An emergency Bill raised in the Dáil by Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore proposes ‘to amend the Wildlife Act to add sprat to the Fifth Schedule, prohibiting targeted commercial fishing of the species. With depleting stocks of forage fish such as sprat already affecting our wildlife, Fiona Hayes Vincent says […]
As the world population grows Aquaculture is considered vital to global food security and so is expected to continue expanding in the coming years. In Ireland Aquaculture employs around 2,000 people with mussel farming accounting for around 317 jobs, nevertheless Kinsale residents, backed by all of the area’s councillors, have […]
The world’s first transatlantic cable, which sent its first telegram 166 years ago, started in Valentia Island off the coast of Co Kerry. Now subsea cables carry 99 per cent of the world’s internet traffic. Today’s cables enable the transmission of light along fibreoptic strands within the cable, enabling an ever-increasing […]
Travel downstream along the Bandon River and a few kilometres east of Enniskeane you will pass under a beautiful freestanding six-arch rubble stone road bridge, built c.1740. It is listed by the ‘National Inventory of Architectural Heritage’ as “An expertly built bridge elegantly spanning the Bandon River. Despite its frequent […]
As I write, I am sitting on a veranda in Ko Yao Noi island in Thailand looking out over Phang Nga Bay watching a pied hornbill cavorting on the wall. I am on holiday. I have many friends who, like me, have taken a flight overseas this year. I […]
Fifty years ago Oxford economist E. F. Schumacher wrote ‘Small Is Beautiful – A Study of Economics As If People Mattered’, challenging the state of excessive consumption in Western society; and challenging economic globalisation, with warnings related to the inevitable human cost. His premise was that economies should revolve around the […]