NEWS EDITOR’S CHOICE
BANTRY DESIGNATED IRELAND’S FIRST FLUORIDE-FREE TOWN
B
antry in West Cork has been designated Ireland’s first fluoride-free town and comes after six businesses
installed filtration systems that will, according to the companies involved, enable consumers to choose to consume food and drinks prepared with fluoride-free water. Talk is now growing that this initiative could spread nationwide. The move to introduce the new filtration systems is being driven by the West Cork Fluoride Free Campaign, which is spearheading the Fluoride Free Towns movement. According to the campaign’s chief spokesman, Owen Boyden,
“The filters are perfectly legal and are being sold up and down the country. As far as I know, there is no legislation preventing it. People deserve a choice.” Fluoride Free campaign teams are working across West Cork towns with operations in: Clonakilty, Skibbereen, Macroom, Kinsale, Castletownbere, and Bandon. The West Cork Fluoride Free campaign, which is working to
reverse Ireland’s mandatory policy of water fluoridation, supported and advised six Bantry-based firms to go fluoride free. Organico Café, Organico Shop, Trawl and Trend cafe and
restaurant, The Fish Kitchen restaurant, The Mariner bar, and Wokabout, a supplier of ready-to-go Thai meals, invested in the installation of a reverse osmosis water filtration system. Ireland in the only country in the EU and one of only two in the world which implements a national mandatory public water fluoridation policy. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland insists that fluoride concentrations in public drinking water pose no known medical problems to the general population. However, according to Boyden, there is growing support for his
campaign and if more towns follow suit then the Irish Government could be forced to reconsider its “isolated mandatory water fluoridation policy” and end what he described as an “outdated and dangerous public health initiative”.
LAYA TO EXPAND IRISH OPERATIONS ADDING 50 NEW
POSITIONS Laya Healthcare, the health insurance firm, has announced that it is to create an additional 50 jobs over the next two years as it looks to expand it operations in Dublin. The company is looking to recruit additional staff in its customer service and claims teams in Dublin and Cork. Launched two years ago the
company had said that it would be looking to have created upwards of 100 new positions by 2015. It has already exceeded that targeted with its current headcount at 440 between its Dublin and Cork offices. Managing director Dónal Clancy
said the expansion showed the firm’s commitment to the market. The company’s new office in Dublin
was opened at the end of May and came as the health insurance provider announced a 16 per cent increase in its Dublin membership over the past two years. Commenting Clancy said, “Last
year, we recorded our strongest performance yet, with corporate sales growing by over 70 per cent. The outlook for 2014 is equally positive.”
HUTCHINSON WHAMPOA GAINS EU APPROVAL FOR
TELEFONICA BID Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa has got the approval of the European Union’s competition authority for its $1 billion bid for Telefonica’s Irish mobile business. According to analysts this decision could set the regulatory tone for Telefonica’s bigger pending German merger deal. In a sector struggling with its fifth
INDUSTRY-LEADING GNSS ENGINE MEETS ECALL MANDATE FOR GALILEO SUPPORT
CSR plc has announced that its SiRFstarV architecture has established a position fix using Galileo satellites. On March 26, 2014, CSR’s SiRFstarV 5ea Quad- GNSS receiver acquired, tracked, and used signals from the four Galileo satellites currently in orbit to produce position fixes in Germany. Galileo support is required to
implement the European Commission’s recently mandated eCall emergency response system for light vehicles, which will automatically send emergency notification messages from these vehicles when involved in an accident. The European Commission’s objective is to have a fully functioning eCall service safeguarding the European Union by late 2015, and
12 Summer 2014 | IRISH MANUFACTURING
CSR’s SiRFstarV is one of the few GNSS receivers that can support the eCall Galileo requirement. A minimum of four satellites is required to make a position fix in three dimensions – longitude, latitude and altitude. The Galileo constellation’s four satellites are currently visible from Earth at the same time for only two to three hours each day, so currently a position fix can only be obtained during this period. The frequency of position fix availability, however, will increase as the European Space Agency deploys more satellites and as additional ground stations become operational. The full range of Galileo positioning, navigation and timing services is expected to be available in 2018, so automotive suppliers are starting to design in Galileo-
compliant solutions like SiRFstarV to support this timeframe. “This is a major milestone for CSR and the SiRFstarV architecture, validating its capability to support all major satellite constellations including GPS, Glonass, BDS/Compass and Galileo,” says Anthony Murray, Senior Vice President, Business Group at CSR. “Our advanced GNSS architecture delivers a feature-rich core platform that not only meets the eCall mandate, but also provides software upgradeability to make full use of the Galileo system as it is deployed over the coming years.”
CSR
www.csr.com
year of declining revenues and the need to upgrade networks to provide new high-speed broadband services, further industry consolidation is expected. Hutchison is currently looking to strengthen its position in Europe. At present it operates in six European countries and it It has the fourth- largest mobile network in Ireland with 3 Ireland and is now adding the second-biggest operator O2 Ireland, though it will remain behind market leader Vodafone. According to the European
Commission its approval was conditional on Hutchison selling around 30 percent of the merged company’s network capacity to two mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), which use the networks of other companies to offer telecoms services. Hutchison is now believed to be in
talks with European cable operator Liberty Global to help the U.S.-listed company become an MVNO in Ireland. Hutchison will also have to divest
five blocks of mobile frequencies in the 900 MHz, 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands at a later stage to the MVNOs should they aim to set up their own network, and continue a network- sharing agreement with Ireland’s third-biggest operator, eircom.
/ IRISHMANUFACTURING
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