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Dangerous Brazilian Au-Pair???

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dangerous Brazilian Au-Pair???

An unbelievable story emerged on Thursday about a 24 year old Brazilian ex-Au pair that wanted to visit her former host family and instead was put into prison.

Paloma Aparezida Silva-Carvalho from Sao Paulo was in Switzerland to visit her boy friend and then had planned to come to Ireland to visit her former host family in Galway. She had worked here before as an au pair for 18 months in 2015/2016 and now intended to come back to stay with the family for 2 months. Immigration officers at Dublin airport, however, were convinced that she wanted to enter the country to work illegally and therefore arrested her and out her in prison where she was strip searched and locked in a cell overnight. :-O

The host family was contacted and confirmed that she was expected to come for holidays, but the immigration officers still decided to send her to prison and told her that she would be sent back to Switzerland the next day.

Now the information in the newspapers doesn’t seem to be fully congruent and the Independent and the Irish Times have told the the story in slightly different ways and have changed the story during the day, but here are some details that were reported:
1) Brazilian citizens do not need a visa to visit Ireland as long as they will stay less than 90 days
2) Paloma had a booked return flight and had EUR 1000 cash with her, so there was plenty of money and clear intention to leave

The EUR 1000 was not mentioned anymore in a later version of the Irish Times story. Also in an earlier version the Irish Times reported that the former Au Pair had decided to leave Ireland immediately once she got released from prison with a permission to stay for just 10 days. But a later version explained that the family actually did collect her and the 10 days reference wasn’t there anymore.

Sooo, we don’t know all the details by the looks of it and even the newspapers don’t really seem to know, but what must have happened there?

A young woman arrives from a foreign country. She worked here before and now came without a work permit. But she planned to stay for a relatively long period of time (2 months) and school holidays are also that long, so there is a possibility that she will look after the kids of the host family during that time. And there is a possibility that the host family will give her some pocket money or even pay her some proper salary. Yes, all this is possible, but it is also possible that food and bed would have been the only pay OR that she was not expected to WORK.

Let’s assume for a moment that the arrangement was that the girl will look after the kids and will get a bit of money for it. Yes, strictly speaking this is work and she needs a work visa. But come-on, are we THAT petty about it now? That girl would not have damaged the Irish economy nor would she have taken another person’s job, not would she have to pay any taxes because over the year the bit of money would have been to low to get her in the claws of the revenue commissioner. So I really think the immigration officers totally overreacted because there is the definite possibility that no employment or formal work was planned.

Sure rules are rules and an immigration officer doesn’t have the power to interpret the rules, he/she just has to apply them. But let’s be honest, they INTERPRET rules every single day and in this case they interpreted the rules unnecessarily strict.

I hope Paloma Aparezida Silva-Carvalho will have a good time in Ireland and I hope she will get a nice bit of pocket money from the family when she leaves and if she looks after the kids. But I think we should apologise to her for a totally unreasonable treatment and the responsible immigration officer should be sent on a humanity training course!

P.S: And here is another story that was reported on the SAME day: A 24 year old guy met an 18 year old Spanish girl in town. They spent some time together, but later he allegedly held her against her will and repeatedly raped her on the former Irish Glass Bottle site near Irishtown over two days. The guy is already on bail for some serious public order crime awaiting a trial, but after he was interviewed by the police, they released him with no criminal charges brought against him, but inquiries will continue.

So a totally harmless and innocent Brazilian girl who wants to visit an upstanding family will be thrown into jail because she MIGHT work here, but a guy that might have raped a girl and who is awaiting trial for a serious public order offence is free to roam the streets. WTF!?!?!?!

 

Dublin, Justice, Odd, Tourism, , , , , ,

Dublinbikes will get a new sponsor

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dublinbikes will get a new sponsor

Coke Zero is gone and Just Eat will arrive as the new sponsor of the Dublinbikes. New ad stickers will be put on the bikes and the website will change and Dublin City will call it differently, but nobody in their right mind ever called the bikes any different than “Dublinbikes” and the new sponsor will not change anything about that either.

The advertisement contract will be for three years and while the amount that Just Eat will pay has not been released, we can assume that it is probably in the region of 2 mio.

There are currently nearly 69,000 subscribers at a yearly fee of EUR 25, a budget of 1.725 mio and if the advertisement costs 2mio, there is a total amount of 3.7mio available, which seems like a LOT of money! At the end of the summer there will be 116 bike stations with a total of 1600 bikes

www.thejournal.ie/dublinbikes-brand-new-sponsor-3506804-Jul2017/

Dublin, Dublin City Council

Averages and Salaries :-O

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Averages and Salaries :-O

So what are you? Are you below average or above average? Before you drop your self-esteem to the floor, let me tell you that without a doubt there are areas in your life or personality where you are well above average, but there might also be some areas where you are blow average. We are multifaceted, so there is give and take and lots of areas where we can shine.

When it comes to numbers, however, the truth is sometimes much bitterer. About two weeks ago I found an article that specified what the average salary in Ireland is. And this average for full time workers stands at EUR 45,611. That is a good bit higher than I had expected and I know that many people WISHED they were just average i.e. not far below average! (If part time workers are considered, then the average salary is EUR 36,519.) Clearly crazily high salaries in some sectors distort the average number quite a bit.

Ohh and if you are anywhere near that average, please chip a bit of your average in the Dublin Event Guide hat!! Without your help it is in trouble! You can help here www.paypal.me/dublineventguide

www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/this-is-the-average-full-time-wage-in-ireland-795670.html

Economy, Society

Dublin is booming: Temple Bar Pub and Guinness Storehouse

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Dublin is booming: Temple Bar Pub and Guinness Storehouse

Two media reports last week seem to indicate that Dublin is booming again. We had that before, but will it last this time?

The first one here, is about the Temple Bar Pub and the fact that it made a profit of EUR 3.29m last year, with a gross profit of EUR 10.3m. That is a HELL of a lot of pints even at crazy Temple Bar prices. Since the gross profit is the total revenue minus the cost of goods, the actual cost for the drink has already been subtracted. And if you divide that amount by 363, then you come to a gross profit of more than 28k per DAY!

And in the second report here, the Guinness Storehouse has announced that they will spend EUR 16m to expand the Storehouse, which includes a plan to double the size of the Gravity Bar on top of the building. Works will start in the beginning of 2018 and will be finished by 2019. Coincidentally the amount they will invest is “just” EUR 1 per visitor for ALL visitors since 2000: 16.5m visitors came to the Storehouse since it opened in 2000.

There is clearly a lot of money in Dublin…at least the pub and pub/drink-related businesses seem to have it.

Dublin, Economy, , ,

Free Wednesday is going, going, nearly gone!

Written by Joerg Steegmueller
Free Wednesday is going, going, nearly gone!

This week it is not a really “odd” topic, but some bad news. If you follow the daily Dublin Event Guide posts on Facebook, you already found out that the Free Wednesday, the one day a month when in the past all state owned and OPW (Office of Public Works)-managed heritage sites were free, did get hollowed out in a bad way for us in Dublin.

Last year the hugely popular Kilmainham Gaol was taken off the list: No more free visits to the Gaol. Because of the very much increased interest due to the 1916/2016 festivities and after a very expensive renovation I could see where they were coming from with that decision. But now Dublin Castle was ALSO taken off the list of free sites on the first Wednesday of the month and I can see that just being the start!!

My prediction is that other sites outside of Dublin will follow in the next few months.

The Free Wednesday (originally it was just called “First Wednesday”) was introduced by Brian Hayes, the junior minister in charge of the OPW, in 2011 to get more people to visit heritage sites. It had exactly that effect! So it worked! If you live in a place, most of us visit the sites less than if we go on holidays somewhere else, so it was mainly for Irish people to learn more about the country and cities around us. Sure, the visitors benefit from it as well, but I think that was an accepted consequence, not the main purpose of the introduction of the First/Free Wednesday.

Is it a coincidence that just a few days after a new junior minister takes over responsibility for the OPW the rules for the First Wednesday get changed? Kevin Moran (who oddly calls himself “Boxer” because he punched and knocked down another boy on a  football field when he was 12) took over at the end of June and immediately the rules changed. Do I think that he CAUSED that change? No, probably not! Maybe the OPW management disliked the (politically motivated) First Wednesday for a long time and took the opportunity to railroad the new an inexperienced guy as soon as he arrived.

I think it is a wrong decision!

Just a few days before that not-at-all publicised decision to take Dublin Castle off the list (I only found out because I smelled a rat and rang Dublin Castle.) another decision was publicised WIDELY and without holding back: Children until the age of 12 will get free admission to OPW sites from now on. Before the age limit was 6 years of age. This is a good decision, but I’d say it costs MUCH less than the Free Wednesday and it consequently saves people who are interested in going to heritage sites much less as well.

Dublin, Events, Tourism, , , , ,
 
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