
Tánaiste to seek Cabinet approval on bonus scheme to keep specialists in air corps
A bonus scheme to incentivise highly skilled specialists to stay in the air corps is to be rolled out amid serious shortages that are impacting operations.
Tánaiste and the minister for defence, Simon Harris, will seek Cabinet approval to immediately extend a service commitment scheme — which currently includes annual bonus payments of around €22,000 to air corps pilots — to air traffic control personnel.
It comes amid reports that Irish military flight operations at Casement Aerodrome in Baldonnel are to move to part-time hours, and may soon have to cease entirely due to severe staff shortages. The cuts could impact rescue, medical, and policing services.
Mr Harris will tell Cabinet that there is a worldwide shortage of air traffic control personnel and proposed measures are needed to help return the air corps to a 24/7 service.
Key worker support
Separately, ministers will sign off on extra funding to expand the number of training places for key workers in health and social care, disability, and education.
This funding will support the creation of 461 additional annual places in these priority professions, with the majority of new places commencing this year.
This immediate expansion will be in nine key areas: Physiotherapy; occupational therapy; speech and language therapy; radiation therapy; radiography; podiatry; social work; medical science; and dietetics.
Higher education minister James Lawless is also examining graduate entry programmes, further education models, and apprenticeship-type routes to increase the output of healthcare and therapy professionals across the system.
Meanwhile, social protection minister Dara Calleary will bring his department's annual report to Cabinet. It shows that there were 2.78m people in employment in the final quarter of 2024, an increase of almost 72,000 annually.
Overall expenditure in 2024 was €26.99bn, which was 26% of the Government's total spending.
Updating Cabinet on a potential trade war, Mr Harris will tell colleagues that discussions on a possible deal between the EU and the US are advancing with technical talks taking place in Washington in recent days.
The EU's position, however, remains that if no mutually acceptable solution is reached, both existing and additional EU counter-measures could take effect on July 14.
Read More
Charity offers counselling to Irish soldiers who have endured the 'horror' of war in Ukraine

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Agriland
15 minutes ago
- Agriland
Watch: ABP marks 10 years of research at demo farm
ABP Food Group hosted a special event today (Tuesday, June 10) to mark a decade of research on the ABP Demo Farm in Co. Carlow. Attended by agri-industry personnel from across Ireland, the event highlighted progress made to date on reducing climate emissions and improving on-farm efficiency. The Sheppard family-owned, 280ac dairy-beef farm, has partnered with ABP since 2015. The partnership was established to test and validate practical on-farm solutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from beef production, whilst also increasing efficiency. The ABP Demo Farm research is in collaboration with, and independently verified by, Teagasc and the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF). The key findings and achievements from the ABP Demo Farm to date include: The farm's carbon footprint is 32% lower than the average beef farm in Ireland, based on Bord Bia data, with steers finished 180 days earlier (ABP Beef Benchmark Report); The research findings indicate that high genetic merit beef sires, compared to lower-merit sires, produce cattle that are on average 38kg heavier and worth €301/head more at the same slaughter age. The gap between the best and worst sires reached 62kg in carcass weight and €511 in carcass value; Hereford cattle ranked in the top third of the Commercial Beef Value (CBV) and delivered €220 more in returns than those in the bottom third; Over 5,500 cattle have gone through the trial programme to date with more than 80,000 live-weights recorded from the trial farm alone; 150,000 doses of semen have been distributed through the Gene Ireland Programme; Progeny from 279 AI beef bulls have been tested, with these sires going on to produce 885,000 calves on Irish farms. The establishment of the ABP Demo Farm followed findings from ABP's work with the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), which revealed that over 90% of emissions across its supply chain occur at farm level. Ongoing and future research initiatives at the ABP Demo Farm include: Working with the ICBF, Teagasc, and Meat Technology Ireland (MTI) to develop genetic strategies for earlier finishing and lower daily methane emissions; Participation in the Water EIP Programme with Teagasc and the Local Authority Waters Programme (LAWPRO) to enhance water quality without compromising productivity, with three ABP team members currently training to support farmers through this scheme; Being the first beef farm in Ireland to adopt the Glasport Bio GasAbate slurry inoculation system, which Teagasc has shown reduces methane emissions by 80% and ammonia by 50%; Running a second-year grazing study in partnership with University College Dublin and BiOrbic, comparing multi-species swards and perennial ryegrass in terms of animal performance, grass growth, fertiliser use, and environmental impact; Measuring soil carbon stocks through 273 soil samples across different depths to track future gains in carbon sequestration. The research findings from the ABP Demo Farm have directly contributed to the creation of ABP Beef Benchmark Report and support the ICBF Gene Ireland Beef programme which aims to identify the most suitable beef bulls for use on the dairy herd. Advantage Beef Programme The success of the ABP Demonstration Farm has also led to the creation of the ABP Advantage Beef Programme, an enterprise partnership that assists farmers to build a more-sustainable beef business. The programme now includes over 1,000 participating suppliers and is a key element in expanding the research findings of the ABP Demonstration Farm across the family farm supply chain. In 2024, the 35,000 cattle produced as part of the ABP Advantage Beef Programme were on average 85 days younger at finish, with just a 4kg lighter carcass weight. ABP is currently working with Teagasc, ICBF and MTI on new projects focused on genetic selection for earlier finishing and animals that emit less methane per day, as well as projects focused on improving water and soil quality. Agri-sustainability manager at ABP, Stephen Connolly, said: 'The ABP Demonstration Farm is a long-term investment in the future of sustainable beef production in Ireland. 'Our objective is to develop systems and share solutions that support farmers and allow their businesses to grow. The key focus of our projects is economic and environmental sustainability and in this, our key areas are animal breeding and grassland management. 'Although this farm is focused on dairy beef, many of the practices developed here can be transferred to suckler-beef systems, which remain an integral part of Ireland's beef sector,' Connolly added.


Agriland
15 minutes ago
- Agriland
DAFM seeks services of recruitment agency
The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) is currently inviting tenders from recruitment services providers. The department said the reason for undertaking this procurement process is so it has 'the people resources it needs, in a timely manner, through the services of a recruitment agency'. According to the tender documents, the value of the contract, which will be for a maximum period of four years, may amount to some €500,000, excluding VAT. DAFM The department currently employs over 4,000 staff operating from six large, centralised locations across the country. Staff also work in 16 regional offices, fishery harbours, meat plants, border inspection posts and laboratories. In addition to the general administrative grade streams, the department employs several technical and professional grade streams. This includes technical agricultural officers, veterinary practitioners, agricultural inspectorate, forestry inspectorate, engineers, harbour masters, laboratory specialists and services support staff. Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine The process for filling vacancies in the civil service is as follows: open competition; internal promotion competitions or expressions of interest and the Civil Service Mobility Scheme. 'The DAFM Competitions and Recruitment Unit already carry out a large number of competitions and this tender is to add the option of using an outside agency to carry out some of these competitions,' the documents said. The successful tenderer will be required to design and administer in consultation with the department, 'an effective, efficient and fair recruitment and selection process for various DAFM positions'. The department noted that the following actions will be carried out by DAFM and not the recruitment agency: Negotiating start dates; Contracts; Garda vetting; Job descriptions, including the terms and conditions for each position; The advertising of positions on Public Appointments Service (PAS); Translation of advertising into Irish; The advertising of positions on European platforms, where appropriate. The department said that it has 'a wide and diverse customer base' which includes farmers, consumers, food processers and other commercial operators, those involved in sea fishing, forestry, bioenergy, research as well as diverse EU institutions, other state bodies and special interest groups. The deadline for the submission of tenders is 5:00p.m on June 24.


Agriland
15 minutes ago
- Agriland
NI beef and lamb export markets ‘more critical than ever'
Beef and lamb exports are of major significance to Northern Ireland's overall economy. according to Livestock and Meat Commission (LMC) chief executive, Colin Smith. And he considers the scale of this enterprise even more significant. The LMC representative pointed out that Northern Ireland – with a population of approximately two million people – produces enough food to feed five times that number, underscoring the vital importance of export markets to the region's agri-food economy. Smith said: 'At the core of this output is the production of Farm Quality Assured beef and lamb. 'Identifying and securing high-value markets for red meat is more critical than ever, especially in light of significant political and economic developments over the past three years.' 'These include a change of UK government and the negotiation of key trade agreements with major global players such as the US, EU, Australia, New Zealand, and India. 'The evolving international trade landscape, combined with fluctuating global tariffs, presents increasing complexity for red meat exporters.' According to Smith, the navigation of these challenges will be essential to ensuring long-term profitability and sustainability for Northern Ireland's red meat sector. He fully recognises the need for Northern Ireland's beef and lamb sectors to be fully cognisant of all these factors. But there is also a political dimension to all of this, which could be of an even more fundamentally significant. Reflecting on the evolving political landscape, Smith commented on the impact of recent UK government decisions. 'The new Labour government has now been in office for a year. And during that time, it appears to have prioritised food security over food self-sufficiency. 'This shift in focus has raised concerns within the farming community.' Smith claimed that support for Labour among farmers 'is clearly waning', which he said was down to 'the government's recent handling of agricultural issues'. 'Inheritance tax reforms are just one example and many within the sector feel farming has been sacrificed at the expense of other interests – particularly in trade negotiations such as those with the US,' he said. Beef and lamb export markets In the view of the LMC CEO, these developments underscore growing tensions between policy direction and the needs of UK agriculture at a time when global competitiveness is more vital than ever. The aforementioned agreements follow on from free trade deals with Australia and New Zealand arrived at by the previous Conservative governments. When fully operational, these arrangements could provide beef export quotas of 170,000t and 60,000t annually for the respective countries. Smith said: 'But that's not the end of the story. The EU continues to progress a trade deal with the Mercosur block which could see almost 100,000t of beef from South American countries coming into Europe on an annual basis. 'This may not impact directly on the UK beef market. But it could have a very significant indirect effect.' So the question then arises: what happens to the significant tonnages of UK beef that are currently exported to the EU in the wake of the Mercosur deal's full implementation? 'The prospect of significantly reduced beef export trading levels from the UK to Europe is a very real one in these circumstances,' said Smith. But even in the here and now the commission's chief executive is concerned about imported beef making its way on to UK supermarket shelves. He explained: 'UK supermarkets are the most significant purchasers of farm quality beef and lamb produced in Northern Ireland. 'It is crucially important that this commitment to Northern Ireland's red meat sector is maintained into the future.'