Environment Minister Phil Hogan’s proposal to abolish town councils is facing a legal challenge.

The Association of Municipal Authorities of Ireland (AMAI) — the representative body for town councils — is considering such a move while an East Cork town council is poised to proceed with its own, independent challenge should the representative body fail to do so. 

AMAI director Tom Ryan says the organisation is giving “serious consideration” to a legal challenge, with the matter set to be “decided by the members” at its conference in New Ross next month.

Meanwhile, Midleton Town Council’s December meeting adopted Mayor Ted Murphy’s proposal to make a €50,00 provision in its draft budget to kick–start its own challenge should the AMAI not do so.

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 The Government has announced the abolition of the Office of the Chief Scientific Adviser. 

The most recent incumbent to the post, Prof Patrick Cunningham, retired at the end of August. Prof Mark Ferguson will take on the role of chief scientific adviser to the Government in addition to his existing role as director general of Science Foundation Ireland.

 Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton said the decision to merge the two bodies forms part of a drive for greater efficiency within his department.

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THE CONSTITUTION should be amended to enable the Oireachtas to establish specialist courts to deal with family and environmental law, along with a court of appeal that could hear appeals from the High Court, the Chief Justice has suggested.

Mrs Justice Susan Denham was delivering the opening address at a conference on the 75th anniversary of the Irish Constitution in the Royal Irish Academy yesterday.

With such a general amendment the Oireachtas could then establish, as it saw fit, specialist courts to deal with environmental and planning matters and family law, she said.

She said an appeal from the High Court is now likely to take almost 3½ years to be heard by the Supreme Court. In addition to the usual appeals, appeals of case–management directions of the Commercial Court in some of the very complex and lengthy cases there are now being made to t he Supreme Court, she said.

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Colm MacEochaidh SC has been nominated by the Government for appointment by the President as a judge of the High Court.

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Dail deputies are to sit for up to 60% more hours under a plan aimed at making parliament more efficient and responsive to changing political events.

The government has agreed to increase the Dail working year by more than half and to expose ministers to daily questioning by opposition TDs and government backbenchers on topical issues of the day.

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Transparency International (TI) Ireland has set up the free confidential alert to identify white-collar crime, waste of resources and advise those affected.

Chief executive John Devitt said the ‘Speak Up' helpdesk will allow concerned citizens to follow their conscience and act as a safe way to report.

"It takes courage and integrity to speak up and report corruption, fraud or the abuse of power," Mr Devitt said.

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A SPOOF email, circulated last week, conned people into thinking Shell had been given permission for the new Corrib gas route.

According to the release, which was "sent from An Bord Pleanála", Shell must build a new garda barracks on the gas pipeline and Shell workers must remove every frog from the Rossport commonage by hand and not by JCB! National journalists took to the airwaves announcing the decision, only to realise their mistake later in the day.  

According to the statement, untreated waste must be discharged into Broadhaven Bay; Shell must build sports and leisure facilities for people living within the 400 metre "kill zone" along the pipeline route and the multi-national must also fund a Doonacarton Early Avalanche Detection (DEAD) scheme where employees will keep an eye out for bits of mountain slipping towards homes.

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BUREAUCRACY and red tape appear to have been the death knell of one of Clare County Council's most innovative projects in recent years.

The position of Biodiversity Officer with Clare County Council is now virtually defunked as the local authority cannot appoint anyone to the positions as a result of the recruitment ban currently in force within the public sector.

However, The Clare People understands that this position is completely funded from outside council sources and could have been maintained with no extra cost to the council if contracts and paperwork had been finalised before the ban on recruitment in the public sector came into effect.

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MAURA Harrington, who went on hunger strike last year as part of her protest against the Corrib Gas project, says life was so good for her in prison that she gained half a stone in 28 days, writes Marian Harrison.

The Shell to Sea protestor received the jail term in March for assaulting a garda and spent the duration of her detention in Mountjoy women's prison, but she had nothing but praise for the regime.

"The weight I lost at Glengad I gained in Mountjoy. In prison you lose your freedom; that's the debt you're paying to society, but the prison regime is geared towards taking account of your human dignity," Ms Harrington told the Western People. In jail she had her own room with ensuite, as well as television facilities and dined on four meals a day.

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U.K. companies can create 400,000 new jobs in the next eight years by cleaning up the environment and curbing pollution, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Brown, hosting a summit of leaders from the Group of 20 nations in April, says the world should tighten financial regulations and encourage environmental technologies to bolster the economy and save the planet from climate change.

"We can expect 400,000 new environmental sector jobs over the next eight years, with a total of 1.3 million people employed in these sectors by 2017," the prime minister said at a breakfast meeting in London today, according to his office. "That is an annual growth rate of 5 per cent, even with today's economic difficulties, underlining the tremendous economic opportunities the low carbon economy provides."

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Most conflicts fought in the second half of the last century were waged in biologically diverse, fragile places, with many negative consequences and a few surprising positive ones, a study said Friday.

A team of international conservation scientists found that 81 percent of conflicts fought between 1950 and 2000 in which at least 1,000 people died played out in "biodiversity hotspots" from the Himalayas in Asia to the coastal forests of east Africa.

The hotspots contain the entire populations of more than half of all plant species and at least 42 percent of all vertebrates, and are highly threatened, said the study, which was published in Conservation Biology magazine.

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