Irish Echo News

Dubliner Alan Joyce says his appointment as Chief Executive Officer of Qantas is a massive honour.

“This is one of the premium jobs in the aviation industry worldwide”, the 42-year-old, who will become the first non-Australian born boss of the airline, told the Irish Echo.

“Any Aussie would be delighted to secure the position but as an Irishman I’m very proud to achieve that.”

Joyce, who currently runs the successful Qantas-owned budget carrier Jetstar, made no secret of his desire to take over from Geoff Dixon. He received the good news from the board last week.

His remuneration details have not been released but outgoing CEO Dixon earned almost AUD $7million in wages, shares and other benefits last year.

He says he has shared the good news with parents Colette and Maurice in Dublin. His brother Anthony is in Australia with his wife and family to help him celebrate.

Mr Joyce, who is also an Australian citizen, says that he has no illusions about the challenges facing the aviation industry.

“My main aim will be to ensure that Qantas continues to be successful and that we are able to deal with challenges of the current fuel crisis. A lot of the core strategies of the airline will not change. I’m committed to the two carrier approach.”

Mr Joyce had enormous praise for outgoing CEO Geoff Dixon who he said had left a massive legacy at the airline.

The Dubliner will remain CEO designate until November when he will take over from Mr Dixon.

Qantas is among the world’s largest and most profitable airlines. The company generated revenues of over AUD$15billion for 2006/07 financial year with profits exceeding $1billion.

The news of Alan Joyce’s elevation to the top job at Qantas comes at a time when the airline is in the international headlines for another reason.

Last week, one of its 747 aircraft was forced to make an emergency landing in The Phillipines after a hole was blown in the fuselage. No one was injured in the incident.

Mr Joyce says that the airline is working hard to identify the cause and believes that the problem will be isolated and fixed.

“We’re in the aviation industry and obviously, it’s a very serious thing when something like this happens. But Qantas safety record is second to none and I intend to keep it that way.”

Born in Tallaght, Alan Joyce studied Applied Science at DIT Kevin St before completing an MA Management Science at Trinity College.

He came to Australia in the early 1990’s having worked in operations analyst roles with Aer Lingus. Joyce also worked a variety of roles at the now defunct Ansett Airlines (leaving a year before the airline went bust) before he was asked to work as Group General Manager Network for Qantas.

His work helped to build his reputation and when Qantas made their long-awaited assault on the budget airline market in 2004, Joyce was offered the position of Chief Executive of the new Jetstar carrier at just 37-years-of age.

by Aaron Dunne

Savings accrued in the superannuation funds of temporary residents here may be forfeited to the Australian Tax Office (ATO) if not claimed within five years of leaving the country.

A new consultation paper from the Minister for Corporate Law and Superannuation Nick Sherry, has proposed the scheme along with a range of other innovations.

The move would see an estimated $1bn raised for the Treasury over three years, and would impact on backpackers and other temporary residents of Australia.

Employers in Australia are compelled to pay nine per cent of a worker’s gross wage into a superannuation fund. Usually, these funds cannot be accessed until the worker turns 55. However, temporary residents or those leaving the country permanently can ‘cash in’ their super, less tax.

Now, under the new proposals, anyone who spent time in Australia on a temporary basis and have since left for good, and who decided not to ‘cash in’ their super, may forfeit those savings to the ATO.

Minster Sherry said the Government was not was not prepared to subsidise the tax-preferred savings of people from overseas, but the superannuation industry has been highly critical of the plans.

“We’re really not happy about this at all from an ASFA point of view,” Pauline Vamos, Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia told the Irish Echo last week.

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“The industry doesn’t like this at all, but it’s public policy. We have a lot of concerns, and there are some aspects we want to see changed.

 “There are a lot of administrative issues here that need to be straightened out, the last thing we want is for the extra costs of this policy to be put on the funds themselves. Of course we don’t like it, but it’s a public policy issue and if it does go through we just want to be sure that it has a minimal impact.”

As it stands, temporary residents of Australia must pay 9% of their income to a superannuation fund of their choosing – just like any other Australian – but they are entitled to claim this money back when they leave the country for good – unlike Australians.

 Many backpackers and other temporary residents have accrued money in their superannuation accounts and have left the money in Australia, either by design to make interest, or by neglect or not knowing that they were entitled to claim it back. The main aim of this new policy is to gather all that ‘lost’ or unclaimed money together.

 “It’s intended to bring together all the bits of money that temporary residents have left behind and just not bothered with. It’s really only going to affect those bits of ‘lost’ money,” Vamos explained.

The government has argued that the proposals will help clean up problems with ‘lost’ or unclaimed superannuation, which sat at a staggering $5.6bn at the end of June last year. An estimated 20 per cent of this figure involves money held in the accounts of temporary residents.

AN unnamed Irish backpacker is facing serious charges after smashing a car trying to avoid capture during a high-speed police chase.

The backpacker, 23, who
was driving in Mildura, in
far north-west Victoria, is
alleged to have failed to stop after being involved in a collision.

Police who spotted the white Ford Laser gave pursuit in the early hours of the morning with speeds reaching an alleged 130km/h in an 80km zone as the driver tried to make a getaway.

The 30-second pursuit ended when the Laser was driven over a roundabout, destroying the car’s sump.

The man, who has an international driver’s licence, was interviewed in relation to both incidents.

He is expected to appear
before the Mildura Magistrates Court on charges of conduct endangering life, manner
dangerous, speed dangerous, failure to stop, speeding and exceeding the prescribed concentration of alcohol.

Police have been told the communal, and now immobile, car belongs to a backpackers’ residence in the area 

by Isabel Hayes

For 22-year-old Kildare man Paul Dowdall, the Australian experience had barely begun before it ended in tragedy. The Carbury native had been living in White Gum Valley in Perth for just four months when he was killed in a motorbike accident on Sunday, June 15.

His heartbroken parents, Paul and Christine, have accompanied his remains back to Ireland. They last spoke to their only son just hours before he died, when he called to wish his dad (pictured) a happy Fathers’ Day.

It is believed Paul was killed instantly when his motorbike was hit by a truck in O’Connor, Perth while he was travelling to work at 6.25am. There have been unconfirmed reports that the truck may have broken a red light. Tragically, the young man had bought the motorbike just two weeks prior to the accident, as he found the commute to work by bus and train was taking too long.

The middle of five children, Paul is survived by his sisters Sharon, 26), Caroline, 25, Serina, 16, and Jessica, 4.

 “It’s a terrible tragedy,” said Joan Ross of the Noranda branch of the Australian Irish Welfare Association, who contacted the Paul’s girlfriend, Siobhán Owen, to offer their support. 

“I understand she was absolutely distraught and it was obviously made even more difficult by her being so far away from her family.”

Paul arrived in Australia last February with Siobhán and two other male friends and the group found accommodation in White Gum Valley, near Fremantle. While Paul found work on a construction site in the city, Siobhán worked as a waitress in Cicerello’s Fish and Chip Restaurant in Fremantle.

 “We are in touch with Siobhán and have sent on our condolences to her,” manager Nick Unmack told the Irish Echo. “She was a popular member of staff, always full of laughs, a model employee. Obviously everyone in here was very distressed when they heard the news and we are just so sorry this has happened to her.”

A neighbour of the Dowdall family in Carbury told an Irish newspaper: “Young Paul was the nicest chap that ever grew up around here. He was so quiet, so inoffensive and so talented. This is just not fair.”

A spokesman for the Irish Embassy in Canberra told the Irish Echo that they were assisting the family in every way they could. Members of Siobhán’s family are also believed to have travelled over to offer their support.

by Aaron Dunne

Two young Dubliners have tragically lost their lives in a horror smash in far north Queensland.

The two backpackers, Paul Duggan and Diarmuid Adlum, both 25 and from the Dublin suburb of Palmerstown, were travelling on the Bruce Highway, 18km south of Cardwell, when their station wagon was involved in a high speed collision with a truck.

Duggan and Adlum are believed to have been killed instantly in the collision as the truck collided head on with the northbound station wagon at about 4.10pm.

 One of the injured, Paul’s younger brother Gerry, 24, was airlifted to Townsville Hospital for treatment. Gerry and Paul’s sister and father have flown to Australia, while Adlum’s parents and two friends also made the journey in the aftermath of the crash.

The truck driver, a 23-year-old man, escaped injury.

The crash scene was horrific, and Regional Traffic Inspector Bob Waters said it took almost seven hours to remove the
debris from the road.

“The crash scene was an horrific scene as both vehicles impacted at speed, there’s no indication of excessive speed, but at speed, and as a result both vehicles suffered major damage and this debris was scattered across the highway,” he told reporters.

Adlum and Paul Duggan had been travelling together around the world for some months, and only met up with Gerry in Sydney to travel up the coast. 

The three had all gone to school together in Colaiste Phadraig Christian Brothers in Lucan, with Paul a year ahead of classmates Gerry and Diarmuid, and they also played football together for the St Patrick’s GAA Club in Palmerstown.

Gerry is still undergoing treatment in Townsville Hospital for his injuries but is said to be recovering well.

 from his injuries.

Four Irish expats have been killed in a series of horrific accidents across Australia.

Niamh Chawke, 37, from the Dooradoyle area of Limerick, died when her car hit a tree in Dubbo, New South Wales on June 21.

Earlier, Irish backpackers Paul Duggan, 25, and Diarmuid Aldun, 24, both from Dublin, died when their station wagon was involved in a head-on with a truck in northern Queensland.

Five days before, Paul Dowdall, 22, from Kildare, was killed instantly when he was hit by a truck as he travelled to work on his motorbike in Perth. 

Full reports in the next edition of the Irish Echo, out on July 2.

The organisation charged with attracting major events to New South Wales said no to an International Rules Test match in Sydney, the Irish Echo has learned.

Sydney could have hosted one of the two forthcoming Test matches between Ireland and Australia in October but Events NSW decided not to support the Test because it was not going to be a one-off.

A Sydney Morning Herald story had quoted an AFL source as saying that Events NSW had refused funding support for the proposed event, but Sally Edwards, the general manager of operations and communications at Events NSW, said they would have supported a Test match under the original proposals for a stand-alone fixture in Sydney.

“We had discussions with the AFL when they originally came to us with proposals for a stand-alone International Rules fixture in Sydney, which we were very interested in. But when that proposal changed to include a second game in Melbourne we were no longer interested. 

“It just wasn’t as attractive a prospect to us with a second game,” she said.

The original proposal for a one-off fixture in Sydney would have brought a large influx of visitors from Victoria, but this prospect became far less appealing when a second Test was pencilled in for Melbourne in response to the GAA’s demand for a second game.

“The strategy and the philosophy of Events NSW are to bring events that are of economic benefit to NSW, and we just didn’t feel this quite fit the bill with a second Test as part of it,” she explained.

The proposed fixture, which would have been held one or two days prior to the launch of the Rugby League World Cup in Sydney, brought about a clash between the ARL and the AFL. 

This dispute is unlikely to have had any bearing on the eventual decision of Events NSW, but Edwards was quick to dispel any thoughts that Australian Rugby Union CEO John O’Neill, who is also the chairman of Events NSW, had any influence on the decision not to support the event.

“The decision was made within the company and didn treach board level so John had nothing to do with it. We have a rigorous process for making decisions on events such as this,” she said.

“It was assessed within the company and the decision was made. It just didn’t stack up for us. Our board is very balanced, we have the chairman of the Sydney Swans, Richard Colless, on there too, so the AFL would have been well represented,” Edwards added.

A stand-alone Test in Sydney could have brought a windfall of up to $10m to the city, a welcome boost at a time when a Sydney Morning Herald study recently revealed a drop of $37m in tourism income to the state, and when O’Neill has said that the Government’s “doesn’t care” attitude has cost the state $3.5bn in tourism revenue.

With a second AFL team planned in the city’s west and with the NSW capital being home to the largest Irish population in the country, a crowd of around 50,000 could have been reasonably expected, including a large influx of international visitors from Ireland as was seen on the last tour Down Under in 2005. 

Ireland also open their Rugby League World Cup game in Parramatta on October 27, so an even larger than usual number of Irish people would have been in the city that same weekend.

ANZ Stadium in Homebush, which would have been the most likely host for the event, also revealed that the stadium was free on the proposed weekend in question and that they had been very keen to host the event.

 “We’re obviously very disappointed it isn’t going ahead. We were very keen to see the event at ANZ Stadium,” stadium spokesman Kyle Patterson told the Echo. 

“We have had a great relationship with the Sydney Swans for many years now and we host finals games here with great success. We get great crowds at Swans’ games and we believed this event could have been of a similar ilk.”

 The two-Test series will now be played at Subiaco Oval in Perth and the Melbourne Cricket Ground on October 24 and October 31 respectively.

The fate of almost 500 million EU citizens will be in the hands of Irish voters when they go to the polls in the Lisbon Treaty referendum on Thursday.

Ireland is the only EU country to hold a national vote on the controversial charter because it has to amend its constitution in order to ratify it.

An increasingly bitter campaign between the Yes and No sides has left many voters confused - and the Government is fearful the complex 287-page document could be rejected like the first Nice Treaty in 2001.

The referendum is the first political test of new premier Brian Cowen who has accused the No side of peddling misinformation to create confusion.

The Government’s worst fears were realised last week when an opinion poll put the No side ahead of the Yes campaigners for the first time. More than a third of voters were still undecided.

Mr Cowen warned Ireland will be marginalised within Europe and the wider international community if voters say no.

The Yes side include mainstream political parties as well as business groups, most trade unions and farmers.

The No side is fronted by multi-millionaire businessman Declan Ganley who originally set up his Libertas group to block the EU Constitution in 2004.

Libertas claims the Treaty will strip Ireland of its influence at EU level and will allow Brussels to interfere in Irish laws and taxes.

Other No campaigners such as Sinn Fein and anti-war groups suggest the charter would compromise Ireland’s neutrality if it signs up to European defence policy.

The Yes campaign - which includes the mainstream Dail parties - claims there is no ‘Plan B’ and the Treaty cannot be re-negotiated again if rejected.

Mr Cowen said ratification will protect Ireland’s interests in the global economy and lead to more streamlined EU decision-making.

Sinn Fein claims that losing an EU Commissioner for five out of every 15 years is unacceptable but Mr Cowen said there weren’t enough portfolios for the 27 office-holders from each member state.

The Lisbon Treaty grew out of the EU Constitution which Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern helped broker in 2004 - but it was rejected a year later by voters in France and Holland.

The Irish Government suffered embarrassment in 2001 when voters rejected the Nice Treaty - but it was passed a year later.

The Lisbon Treaty is due to come into force on January 1 if voters vote yes this week.

Watch a ‘No Vote’ advertisement here.

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Landscape gardener and Tree Surgeon are just two of the 12 new occupations the Australian Government has added to its Migration Occupations in Demand List (MODL).

Migrants who can prove they possess those skills and qualifications required on the list can apply to have their skills recognised with a view to gaining permanent residency in Australia. 

The list is updated twice a year, and the latest additions reflect the severe skills shortages and lack of workers in certain industry sectors.

Other occupations included amongst those most recently added are engineering manager, electronics engineer, optometrist and dental technician. 

A range of IT professional positions were also added to the list, with those specialising in data warehousing, Linux, .Net technologies, Solaris and Unix now being in demand. One IT occupation has been removed from the list, with Computing Professional specialising in Sybase SQL Server no longer eligible.

The MODL includes occupations identified by the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) as being in national demand with sustained employment prospects.  

The MODL has its basis in the DEEWR skill shortages research, with account taken of some broader labour market information, including supply and demand trends.

The MODL is used to target the General Skilled Migration categories of the Migration Program to meet the skill shortages of the Australian labour market. 

For a full listing of the occupations officially in demand, log on to www.immi.gov.au.

The International Rules Series between Ireland and Australia will resume in October.

The first test will take place in Perth on Friday, October 24 and the second in Melbourne on October 31.

Although venues are yet to be confirmed, it’s almost certain that the tests will take place in Subiaco Oval in Perth and the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The hybrid code has not been seen since 2006 when the Australians prevailed in a bad-tempered series in Ireland. 

The news will be welcomed by GAA fans in Australia who were fearful that the code might be consigned to history.

Time will tell whether the GAA seizes the opportunity to select all nine Irish players currently contracted to AFL clubs.