@farmersjournal Just what farmers need - More funding for ICBF and more half arsed schemes which don’t work and more corrupt evaluations encouraging in breeding ?
Same circus 🎪
𝐅𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐭 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐅𝐚𝐜𝐞𝐬 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈𝐬 𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐓𝐨 𝐁𝐞 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐂𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐣𝐮𝐫𝐲 𝐈𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐟 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐊𝐢𝐧𝐝
A report by Debbie McCann in today’s Irish Mail on Sunday says a family court “expert” is under criminal investigation for alleged perjury and fraud following their involvement in a long running family law case.
According to the report, the investigation, believed to be the first of its kind, follows evidence given by the expert in a recent family court case which was later overturned on appeal. Sources familiar with the matter told the Mail on Sunday that a judge found the expert’s evidence demonstrated a “complete lack of impartiality”. The judge subsequently removed the expert from a court appointed role.
McCann reports that details of the criminal investigation emerge amid increasing scrutiny of expert witnesses operating within the family court system and growing calls for reform of how such experts are used.
The article points to the Right to Transparency campaign, led by barrister and advocate Lisa Ann Wilkinson, which recently highlighted concerns about the use of paid but unqualified experts in family courts. The campaign is calling both for an end to the in camera rule, which keeps proceedings private, and for an end to what it describes as unregulated and biased expert reporting.
The report also draws on landmark research published by Women’s Aid last year. That research argued that significant reform of the current system is required to ensure there is no bias towards the disputed concept of “parental alienation” in the assessment of domestic violence cases.
McCann notes that the Women’s Aid research found expert assessors conducting Section 32 “voice of the child” reports and Section 47 assessments, which help determine a child’s best interests in legal disputes, should possess relevant qualifications and be registered with CORU, the social work regulatory body.
The research further recommended mandatory domestic violence and abuse training for assessors. Conducted by researchers from Trinity College Dublin and University College Cork, the study examined the experiences of adult and child victims and survivors of domestic violence and abuse in guardianship, custody and access proceedings.
According to the report, the research identified “serious questions” around the qualifications and expertise of professionals appointed to conduct assessments and prepare reports for family courts.
McCann also references previous Mail on Sunday reporting involving mothers who lost custody after raising allegations of abuse by fathers. In some of those cases, the article says, mothers were accused by experts of “alienating” the father rather than having their abuse concerns accepted.
The report additionally revisits previous Mail on Sunday coverage concerning so called family court experts who are not regulated by CORU. It notes another case in which an expert involved in an Irish family law matter was sanctioned in the UK after the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy concluded the service provided fell below the standard reasonably expected of a practitioner exercising proper care and skill.
Ex-solicitor loses bid to return seven years after strike-off as SDT says dishonesty was 'almost unsurmountable' hurdle to clear | Law Gazette https://t.co/5VNVQ92pFS
My sucklers,,that little one is cheeky.
It'll be a few weeks before I'll be confident enough to drive into a field and be confident she's not hiding under a dock peaf😄
Delighted that lovely Irish tweeter David O'Brien (below) formerly @thepainterflynn and now tweeting from @oddweirdadvice is doing better after a lengthy and stressful hospital stay in Tipperary. The hospital wants to discharge him, but David has nowhere to go. He would prefer to avoid going into a home if possible. Is there anyone who might be able to help?
Also, David, who had a huge amount of followers, lost them all when Twitter recently closed his account. Give him a follow at @oddweirdadvice and say hi. You won't regret it - David's former account was one of the most uplifting on Irish Twitter.
PS David's story demonstrates that as a country we are failing the elders among us. They have immense wisdom and dignity and deserve more support. Seems crazy that they receive so little when we will (if lucky) all be elderly ourselves some day, with no guarantee that our children, if any, will be even in the same country!
Ciara Ryan graduated from UCD with a degree in Animal Science in 2021 and worked for @tirlan_ as a ruminant business manager then Ceva Animal Health Ireland as territory development manager.
She took up her role as the new manager of Mid-Tipp Mart in January.
“I never in a thousand years saw myself managing a mart, but I’ve always been in the mart.
“Even as a child, I went to marts with my late father. A job as a mart manager doesn’t come up too often, and it’s a hard job to get, so when I got the opportunity, I decided to grab it because I thought I may never get another chance at something like this again.”
A fantastic interview with Ciara and @catherinecunnan Farming and Rural Affairs Reporter with @Independent_ie
https://t.co/66RlLFLmdr
Someone is selling an entire hill in Tuscany. 45 hectares, for €1.3M ($1.5M).
That's 111 acres of southern Tuscan countryside with a 500m² stone farmhouse on top, 9 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms, a pool, and an outdoor wood-burning oven.
The estate sits at 400m altitude on a privately owned hill near Saturnia, 8 km from the famous thermal baths and 50 km from the Tyrrhenian Sea. The farmhouse was built in the early 1800s by the Piccolomini Counts as the steward's residence for what was once a much larger estate. The current 45 hectares break down as 37 ha of woodland, 7 ha of arable land, and 1 ha of olive grove with 50 trees. It borders a nature park and the Albenga River.
What makes the price interesting is the land. 45 hectares fully consolidated and bordering a protected park is rare at this level in Tuscany. Most farmhouses in this price range come with 1-3 hectares of land. Here you're buying the hill itself.
The trade-off is access. You're 160 km from Rome airport and 200 km from Pisa, so this isn't a fly-in-for-the-weekend kind of place. Then again, if you're buying a hill in Tuscany, being hard to reach is probably the point.
How much would something like this cost where you live?
@MLorrM@Wftproof@stevemiddi1@BankConfidenti1 Given those poor /sloppy standards-
it’s not difficult to understand why nexus and standing is ignored .
Ignoring facts and operating with fiction and fluidity is how Ireland operates.
Farmers have figured out that the cheapest pesticide is a strip of flowers.
When you plant wildflowers through a crop field, not just around the edge but in strips running through the middle, you get ladybugs, lacewings, hoverflies, and parasitic wasps living in the field instead of visiting it.
They eat the aphids, the caterpillars, and the mites for free, all summer long.
In controlled trials, fields with tailored flower strips had leaf-beetle numbers 40 to 50% lower and crop damage cut by around 60%, enough to drop below the threshold where spraying was even considered worth it.
The flowers attract a standing army to our fields.
We spent decades engineering chemicals to kill the insects eating the crop, when the insects that eat those insects would have worked for the price of seed.
A Lithuanian farmer discovered a church bell buried for 82 years while working his field.
Cast in 1908, locals buried it in 1942 to protect it from Soviet forces who melted church bells into weapons. It came out of the ground perfectly preserved.