Hundreds turn out in support as Kneecap's Mo Chara granted unconditional bail
Sarda IN is a voluntary group in Northern Ireland that provides dogs for search and rescue, as well as for cadaver searches across Ireland. Video: Alan Betson
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
6 hours ago
- Irish Times
Time off to care for children can leave women poorer in retirement. Here's how to close the gap
Ireland's gender pay gap may be improving but it's still a reality. And for young women, the implications extend far beyond what they can expect in their weekly or monthly pay packet. Finding out that you are paid less than your male colleagues for the same type of work is clearly demoralising: realising that today's insult could mean a permanent financial disadvantage in the far off days when you eventually retire should be deeply worrying. It means that at an age when most people are understandably focused on just establishing themselves in their careers – and when all the data tells us that pensions are seen as a low priority – women need to be pension aware. And thanks to the power of compound interest, the gap in retirement income will be even larger than any gap in pay. READ MORE Reporting and research on gender pay gaps is improving all the time and as it does, the impact on pension pots will diminish but, as of now, PwC pensions partner Munro O'Dwyer says, the gap is around 11 or 12 per cent, though, clearly, that can vary from sector to sector. What is the gender pension gap? Data published by Irish Life this time last year found that, in Ireland, there was a 36 per cent gender pension gap . For every €100,000 a man has in their pension pot, on average, a woman will have just €64,000. The practical impact is that women will either have substantially less money to live on each year in retirement or their pension pot will be exhausted before they are likely to die. When you consider that women in Ireland, in general, live for three and a half years longer than men, the reality is that they need a bigger pension pot than men, not a smaller one. The Irish Life report said women would need to work for eight years longer than men just to match the men's pension pots! O'Dwyer notes that the gender pay gap is just one area of disadvantage for women when it comes to pensions. How does staying at home with children impact pensions? Women are also more likely to take time out of the workforce for caring commitments – either to raise children or to care for older relatives – than men. And where they do stay in work, those commitments mean they are more likely to be in part-time employment. As a result, their pay will be lower as will contributions into an occupational pension – both their own and those coming from their employer. Even in couples not wedded to such traditional division of labour, simple domestic economics where the male partner is bringing in a higher wage can often mean they opt for the lower earner to step back from the workplace. That's not universal, of course, but it remains more likely as of now. How can you close the gender pensions gap? So, in a working world that is still skewed against them, what can women do too offset the disadvantages? First, get started early. It's good advice anyway as the longer funds are invested in a pension the better the eventual return. But if you are a young woman and you are likely to be taking a step back from work at some point to raise a family, it's even more important. 'The best advice is to make an early start to contributions at the highest level you can afford,' says Ray McKenna of employee benefits group Locktons. 'The best opportunity by far to build retirement funds tends to be when in employment. Not only does the employer also contribute, but the tax relief reduces the cost impact ,' says Shane O'Farrell, who is director of workplace market at Irish Life Employer Solutions. 'So people returning to the workforce after periods of absence (or those about to leave employment) should look carefully to address the missing years by additional top up contributions, ideally following a financial health check'. Given the generous tax relief available – up to 40 per cent for those paying tax at the upper rate – there are limits on how much you can invest in a pension. Having said that, the limits are generous enough that very few people hit the relevant caps. Under the age of 30, you can get tax relief on anything up to 15 per cent of your gross salary that you put into a pension. In your thirties, that share jumps to 20 per cent, rising to 25 per cent in your forties. Between 50 and 54, the figures is 30 per cent, rising to 35 per cent between 55 and 60. Over the age of 60, you can put up to 40 per cent of your gross salary into a pension while availing of relief. There are two other caps. First, when assessing those percentages, the upper salary limit is €115,000. If you earn less than that, no worries; if your gross salary is higher, you just get the percentage appropriate to your age of the first €115,000 of salary. So, if you're 42 and earning €130,000, the maximum pension contribution you can secure tax relief on is €28,750 (25 per cent of €115,000). [ Childcare in Ireland: 'Even as well-paid professionals, it was an exhausting struggle. The numbers never added up' ] In addition, there is a cap on the total size of your pension fund for tax relief purposes, called the Standard Fund Threshold, which is €2 million. Again, this will affect very few people when you consider that, according to 2023 PwC figures, the average private pension pot in Ireland is a very modest €75,000. For what it is worth, if you are relying on a €75,000 pension pot in retirement, you will feel the pinch financially, so I would suggest aiming higher than that. It would only deliver income of somewhere between €3,750 and €4,500 a year on top of any State pension you are entitled to. But let's get back to our young woman starting out in work. If you are in your 20s and earning, say €35,000, you can still put €5,250 a year into your pension. And because that is deducted from your gross salary before tax, it would cost you even less. Now at €35,000, you'd still be paying income tax at 20 per cent so your tax bill will be €1,050 lower for the year than it otherwise would be. That means, in take-home pay terms, the €5,250 pension contribution is costing you just €4,200, or €350 a month. Someone in their thirties on the average industrial wage – €53,352 as of the first quarter of this year – could put as much as €10,670 into a pension. Almost all of this would otherwise be taxed at 40 per cent so your €10,670 will actually cost you just €6,677.60 in take-home pay. And that's even before you consider that many employers will match your pension fund contributions within certain limits. Those limits – and indeed what you might be allowed to put into your company's occupational scheme – will likely be significantly lower than the amounts above but there is nothing stopping you taking out Additional Voluntary Contributions (AVCs) to accommodate the balance. Employers won't contribute to AVCs but it does allow you max out your tax relief. And remember it is not all or nothing. If you cannot put in the maximum permitted, it's not the end of the world. Should I increase my pension contributions? The key message for young working women is that it is more important for them than it is for men to invest as much as they can in their pensions early to allow for the fact that you might miss out contributions in some years when you are out of the workforce. If you are taking unpaid time out of work, you will not be permitted to contribute to the company pension scheme for that period. However, if you did not use up your full pension tax relief threshold the previous year – the 20 per cent of salary in your thirties for instance – and you have the financial resources available, you can make additional pension contributions via an AVC or a personal retirement savings account (PRSA) up to the end of October the following year. As an example, Patricia (35) earns €55,000 and last year contributed 6 per cent (€3,300) to a company pension, a figure that was matched by her employer. That 6 per cent is well below the 20 per cent limit on pension investment that she can get tax relief on. Patricia has taken unpaid time off work this year to spend more time with her children who are just making the transition to school. She won't be able to invest in the company pension scheme as she's not being paid. However, as long as she acts before the end of October – including filing a tax return – she can put up to €7,700 into an AVC or PRSA and get a tax refund for 2024 of €3,080, which means the €7,700 investment will only cost her €4,620. You can only go back one year like that but at least it will help. What are the benefits of flexible hours? Another approach, says Locktons' McKenna is to see if your employer is prepared to be more flexible around work patterns. With hybrid and remote work more common, and more practicable than it used to be, many people can continue to work as long as employers allow wriggle room. That would, for instance, allow the carer (woman or man) to put in their work hours when their partner has finished their more regular working hours. The main advantage, in pension gender gap terms, is that as you are still being paid, you can continue to make contributions to the company pension scheme. Also, as you are earning income, there is income tax against which you can offset the tax relief on those contributions. Otherwise, apart from the one year lookback arrangement we spoke about above, any contributions you make to an AVC while out of paid employment – even if you had the financial wherewithal to do so – would have no tax to claim relief from, reducing the attraction. There are other factors that also disproportionately play against women where improvements are more at the gift of government and industry rather than something over which individuals have control. [ Health takes a back seat when working and raising young children. We just get on with it Opens in new window ] PwC's O'Dwyer points to waiting and vesting periods for occupational pensions. Many company schemes do not allow staff to join their scheme for six months after they start work. And, if you leave the company within two years of joining an occupational scheme, companies can, and do, simply give you back any contributions you made to the scheme in that time. That means you lose out on the benefit of any employer contributions and the investment performance on those and your own refunded contributions not just to the point where you leave the business but also over the following years right up to when you retire. Because of women's employment patterns, O'Dwyer says this works more against women than men. He also notes that in an era when technology allows for immediate action on signing people up to schemes, there is no justification for waiting periods. While there are ongoing criticisms of the incoming mandatory workplace pension scheme – auto-enrolment or My Future Fund – planned for next year, O'Dwyer notes that it will at least ensure that people are signed up from the date of employment without waiting periods and that their pension fund will remain invested even if they do move jobs or otherwise leave the employer within two years. He notes that there is more Government could do; for instance, the State could continue to make its contributions to a person's auto-enrolment account during periods of unpaid leave in line with the level of State contributions before the leave. Other countries, O'Dwyer says, have looked at one-off contributions to women's pensions at events such as childbirth for social policy purposes in a world where more and more western economies are concerned at low rates of childbirth. 'Having children is very important (for an economy) and financial support is very important,' he says. 'There are ways it can be done. There is a cost but it is arguably an investment in the future.' You can contact us at OnTheMoney@ with personal finance questions you would like to see us address. If you missed the last newsletter by Dominic Coyle on setting up a bank account before coming to Ireland , you can read it here .
Irish Times
8 hours ago
- Irish Times
Kneecap's Dublin fans have their say
Sarda IN is a voluntary group in Northern Ireland that provides dogs for search and rescue, as well as for cadaver searches across Ireland. Video: Alan Betson
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Irish Times
Death of an ‘old boy from Ireland' in a London-Irish suburb
It began with a handwritten shop notice. A passerby photographed it in early June in the window of Butler's newsagents in Archway, north London . Over the decades the area had been a magnet for Irish immigrants, but the community aged. Younger London Irish now favour Hackney or Clapham. Meanwhile, Archway's green army went grey. The notice announced the death and upcoming funeral of Martin Fallon (73), originally from Sligo. It had a grainy passport-style photo of him. The passerby, a local, posted the picture she captured on X with a note about how Archway's 'old boys from Ireland' were 'slowly dying out'. She said the area had changed from its Irish heyday, with many pubs and betting shops closed. There was a wistful air to her post, embellished by her image of the note in the window. In neat capitals, it looked like the vintage handwriting typical of an older person. The passerby's tweet garnered two retweets and 18 likes. Then somebody took a screenshot of it and posted it on a slew of Irish Facebook groups. This second person seemed to misconstrue the shop notice as an appeal to find Fallon's family. Soon it was all over Facebook groups linked to London's Irish communities, as well as groups linked to communities in the west of Ireland. A narrative – inaccurate, as it turned out – took hold that Fallon must have lost touch with home. READ MORE The story fitted a stereotype: that of the older Irish man who moved to London years ago, perhaps 'to work on the buildings', and ended up alone. Facebook users shared the post widely in a well-intentioned but misguided attempt to find anyone who knew Fallon. There were even radio appeals in his native Sligo. But important elements of the narrative that sprang up around Fallon online did not survive scrutiny. In fact, he had been in touch with a few family members, in Ireland and in London. They knew he had died because they had arranged his funeral. Fallon's funeral took place in Islington Cemetery on June 9th, the week after the tale about him went viral. The Irish Times attended the service in the small crematorium chapel, flooded with light beneath a glass dome. The huge cemetery around it was the size of a city park. Irish surnames abounded on its headstones. The notice in Butlers newsagents window announcing Martin Fallon's funeral Flowers left for Martin Fallon outside his funeral in Islington Crematorium Although some elements of Fallon's story online were perceived inaccurately, he had indeed lived a life typical of some Irish men who moved to Archway decades ago. He was a regular in Butler's newsagents, which has continued to sell all the Irish regional newspapers. He never married. He appeared to have a tight-knit network of friends and some helped him when he fell ill. He died of lung cancer. Originally from Collooney, he once worked in a bakery in Sligo. He loved Liverpool FC and Sligo Rovers. He had three sisters, at least two of whom had moved to the Archway area before him. Fallon followed about 40 years ago. It seemed two of his sisters had died. The remaining sister now lived in Galway but wasn't able to travel to his funeral. Fallon had a niece, who was present. She said she would bring his ashes to Ireland. [ Irish in London: 'Nobody was making me stay. I could have left at any time and gone home to Sligo ... That was 24 years ago' Opens in new window ] Fallon's service was simple, dignified but still noticeably small by Irish norms. There were a dozen mourners, a fraction of the size of a typical funeral in the sort of west of Ireland community where Fallon grew up. It hadn't been correct that he had completely lost touch with all family, but clearly his network in London was tight. Charlie Patel outside his newsagents, Butler's, a hub of the old Irish community in Archway Irish local newspapers in the shop Charlie Patel, the owner of Butler's News, where the original funeral notice was posted, describes Fallon as a 'lovely man'. He always bought the Sligo Champion and occasionally some of the Irish food staples the shop also stocked. Fruitfield jams, Chef sauce, Erin soups, Flahavan's porridge and Clonakilty rashers are all sold in Butler's. 'Even when my old Irish customers move away from Archway to the suburbs, to Enfield and places like that, they come back to my shop to buy their local Irish papers,' says Patel. 'Or sometimes their grown-up children come in to buy it for them instead.' Over several hours in Patel's shop over a couple of days last weekend, other elderly Irish immigrants talk about the Archway they have known as a bastion of the London-Irish community, and what it is like now. Many are, like Fallon, bachelors who retired after working in manual jobs. They are friendly but some are also shy about being photographed or identified. A west of Ireland woman, younger than Fallon's peers, says many of Archway's older Irish contingent, especially the men, 'wouldn't be too forthcoming'. 'Especially if they ended up alone,' she says. The woman says putting up a shop window notice of the kind that sparked the viral online post about Fallon is common in Archway. It is, she says, a sort of community messaging service for the elderly Irish to spread funeral details and news of deaths. 'They wouldn't always have each other's phone numbers,' she says. Archway is at the northern end of Islington borough, which is more affluent towards its southern parts nearer central London. The local MP is former Labour leader – now Independent – Jeremy Corbyn . In 1983 he beat Clare man Michael O'Halloran, a former MP who had split from Labour. The heartland of Archway centres on Junction Road and its strip of shops; the Upper Holloway Road, which used to be lined with Irish pubs, and a pedestrian plaza beside Archway tube station, known as Navigator Square, named in honour of Irish 'navvies' who came to Britain in the 19th century to build transport networks. 'There is an older Irish community here who often talk about going back [to Ireland],' Corbyn told The Irish Times in an interview on Navigator Square during last year's election. 'But they're never going back. It's just the idea of it that's important to them.' [ Older Irish people in London: 'It is so important to have something to get people out of the house. It breaks down the loneliness' Opens in new window ] Corbyn said The Archway Tavern, still standing tall over Navigator Square (which used to be a roundabout), was a hub of the Irish community and was 'where building labourers got work'. He said many Irish women worked as nurses at nearby Whittington Hospital. One history book estimated that 85 per cent of its nurses were Irish in postwar years. 'Every pub on Holloway Road also used to be an Irish pub with Irish music,' Corbyn said. 'That's not quite the same now. A lot has changed in Archway, just as it has in Ireland.' One thing that has stayed the same, however, is Butler's newsagents. Patel, who runs the Junction Road shop with his Gujarat-born wife, Naimesha, says they bought it 26 years ago. It was owned before that for 15 years by another Indian family. Another Indian family previously owned it for 18 years, after taking it over from Butlers, an Irish family. So for almost six decades since the mid-1960s, the newsagents shop has been run by Indians who kept its Irish name. Among the customers last Friday is Tipperary man Michael Coley (81). He has been in London for 67 years, since he was barely a teenager, but he still has a strong Irish accent. Coley used to work 'doing paving and sewage pipes'. With his late wife they had five children, who gave them 14 grandchildren. Coley used to go home to Thurles 'every few years' but no longer. On Saturday he is back in Butler's shop to buy Mikado biscuits and Fig Rolls for his grandchildren. A woman originally from a pretty village in Co Clare has been in London for 50 years. Would she ever think of moving back to Ireland? 'You get too used to the life over here,' she says. 'They're too nosy where I'm from anyway. They want to know everything but tell you nothing.' Betty Breen enters. She came to London 43 years ago. She has a glint in her eye. 'Where are you from?' she asks this reporter. Wicklow, comes the reply. 'We all have our problems in life,' she says. Breen married a Clare man, and her sister used to run the Archway Tavern, 'years ago, back when pubs were pubs'. Her London-born daughter moved to Kilkenny 15 years ago. Archway has changed a lot, she says. 'I think it's gone a bit rough.' Two men, bachelors, come in separately but chat together. Neither wants to be identified. One is from the southwest and moved to Archway in the 1970s. He worked in a trade. He didn't marry. 'I had a friendship years ago but it never worked out.' The other man is from a southern county. He used to travel between Ireland and England, and sometimes Scotland, 'when things were harder for the Irish in London'. One reason he stayed in Britain was the National Health Service. Joe Henry, from Tubbercurry in Sligo, moved to Archway in the 1970s. Like several of the others, he never married. He is friendly and chatty, but prefers not to divulge any more personal details. 'I've lived my life under the radar so far,' he says, laughing. Several of the men give lowdowns on the pubs on Holloway Road favoured by the Irish. Some drink in the Flóirín, an unfussy, locals kind of pub that used to be called the Mulberry. When The Irish Times visits, a Laois versus Tipperary hurling match is on the television. It is also clearly an Arsenal pub; the club's stadium is not far away. The woman behind the Flóirín bar looks familiar. It is Kerry woman Betty Breen, from Butler's earlier. She laughs when asked to stand for a photograph. After declining, she swaps banter with men at the bar. She is well able for them. The Flóirín The Crown Some men drink in the Crown on Upper Holloway. The Hercules, farther down the street, was also popular. The Mother Red Cap on Holloway Road, a former mainstay of the community once owned by the Phelan family, shut last year after St Patrick's Day. The legendary Gresham ballroom shut years ago and is now a Sainsbury's. Through the other side of Navigator Square, up Highgate Hill, a new Irish music and gastropub, Brendan the Navigator, was opened a couple of years ago by Clare flute player John Rynne. The Old Crown Inn, which was an Irish mainstay, used to sit on the same site. It was across the road from St Joseph's Catholic Church, jokingly known by some local Irish as the 'posh' church. The other church is St Gabriel's on Holloway. A grotto at St Joseph's church on Highgate Hill near Archway Many of the elderly Irish in Archway speak of how the area has changed. People from other ethnic backgrounds are now more numerous. Census data appears to bear out the perception. A 2021 council report based on census figures suggested 5.8 per cent of the Junction electoral ward's residents were of 'white Irish' ethnicity. About 11.5 per cent were black and 8 per cent Asian. About 4.1 per cent were born in the Republic, with 5.5 per cent born in Africa and 7.1 per cent born in the Middle East and Asia. A further 4.3 per cent were born in the Americas and Caribbean. Archway, it seems, is no longer an Irish stronghold. Other recent incidents have unsettled some of the older Irish community. John Mackey (87), originally from Callan in Co Kilkenny, a bachelor who lived for decades in nearby Finsbury Park, died in a knife attack in May. A man has been charged with his murder. Mackey had recently moved a little farther east to Manor House. He used to frequent Archway, however, where his late brother Christy used to live. Mackey's niece, Margaret Kennedy, said her uncle was 'an enigma', a popular, colourful character who wore a fedora and was 'loved by everybody who met him'. 'He was simply a charming man. He never married but he was a ladies man, always a woman on his elbow. I never once saw him cross.' Echoing something Corbyn had said earlier, Kennedy said her late uncle John always joked that he would 'be on that boat' back to Ireland, but he never moved home. Mackey's funeral is in Callan next week. Meanwhile, Fallon's funeral earlier this month concluded with the Liverpool football anthem, You'll Never Walk Alone. Sligo Rovers Football Club also sent flowers. Fallon died on April 27th, the day Liverpool beat Tottenham 5-1 to win the Premier League. He slipped away just before kickoff.
