Pressure on Micheál Martin as three of Fianna Fáil’s youngest TDs issue warning shot
Losing a loved one is a challenge all of us must face, but the grief is surely exponentially increased if that loved one dies alone on a street or in a laneway.
The Irish tradition of community support when someone dies is rightly celebrated and justly famous.
From ancient rites such as keening to the customs of waking the dead, and seeing a funeral as a celebration of the deceased’s life, the Irish attitude to death is often seen as a true expression of sympathy rather than cursory consolation.
Because of that tradition, recent figures from the Health Research Board (HRB) are all the more shocking.
This week, that organisation shared data from 2022 — the most recent year for which figures are available — which showed there were 124 homeless deaths that year.
It is terrible to consider so many people dying without a home to call their own, but a closer examination of the figures is truly disheartening.
The HRB stated that 71 of those people died alone, and 36 of those deaths were in a public place.
The housing and accommodation problem is one with many unforeseen consequences, but this is surely one of the most appalling side effects imaginable.
Losing a loved one is a challenge all of us must face, but the grief is surely exponentially increased if that loved one dies alone on a street or in a laneway.
That is the harsh reality lurking behind these figures.
Not only are people homeless, they are dying in their dozens on our streets, often with nobody on hand to offer comfort to them in their last moments.
The number of homeless people dying was 95 in 2019, 127 in 2020, and 124 in 2022.
The issue is further complicated by medical conditions, problem drug use, and mental health issues, “still among the additional challenges faced by the people who died while homeless, with many people impacted by more than one of these at the time of death”, as stated by the HRB.
This shows the size of the challenge.
But if people dying alone on the streets is not to become normalised, that challenge must be met.
The State’s cybersecurity watchdog has welcomed news that Anthropic, a major AI company, has decided not to give a broad release to its latest AI model.
That is because of concerns that the new model could expose cybersecurity vulnerabilities, so Anthropic will work with the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft to use the model to strengthen those companies’ cybersecurity.
Our National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said the decision not to release the model on a general basis was a “responsible approach”, adding: “[We] would encourage all frontier AI developers to adopt similar practices widening the availability to trusted global industry and government cybersecurity partners.”
This is certainly a welcome step from Anthropic.
Why the company is creating an AI tool which is able to identify and exploit weaknesses across every major operating system and every major web browser in the first place is a matter for another day, but at least the company has recognised the potential for disaster here, and has acted accordingly.
Unfortunately, who can be confident that other AI companies will be as restrained?
The NCSC is encouraging such companies to adopt similar practices to Anthropic, but using the term ‘encouraging’ is itself a giveaway.
These companies are in competition with each other and it is doubtful, for commercial reasons alone, that Anthropic’s competitors will follow the example being set here.
In that context, it is worth considering a recent feature in magazine, which cast Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, in a very unflattering light — one interviewee used the term “sociopath” to describe him.
The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, used to work at OpenAI but left to found his own company because of differences with Altman.
The two are now keen rivals.
Will OpenAI see Anthropic’s reluctance to release its new model as anything other than an opportunity it can exploit?
The speed of progress in AI means we may not have to wait too long to find out.
Swim Ireland, the sport’s governing body, has called for investment in the country’s swimming infrastructure, and with good reason.
On Wednesday, its interim CEO, Mary McMorrow, shared some stunning statistics about swimming pools in Ireland.
Over half (57%) of pools are in hotels.
One quarter of our pools were built before 1990, and just 2.5% of pools have been built in the last five years.
Ireland has one public swimming pool for every 81,000 people — in comparison, Scotland has one for every 14,000 people.
Ms McMorrow said: “We are just not keeping up with the pace. We have more people swimming. Swimming is the number two sport for people behind only personal exercise, but yet we don’t have enough swimming pools currently... 67% of the pools have waiting lists for swimming lessons.”
This is an extraordinary deficit in our national infrastructure.
The sheer imbalance in the number of pools in hotels versus the number of public pools is a major concern in and of itself.
Those hotels are, of course, private operations which are seeking to make a profit, and rightly so.
It should not be incumbent on them to make up for the stunning lack of public pools in Ireland.
Swimming is an essential life skill, one which is particularly necessary to ensure water safety for those using rivers, lakes, and beaches all over the country — not to mention the physical and mental benefits associated with it.
More, and newer, public swimming pools are badly needed.
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