because certainly anyone that the frequent gyms will notice more and more you're going to see the big tubs of whey powder and other supplements and and so on and so forth it seems in recent years that that's grown quite a lot and it's being presented as something that's desirable something that's necessary to build as you say to build up the muscles and build up the protein and and maybe it's setting people down a path that's not necessarily right for them yeah i mean we live i suppose boats in an information wizard and at the same time there's a lot of misinformation from sometimes as well people who aren't necessarily qualified in this area and it can be sometimes quite a simplistic kind of before and after picture presented and in a sense it can be like the body is a means of production that is this is something you should be kind of constantly working towards changing and i think for male athletes in particular they are it can be the hardest to reach when they're experiencing an eating disorder because they may not kind of want to get help do do the disorders present themselves differently in men and women very often in women we're talking about say anorexia nervosa um is is the experience of men different or are is it similar uh expressions of the disorders similar ways in which it affects them there would be some similarities and then some differences so i suppose you know historically that we know more about women's experiences a lot of the diagnostic tools out there have been based on women's experiences and that's kind of be one of the the criticisms that kind of the field of eating disorders hasn't really been set up effectively to capture men's experiences so we know there's a piece around this idea of muscle dysmorphia and that's you know sometimes alluded to as kind of reverse anorexia nervosa where a person gets locked into this kind of cycle of constantly building muscle mass and the difficulty there is it's it's never enough in the same way with anorexia nervosa weight loss it's never enough it's this constant push push push and for men i suppose that there's it can be a lot too around kind of compulsive exercise and the frequency of training and a red flag there is you know a person not being able to take a day off in a sense are they really pushed through injury and don't don't take that kind of rest recovery period and then that all affects their quality of life i call it as a contactless to say my son is really into working out at the moment he's living off chicken and broccoli i'm very worried about him am i being overbearing am i being over anxious yeah so it's kind of i suppose a couple of things is it that the person that's pursuing this maybe out of some sort of kind of specific diet that they have in mind you know what's the impact here say on school college work quality of life have you noticed any sort of personality change that can can very much come through as well are they having difficulties with flexibility so if you kind of change the family meal plan kind of at the last minute does that really throw them off in some way so those would be kind of a couple of red flags so is it that that focus you've described might it be masking something else is a question maybe i would be asking um obviously barry if people do want to get in touch with you be they people who think they may themselves have a disorder or people that have queries like like our college is there they can make contact with you at body wise that's a b o d y w h y s how how can they do so yeah absolutely so we've eaten disorder is awareness we just kicked off this morning so that's all up online various webinars and across our social media we'll have a couple of podcasts and a new animation focusing on a sibling perspective or people can also contact zero one two and oh seven nine zero six or message alex at body wise dot a for support and then our family program pillar which is coming up as well online on the ninth march barry murphy thanks indeed for speaking to us this morning barry they're from body wise just repeat that web address it's w w w dot body wise that's b o d y w h y s dot uh i e and uh you'll find a wealth of information there and hopefully some perspective and some answers in the meantime barry thank you very much indeed you're welcome thank you that's barry there from body wise and that brings today's nine to noon show to a close thank you indeed to donna marie for producing and also thanks to on you for all her help on the program as well and um john brezzan is up next on the nine to noon show not on the nine to noon show john's up next on around the northwest most importantly thanks to you for listening thanks to our contributors and thanks to you for your contributions uh until noon show back on the air tomorrow morning at nine but for myself donal cavena have a very good day there's a gavel of monsters you'll see around town in every color from bright pink to brown