Latest news with #Forsa
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
Five Oberstown staff required hospital treatment following recent incidents
Nine staff at Oberstown Children Detention Campus were injured in an incident involving one young person on Wednesday, the trade union Forsa has said. The incident, during which improvised weapons were used, resulted in four staff being brought to hospital and a number being signed off work for up to a month. It comes as it emerged at the weekend that two young people, accused of being armed with a machine gun during a robbery in South Dublin, were freed due to lack of space at the State's main youth detention centre. On Tuesday, the Department of Children , which oversees Oberstown's operations, said it planned to increase capacity. READ MORE It would 'put in place the necessary resources to enable a small number of additional places to be made available in the near future'. Oberstown currently has capacity for 40 boys and six girls, and is accommodating 40 boys and one girl. Wednesday's violence was the third such incident since Sunday, June 8th, said a staff member who spoke to The Irish Times on condition of anonymity. These had left five people requiring hospital treatment. 'The most serious incident happened Wednesday last week in a remand unit on the campus. During an attempt to move a young person who had previously assaulted a member of staff, a residential social care worker had their face sliced open. They required immediate emergency hospitalisation,' he said. Forsa said there was 'a growing crisis in workplace safety' at the facility. Senior management was 'failing in their duty of care' to staff and this was exacerbating a crisis in staff recruitment and retention, it said. 'Just two out of 10 staff recruited at the start of the year remain,' said the union. [ 'It's not a prison': Inside Oberstown child detention campus Opens in new window ] The staff member said an increasing focus from management on the 'care' of the young people had resulted in inadequate attention to the 'safety'. The complexity of the young people's needs was increasing and the crimes for which they were sentenced more violent. 'The young people used to be coming in for robberies, robbing cars. Now it's all murder, attempted murder, rape, sexual assault. 'We have young people testing positive for crack, cocaine, multiple drugs.' The young people as well as staff were affected by the violence, he added. 'You have young people we have built huge relationships with, and then they see someone walk past, their head covered in blood, and we're meant to just move on. The system is normalising this. 'Staff are stressed, injured, burnt out.' Forsa said staff reiterated their call for 'more effective restraint techniques and the provision of appropriate personal protective equipment. 'Repeated warnings to senior management, about the risks facing staff, have been consistently ignored,' he said. 'Management's failure to recognise and address ongoing problems can no longer be ignored: we are witnessing a complete failure to uphold basic health and safety obligations. Our members are being placed in harm's way every day with no adequate response or accountability.' A Hiqa report last year found the 38 young people then present were having to stay in their bedrooms for periods to facilitate breaks due to insufficient staff. It found the young people on-site generally received 'good-quality, child-centred care'. Both Oberstown management and the Department of Children have been contacted for comment.
TimesLIVE
12 hours ago
- Politics
- TimesLIVE
CRL Commission chair opens case against Forsa leader for 'repeated insults'
The chair of the CRL Commission wants the courts to decide the fate of Michael Swain, leader of Freedom of Religion South Africa (Forsa), who she believes is repeatedly insulting her and the commission for its stance on the monitoring of churches. Thoko Mkhwanazi-Xaluva addressed a media briefing on Thursday with Cheryl Zondi, a witness in the Nigerian televangelist Timothy Omotoso rape case, before she proceeded to Hillbrow police station to open a case of crimen injuria. Mkhwanazi-Xaluva alleged that NGO Forsa had been persistently using various social media platforms to spread misinformation about the work of the commission. 'This misinformation has been sustained despite us having met them to provide clarity on why the commission has resolved to undertake particular projects or programmes. 'However, the most crucial issue that necessitated this briefing today is the malicious lies that they have been spreading about me as the chair of the commission, as well as Cheryl Zondi,' she said. In April this year, the Commission for the Protection of the Rights of Cultural, Religious and Linguistic Communities (CRL Rights Commission) raised concerns about the absence of effective oversight mechanisms for religious leaders in churches Mkhwanazi-Xaluva at the time questioned who was responsible for monitoring and preventing inappropriate behaviour in churches. 'There are behaviours that are unbecoming, inappropriate, unsuitable, sometimes even indecent, in churches,' she said in April. 'Who is monitoring that? Who is making sure that those things don't happen?' On Thursday, she said Forsa, an organisation of religious leaders representing more than 12-million people, had appealed to the president not to reappoint her in 2019. She said they claimed to have highlighted irregularities and bias of the CRL's investigation and the conflict and division this had created among the faith communities, which CRL had a statutory and constitutional duty to protect and defend. 'While Forsa raises a bias on the part of the commission, they go ahead to single me out. The investigation into abuses taking place in the religious sector and in different religious communities was launched by the members of the commission, not by myself as an individual,' she said. She said the commission seemed to have started a war with some of the religious leaders when they spoke about monitoring. 'We seem to have started a war with that because people don't want to be held accountable. People who say they're fighting for freedom of religion have literally declared a war on the commission, but specifically on me and then dragged in Cheryl, because they think this is easy to do. You can't just insult people in whatever way you like,' she said. She added that the commission needed to send a strong message to all the people who were trying to run away from being held accountable as religious leaders.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Millions of Germans undecided: dpa's election campaign brief
Even though polls have barely budged during the German election campaign, millions of voters remain undecided, pollsters say, even with just two days before the country casts ballots in a highly consequential election. That's raised hopes among candidates and party campaigners that they can find some last-minute traction with the German public. The Forsa polling outfit says 22% haven't picked a party yet, while a new YouGov survey put that figure at 20%. For one last time before German voters cast their ballots on February 23, dpa is bringing you the highlights - and lowlights - from the campaign trail. Los geht's! Conservatives firmly in first place But whatever hopes undecided voters might stir, polls have shown a very clear - and barely shifting - picture at the top of the race. Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have held a commanding lead for months. That's why other world leaders have already been treating Merz, the clear front-runner, as the chancellor-in-waiting even before the ballots have been cast. The latest Forsa poll on Friday for private broadcasters RTL/ntv showed the centre-right bloc down a point at 29%, but still well ahead of the second-place far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) at 21%. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), meanwhile, had hoped for a comeback over the course of the campaign but have been stuck at 14% to 17%, leading to fading hopes that Scholz could somehow hang on for another term. As the latest Forsa poll puts the SPD down a point at 15%, Scholz is headed to Dortmund for a final Friday evening rally, after which he'll presumably pray for an election day miracle. Dortmund is the biggest city in the Ruhr region, Germany's old coal-and-steel industrial heartland, and the legions of trade union workers there long provided the Social Democrats with their electoral might. Polls have been wrong before, of course, but there's been remarkably little variation in Germany's truncated campaign. Russia behind fake videos? Made-up videos purporting to show voting problems have been circulating online, usually casting the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the victim. A fake video set in the eastern city of Leipzig shows a paper ballot without the AfD listed as an option, while another fabricated video claiming to be filmed in Hamburg shows ballots marked for the AfD tossed into the shredder. German security authorities have indications that both fake videos are part of a disinformation campaign by the Russian outfit "Storm 1516," according to Maximilian Kall, spokesman for the German Interior Ministry. That would hardly be the first time Russian propagandists have tried to sow chaos in a Western election. 'It's about democracy' You know things must be serious when athletes chime in on politics. Coach Niko Kovac from ailing Borussia Dortmund, who as a Berlin-based Croatian national is not eligible to vote on Sunday, urged Germans to exercise their democratic right and cast their ballots. "It's about democracy," said the 53-year-old, adding he hoped that "every single person" casts their vote. Quote of the day: Bodo Ramelow "We are the hit of this federal election. Nobody had us on their radar." - Bodo Ramelow, the top candidate for The Left, is all praise after the far-left fringe party surged within just a few weeks from below the 5% threshold usually needed to take seats to up to 8% in the latest polls.
Yahoo
21-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Poll: German main political camps see slight drop as AfD up by 1%
The latest poll released on Friday - just days before German snap elections - saw both the conservative bloc and the Social Democrats incur a slight drop, with a two-way coalition following Sunday's vote seeming increasingly unlikely. The centre-right opposition Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), who have consistently been polling in first place in the months leading up to the election, were down by one point at 29%, according to the survey conducted by pollsters Forsa on behalf of broadcasters RTL/ntv. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz also lost one point, dropping to 15% - meaning Germany's main political camps are unlikely to garner enough votes to form a traditional "grand coalition" comprising the CDU/CSU and the SPD. The Greens, the junior partner in Scholz's current centre-left minority government, held steady at 13%, according to the survey, a result that would also rule them out as the sole coalition partner for the CDU/CSU. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), meanwhile, increased its share by one point to 21%, cementing its hold on second place. Support for The Left party - on the far left of the political spectrum - also rose by one point to more than 8%, after the fringe party, which for a long time hovered around the 5% threshold usually needed to take seats in parliament - continues what appears to be a last-minute resurrection. The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which campaigns on a mix of left-wing economic policies and an anti-immigration views, might both fail to make it into parliament this time around, with the Forsa survey putting them at 5% and 3% respectively.
Yahoo
18-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Thin majority of Germans back role in possible Ukraine peacekeeping mission
BERLIN (Reuters) - A slim majority of Germans are in favour of deploying Bundeswehr forces as part of a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine to monitor any ceasefire that is agreed, a poll showed on Tuesday. European leaders, alarmed at being sidelined from talks on the future security of Ukraine, are considering possible contributions to any future peace mission as U.S. and Russian officials meet to discuss ending the three-year-old war. A Forsa poll for Stern magazine said that 49% of Germans favoured such a deployment while 44% opposed it and 7% abstained. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. In western Germany, 52% of people backed an involvement while 65% of those in former Communist eastern states opposed it, the survey said. It also showed that 83% of voters for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would reject deployment. A defence ministry spokesperson said on Monday that Germany would not shy away from contributing if a framework were set. However, any decision would probably be for a new German government to take after a federal election on Sunday. The poll was conducted on February 13 and 14. (Writing by Madeline Chambers, Editing by Rachel More)
