The Minister for Health, Mary Harney, has a lot to answer for. Nurses, midwives, consultants and other staff in the newly opened (CUMH) are stretched to the limit coping with the pressure of expectant mothers and babies from the original three maternity hospitals in the city.
We spent over two hours in a stuffy, crowded and very warm waiting area to be seen by a midwife and a consultant this morning.

It was in stark contrast to the empty hallways and calm of the hospital just two weeks ago when we were given a of the facilities and offered a glimpse of a gleaming high-tech maternity environment. Pregnant women, partners and children waited in the sweltering heat while staff were run off their feet. The waiting area was unfortunately too small, there weren t enough seats, and pregnant women had to make do by leaning against the walls of the corridors while waiting to be seen.

Despite the pressure, staff were as nice as always. Midwives were considerate, helpful and professional, but when asked about how things were going I heard that 2 had resigned and 4 had taken sick leave. As well as being short staffed to begin with, the remaining staff are even worse off now.

Some workers are pulling 11 hour days.
Did I forget to mention that this 75 million Euro hospital doesn t have air conditioning? Can you imagine the heat and mood in a small area where the only air comes from 2 slightly ajar windows and from internal corridors?

It wasn t nice. At least the two expensive flat screen LCD screens on the walls kept us occupied with day time TV courtesy of TV3. Oh yeah, that s what we need.

Thanks to Mary Harney s last week the a week late on Saturday last. She had threatened to find a different use for the building if midwives didn t accept her terms and move to the new hospital. Midwives and consultants protested that staffing levels weren t high enough and I bore witness to that shortage this morning.

Even the computer system there is broken and not expected to be working until this evening. No appointments could be made so women had to come on a first-come-first-served basis to the morning clinic. One woman we met there had been there since 8.

30am. We arrived at 11am. Apparently it was even worse on Monday.

Teething problems with a new hospital? Perhaps, but if Mary Harney wanted the hospital opened a week previously shouldn t those problems have been sorted out then?
Truly, healthcare is a vocation.

I couldn t do it. The midwives and staff deserve all the support they can get.
Do you work from home?

Do you wish you could share the cost of an office space with like minded individuals?
was launched a few days ago by and whose is to, promote coworking in ireland, to provide a community space for coworkers to team up and to serve as a guide to people who are looking to go out on their own. I love the notion of a community of cafe-like collaboration spaces for developers, writers and independents .

It s a great idea and I for one will be subscribed to the blog and keeping an eye on developments. I m not the only one: and have both expressed an interest in the venture.
This has more details on what coworking is with a long list of posts on the subject and links to coworking initiatives all over the world!

alerted me to the fact that the new are using WordPress, and so with much excitement I hit the site and browsed around. A quick look at the source showed that they are in fact using which is rather neat.
Ireland.

com is the website of , a major daily newspaper here. It ll be great to see journalists blogging there, but only if they are allowed free reign. If they pull it off, they ll bring a lot more attention to the site.

So far, only two blogs are operating. is a music blog written by Jim Carroll, and by Conor Pope. Conor s first post is , a short post exploring new charges by Aer Lingus.

I don t see a Trackback link there but hopefully they ll allow trackbacks and pingbacks sooner rather than later.
Welcome to the ireland.com blog page.

We have two blogs, one written by music journalist Jim Carroll, using his weekly column On The Record as its cornerstone. This blog will shed light on the machinations of the music industry at home and abroad. From today, the consumer-focused PriceWatch section will also be carried in blog form on the site.

Written by Conor Pope, the blog will be updated throughout the week and will allow users to post details of rip-offs, ask questions and perhaps even highlight bargains they have spotted.
William Shatner was by the Sunday Times for it s In Gear section and in typical fashion it s mostly about cars, but don t let that put you off if you re not a motorhead. He talks about his marriages, his future flight into space in a Virgin Galactic Shuttle (not looking forward to it), horse riding, and his hopes for good health which must play on the mind of an active 76 year old.

To lift the mood I ask what dreams Shatner still wants to fulfil. “Not to get sick,” he says. “I’m so healthy and I feel so strong and I jump up on a horse and I drive fast cars.

And I’m thinking this has got to end soon, and I don’t want it to end. That’s my biggest dream.”
While on the subject of high achieving 35 year old septuagenarians, I want to congratulate my mother-in-law, Philomena Burns for winning The James Stack Memorial Perpetual Trophy and a gold medal in this year s Feis Maitiu poetry and recital competition in Cork.

She is of course delighted and we re very proud of her! I hope to update this post with a photo of her and her trophy and medal next week.
How are you supposed to do business in Ireland when tax forms don t come on time?

Here s a snippet from a form P30 I got from Revenue this morning.
A form that should be filled out before February 14th arrived on March 30th. A form that warns that there may be penalties for late payment.

Sheesh. Oh, and it arrived opened. Not the first time that happened either.

This morning I finally paid my motor tax. Instead of getting the nice simple online registration form and pin number I got a final reminder sometime in February warning that the police would be called if the tax wasn t paid within ten days. I didn t and they weren t.

I called the garage instead who sent me a form to get another vehicle registration form, which I already have. I have two of them now, one must go back.
We know for a fact that mail has been lost.

A letter that Jacinta was expecting last year vanished without a trace. Maybe it s in some sorting office somewhere stuck behind a bin.
An Post need to get their act together and stop losing mail and delivering late.

Edit: oh, and next time you buy a second hand car you ll have to pay the motor tax for the time the car was in the garage. You re not supposed to, but it s happened to me on my last two cars. I ve had to pay for the month previous to purchasing the car because the tax just happened to run out before I bought it.

The garage is supposed to register the car as off the road but that obviously doesn t work.
Edit: It s April 4th. I just received a tax assasement from Revenue dated January 10th.

It had no address on the form, but someone had hand written the address on a slip of paper which was stapled to that form. We got an awful shock until we realised the issue date because we ve sent Revenue big fat cheques since January. gulp!

I spotted this on a large advertising hoarding on the Western Road in Cork this afternoon and snapped it to remind myself to look it up. It s right by UCC and in the perfect spot to attract the attention of webs savvy students. URLs on hoardings are like honey to a bee with me.

I will snap off a few shots of the sign as a reminder and visit later. When I did visit I was presented with the following page. I have to ask, if I m visiting thisisliving.

ie what country do you think I m in?
After selecting Ireland and hitting Enter I was brought into a nice animation of a resort or hotel which built up and zoomed away again, and then repeated with another 2 locations before being brought to a hotel reception. I signed in and clicked around for about 5 minutes before getting bored of all the loading.

It reminded me of the days spent loading C64 games from datasette. At least then I had the cool Ocean or Thalamus loading music to entertain me..

The copyright notice at the bottom of page identifies Sony Computer and a took me to which has the following tv ad for the Playstation 3. Apparently this advertising campaign has been running all over Europe since January. I m sure I would have come across a games console somewhere if I had persisted!

Game footage in the above trailer does look pretty. Anyone bought a PS3 yet? Someone told me they re going for about €600 or so.

That correct? You could buy a reasonably specced home PC for that much! Supposedly Ireland has a less than healthy obsession with everything Playstation so I m sure they re selling like hotcakes!

Today is here in Ireland and in honour of the day I m offering a daffodil header image to any blogger who d like it. There are no restrictions on how you use this image, do what you like, but I would love if you would blog about . I ve made two header images especially suited to blogs using the .

These are 780 200 images, and to make things easier there s a mirrored image to suit your blog title. Larger sizes are available on request.
Daffodil Day is in aid of cancer research.

The does what it can to fund raise for cancer research and care so they re a good charity to support.
Daffodil Day is the largest annual fundraising event run by the Irish Cancer Society to raise money for people with cancer.
This year our Daffodil Day is on March 23rd, and over 5,000 volunteers nationwide will be helping to sell fresh and silk daffodils and daffodil pins.

If you would like to help out during Daffodil Day, just phone us on 1 850 60 60 60 or Email reception@irishcancer.ie
Daffodils are flowers of hope and of springtime. That is why they are such an appropriate symbol for the Irish Cancer Society s cancer care projects.

These projects help to improve the quality of care available to people with cancer throughout Ireland.
I have to admit their is a little strange. I never thought I d have to ask permission by fax to link to a website.

Slightly later we bought our daffodils while doing a spot of shopping in Blarney. Here s the very nice volunteer and her springer spaniel who were manning the stall outside Supervalu. A bunch of daffodils or a pin are 3 Euro each.

A small contribution to cancer research.
Seachtain na Gaeilge is now over for another year but this year RTE actually featured a tv program I enjoyed. was a four part series which followed 4 immigrants to Ireland as they learned to speak Irish and learn about Irish culture through cooking, sport, music and dancing.

The show was presented by Bob Kelly who was engaging and jumped from Irish to English with ease while keeping the conversation going.
The last episode on Arainn was wonderful to watch. The scenery there is so stark and barren but the local populace were friendly and full of fun.

Witness dancing at the cross roads! Predictably enough they ended up at but drinking champagne near those cliffs? Gulp!

I felt Bob Kelly preached a little too much at the end about the importance of keeping the language alive but it was humbling to hear these new Irish speaking as Gaeilge. I for one would love to labhair cupla focail in my daily interactions with strangers and friends.
Just back from town now.

We met Linda and went to Luigi Malones for lunch, hoping to catch the last bit of the parade afterwards, but as we reached Patrick s Street at 2pm the crowd started to disperse! The parade lasted barely an hour! Conor saw the whole thing and he said we didn t miss much.

I got some great shots of the crowd and as everyone was in good mood many people posed and acted a little crazy for the camera.
A few minutes later we met Conor and Sylvia, headed to the farmers market where Linda and I took long exposure shots of the carosel and we eventually ended up in a nearby cafe for further refreshment.
Looks like some photos of the parade on Flickr already.

I saw an insane number of people with digital SLRs. Folks, why aren t you all blogging?
I think Linda might have found a new passion in street photography too.

Can t wait to see her shots!
More photos: took some excellent shots of the parade in Dublin. did the same in Galway.

Gallery to follow! has lots to offer today! Anyone else I can link to?

Leave a comment!
Everyone s very quiet! No more photos?

I have a few on my photoblog, and I ll be posting some more over the next week.
Tomorrow is the feast day of the patron saint of Ireland, St. Patrick.

Unfortunately it seems that St. Patrick was never by a Pope, but that s ok because according to , for most of Christianity’s first thousand years, canonisations were done on the diocesan or regional level. We ll not give up our Saint without a fight!

( )
In honour of the day parades will be held in all the cities and many of the towns of Ireland. I ll be in Cork tomorrow to capture a flavour of the day and photos will appear soon after on .

I love reason two however!

You don t have to resign from office for being corrupt - just pretend you re really sorry for about half an hour. Or better still - ignore it and it ll go away!