The day science fiction became fact

Years ago, there was a programme on the telly called 'Beyond 2000' which, by reporting on strides and advances the scientific world was making, gave us a picture of what life would be like, as the title suggested, beyond the year 2000.

So here we are, 11 years after that magic year, and I can honestly say they got it terribly wrong, on so many levels. They never saw the iPhone coming, or the indeed the general ubiquity of mobile phones and the internet.

They somehow thought we'd all be living in giant cities under water and that holograms would be a big deal.

Eh, yeah, whatever.

The only thing they kinda got right was electric cars, but they completely missed the boat on hybrids.

But one thing they had lots of, was people sitting down with harnesses on their heads and a load of wires flowing, medusa-like, from their head to a bank of computers.

And that's why, when I found myself last Friday evening sitting in a lab with a harness on my head and wires flowing to a bank of computers, I felt a little nostalgic, and giddy – although as I soon learned, giddy was not a good idea.

A friend of mine, Kevin Sweeney, is a Ph.D researcher at NUI Maynooth. A few weeks ago he put out an appeal on Facebook (something else the Beyond 2000 people missed) saying he needed volunteers for his research.




This be Kevin.


So I volunteered, without entirely knowing what I was I was volunteering for..

I emailed Kevin, who is a former pupil of the Salesians in Celbridge, and made the mistake of asking him.....

“What I am looking at is the noise that can be embedded on the fNIRS records due to the movement of the recording optodes. And my PhD is basically trying to remove this noise. So I will be getting you to do some small test while I record the change in the oxygenation levels in your brain,” was his prompt response.

“And then as you do that I will be disturbing the recording optodes intermittently to create motion artifact. I can then use that data in my post processing.”

Now, aren't you glad I asked?

Not admitting defeat, I turned to Google (something else they missed) and typed in fNIRS and came across a paper written on the topic. For the record, it stands for functional Near Infra Red Spectroscopy.

I started reading the paper, and recognised words like “at” and “the” and “and”, but nothing else.

And then I noticed that the authors of the report were Darren J Leamy, Tomás Ward and Kevin T. Sweeney. Yep, that would be the same Kevin Sweeney.....the man himself.

Anyway, I confessed my ignorance and general confusion to him. He reassured me he'd explain it all to me in laymans' language when I saw him.

And, actually when he did, it was pretty straightforward.

Kevin is part of a team that is aiming to improve our ability to measure what's going on the brain.

There are all sorts of practical applications for this sort of work, including working with people who have brain damage or have had a stroke, etc.

Current technology can give doctors and scientists a certain amount of information. Kevin and the lads are hoping to be able to come up with a method of giving doctors a clearer picture of what (if anything) is going on inside our noggins.

You can only imagine the jokes flying around the newsroom of the Leinster Leader when I announced where I was headed last Friday afternoon.

“What if they don't find anything......,” was the general gist. Oh the wit!

So I turned up, and made my way to the Engineering building on the north campus of the college. Inside, Kevin met me and brought me to a small-ish room on the first floor.

He showed me everything, and how it would all work and why he needed the information.

I was to be one of about 15 people the test would be done on.

The measurement essentially works by measuring the oxygen levels in the blood that flows around the brain. This can be measured quite simply. Those of us who have visited hospital in recent times will be familiar with the small plastic clamp the nurses put on your finger.

The clamp shines a light which is similar to infra-red light into your finger and measures the response. This tells them if your blood is properly oxygenated. Effectively, what it's really monitoring is to see if your heart, lungs and blood are all working properly.

In the case of the brain, there's a slight difference. When a certain part of the brain is activated (if, for instance, you decided to raise your arm) oxygenated blood is sent to that part of the brain.

So by measuring the level of oxygen in the blood, you can measure the level of activity in that section of the brain.

But rather than putting a giant clamp on my head, Kevin used a strap with a couple of small optodes resting against my forehead. The optodes contain the lasers that fire the light into my brain.

“You could fire that light into a glass of milk if you wanted and you'd get a certain reading,” he explained. “What happens is that a certain amount of the light comes back out, and by measuring that, we can tell how oxygenated the blood is.”

I was instructed to sit on a chair. It was a little bit funny because it was a carseat. I couldn't tell what kind of car, but it looked a little odd surrounded by computers and wires. The idea was to make the person feel more comfortable than they would on one of the normal office chairs, and it worked.

Having attached the strap to my head, turned on all the computers, computer programmes and sensors and given me a pair of big laser-proof glasses to wear, I was told to sit still for nine minutes.

This is a lot harder than you think! You suddenly starting itching in places you've never itched before, for no good reason – but you can't move a muscle!

One of the optodes pressed against my forehead was really uncomfortable, and threatened to drive me nuts.

I moved once, two minutes into it, and he had to start over.

However during the third nine-minute period of stillness I discovered that closing your eyes and trying to sleep was as good a way as any to keep still.

Every minute or so, one of the computers would beep, and Kevin would move one of the optodes on my forehead. This varies the data which he can then analyse later.

After the first nine minutes, he gave me a test to do on a computer screen. I won't explain it all here, but essentially it involved trying to match up cards on the screen. There were three different patterns that could be used to match up the cards and you initially had to figure out which pattern it was.

I sat there for another nine minutes, doing this test, and not moving except for my finger on a mouse.

The third nine-minute period was the same as the first and then the fourth one involved doing the cards again.

Although I was pleased to hear that I'd done well in the card test, the results were somewhat irrelevant. The purpose of the test is to activate a certain section of the brain.

Throughout the testing, there were several computers around monitoring what was going on inside my head.

One of them, to my left had about a dozen different graphs with various sized yellow lines going across the screen. God knows what it all meant.

Kevin said that he couldn't tell much from what the various graphs were showing him during the test – it would only be later on, when he analysed it all that he could tell anything.

The only thing that stands out is your heart rate. For each beat of my heart, a spurt of blood would run through my brain and this showed up as an even series of spikes across the screen.

But I suppose at least I can go back to the (nit)wits in the Leinster Leader newsroom and assure them I do indeed have a brain!



This was the result. Nope, still don't understand it fully, but at least confirms that I have a brain, and it works reasonably well.....



Almost 20 years have passed since I left school

Observe the photograph above.


It was taken on a bright early summer's day in May 1992, almost 20 years ago.

The 103 young men pictured here were pupils of Naas CBS and were weeks away from sitting their leaving certs and heading on to wherever the world was going to take them.

They were all between 17 and 18 years old, which means that they are now somewhere between 36 and 38. Next June will be the 20th anniversary of their departure from the school.

Back then they were all school boys, obsessed with football, music, school discos in Stirrups, the Ambassador, Nijinky's, leather jackets, the Batman movies (the first two), the Cure, An Emotional Fish, Nirvana, (very) early Blur, Doc Martin's and girls from the convent.

None of them had mobile phones, although the father of one, who worked in the bank, had one, and it resembled a size-11 shoe with a six inch aerial (15.24 centimetres for the young people).

Needless to say, that phone did not send text messages, take photographs, upload said photographs to the internet, browse the internet, book flights, play games, play music or use satelites to direct you to your holiday home in Spain (in the unlikely event that you had one of those).

A handful of the 103 had access to computers which were just about able to handle word processing (a forerunner of Microsoft Word for you young people) and Pacman. It's hard to comprehend this now, but there was no internet, no Facebook, Bebo, Twitter or email.

It wasn't uncommon to see a queue for a pay phone.

Digital photography did not exist. Photographs, including this one, were taken on film that had to be processed.

None of the lads had a car, although one had a small Honda motorbike which was pored over and endlessly discussed as if it was a space ship.

We didn't have Oxegen, Electric Picnic or the Festival of World Culture. We didn't have multiplex cinemas, the IFC, McDonalds on every street corner, breakfast rolls, Lucozade Sport, hybrid cars, X-Factor or a thousand channels in our televisions.

We had RTE 1 and 2, BBC 1 and 2, UTV and Channel 4, Ford Escorts and Toyota Corolas. We had Malone's Bakery and Feile, and until we lost them, we never realised how much we loved them.

Twenty years later, the class of 1992 are doctors, lawyers, a journalist (yours truly), an equestrian centre manager, a mechanic, business men, computer engineers, quantity surveyors, accountants, a writer on Fair City, a surfer, an artist, a lecturer in literature, a poet, a plumber and every other thing you could possibly imagine, and surely some you probably can't.

For many, their full heads of dark hair (long was in at the time) are a mere memory, while not-so-full waist-lines are a similar ancient memory.

Many have left the county, and many have even left the country.

At least one of them, tragically, has passed away.

Many of them are the fathers of young families, and consequently they're often to be seen wandering alone late in night, tired and dazed, like ghostly figures, along the dimly-lit aisles of enormous supermarkets, looking for baby wipes.

Some of them may even have sons who will go to Naas CBS, where they will obsess over football, music and girls from the convent and it's nice to know that in that sense, some things never change.

Those 20 years have been more transformative than anyone alive at the time could have imagined. To the class of 1992, the Kildare of late 2011 would have been just about barely recognisable.

Back then, we didn't necessarily know it, but we lived in a country that fell far short of the standard of living experienced by the rest of western Europeans.

There were essentially no Polish people living in Ireland, or from anywhere else in eastern Europe, which had, until three years previously, still languished behind the Iron Curtain.

Ah yes, the Iron Curtain. It wasn't mentioned in our history books because it wasn't yet history. Your average 17 year old may not fully understand the concept of this now, but there were no weekends away in Prague, Berlin, Krakow or Budapest. You simply could not go there, even if you wanted to.

Ryanair was there, but it wasn't the low-fares monster it is today and consequently only the wealthiest took weekends away.

A flashy car was something of a rarity and hitching, which was still a viable and reasonably reliable form of transport, was the best way for most people to see the inside of a flashy car.

When we were growing up, a number of things were clear. After school, we would either be one of the lucky few who found a job in Ireland, or emigrate. Going to college wasn't really a third option. It was an interesting and fun way of delaying the inevitable and making us more employable in another country.

In a short space of time, by the time any of us who had gone to college had graduated, everything had changed.

The Celtic Tiger was starting to purr and with each passing month, opportunity knocked louder and louder.

Technological advances have changed our world dramtically. Recently I was texting a friend who was relaying to me, in real time, how she was getting on during a hike at Yosemite National Park - which is in a rural part of northern California.

She also sent me pictures and a short video of her group making dinner over a camp fire, 5,000 (8,000kms) miles and nine time zones away.

Using Skype on her Iphone, I could have chatted to them all as we ate dinner together, except that my laptop was on the blink.

In 1992, I might have gotten a battered postcard, three weeks after she arrived home – and would have pored over it endlessly. The world was still an enormous, exotic and mysterious place – an exciting proposition.

Now we can acccess so much of it at our fingertips that, as Kavanagh said: 'Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder'.

Technology has opened up Kildare to the rest of the world and the rest of the world to Kildare. The class of 1992 can now do business in another county or country, without actually moving there.

With a population of 200,000 there are now twice as many people living in Kildare as there were in 1992.

Naas in the early 1990's, for a bunch of spotty lovelorn teenagers was a place that was on the edge of somewhere (Dublin) and miles from anywhere else.

Now it's is a comfortable, cosmopolitan and lively place to live, whereas in 1992, it was the sticks.

To reflect the changes in Kildare and Ireland over the past 20 years, the Leinster Leader wants to try a small social experiment.

Between now and the New Year, we're calling on the men in this photograph to make contact with us, and give a brief outline of what they've been up to during the last two decades.

It's likely that there were some in the class who are not in the photograph, and we would of course be happy to hear from there as well.

Email conor@leinsterleader.ie

Don't call us, we won't call you

This was quite a shocking one....

Phones at a HSE clinic that treats mental health difficulties of young people and adolescents are not being answered.
And a message left by staff of the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in Athy on the answering machine discourages potential patients from leaving a message.
“This is the Child Guidance Service. Unfortunately we're currently without secretarial service so this phone will not be answered,” the message left by a clearly frustrated staff member says.
It continues: “You may leave a message but we cannot guarantee that this message will be checked at any time, so if this is an emergency, please contact your GP, on-call service or your A&E department.
“We greatly regret this situation. Thank you.”
The Child Guidance Service is one of three clinics that are part of the Mental Health Services section of the HSE in Kildare/West Wicklow.
The Leinster Leader rang the other two clinics, in Celbridge and Kill. While the phones were not answered there either, the message did invite callers to leave a message, saying they would get back to them.
Cllr. Mark Wall was shocked to hear the news.
“It's unbelievable to say the least. I've listened to the message and you can hear the frustration in that man's voice,” Cllr. Wall said.
“I've been saying it for some time. There has to be a whole serious re-think about what the HSE is doing in terms of the money they're getting and the services they're providing.
“And again it's the most vulnerable, such as in this instance young kids and adolescents with issues, that are getting hit.”
Sean O'Sullivan of Kildare based HOPED (Help Other People Endure Depression) agreed that the message was indicative of the HSE's general approach to dealing with mental health.
“We need leadership from the HSE on this issue,” he explained.
“All of the voluntary groups should be under the one umbrella,” he said, adding that there had been an initiative some time ago from the HSE to do this, but it came to nothing.
“When you're depressed, you eventually you lift that phone to make that connection with somebody.” That first connection, he explained was very important.
“A lot of people ring me themselves, but a lot of them go to their deaths and nobody knows about it.”
“I write letters from the HSE and it could take two months for them to reply.
“I know they have best of intentions, but under the HSE it's a quagmire.”
“We have more than twice as many people dying through suicide compared to dying on the roads,” he said, adding that there was no national figure like Gay Byrne to campaign for it.
Referring to the message left on the Athy clinic's answering machine,a spokesperson for the HSE said “this is only a temporary arrangement which the HSE is currently working to resolve”.
And she insisted that if people left a message on the phone, “somebody will get back to them”.

Officially the most bizarre story I've ever done

Clane girl Sarah O'Brien went online to myfreeimplants.com to raise money for a boob job. Pic courtesy of the Irish Sun.

A 21 year old Clane woman who wants to get breast implants has taken to the internet to appeal for the price of the expensive surgery.

Sarah O'Brien says she was always conscious of her size-A bust, and when she came across the American website myfreeimplants.com she decided to give it a go.
“I was always very conscious of it. It's a major complex for me,” she told the Leinster Leader.
The website works by facilitating contact between women facing a bill of €5,000 for a boob job and men who may wish to help them pay for it.
The women post pictures, videos and other information about themselves on the website. The men in turn can chat to the women and request pictures or videos.
According to the website, the money doesn't go directly to the women. It is paid directly to the clinic which performs the surgery.
It also features testimonials of hundreds of women who have raised the required amount for the surgery through the site. And it claims to have tens of thousands of members from all over the world.
Sarah admits that some of the men she contacts are “weirdos”. “I've had some odd requests. One man paid me to watch him taking a shower.
“Sometimes they ask you to masturbate, or to watch them doing the same, but I'm not into that.”
But she told the Leinster Leader, there are plenty of genuine men out there as well, even some she would now class as friends.
“I was chatting to one man the other night about my mother who has died. And I was crying and he was crying. Some of them can be very nice.
Sarah's boyfriend Ciaran, whom she lives with doesn't mind, she says.
“I said to him 'look are you going to pay for this' and he said 'no', so I have to do what I have to do.”
News of her bold surgery bid have spread and she is set to appear on TV3 and on several national and local radio stations.
Sarah says that she has investigated the price of getting the implants. “There's a place in Bray that is cheapest. It's about €5,000.”
So far, in the four months since she joined myfreeimplants.com she has gathered $358, and says she will need to get a total of $6,500 for the job.
And she's hoping that the publicity she's getting for her bid could lead to a deal with a surgery clinic.
“I just wanted to say that it there's a clinic willing to sponsor the operation, I'll use the publicity I'm getting now on TV3 and in the other media to publicise them in return,” she explained.
myfreeimplants.com has attracted attention from all over the world, including one of the biggest chat show hosts in the world, Jay Leno, who was prompted to note: "See that's what's great about America! Here's men lending a helping hand to complete strangers. See that's what makes our country great!"

Update: The following morning, as the paper arrived out into the shops, Sarah announced on our local radio station, KFM, that a clinic in Bray had agreed to sponsor her surgery.

Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink

This is one I've done in the past few days. I'm really interested in this section of North West Kildare, not least because as an avid cyclist, it's about the only place in the county where there are some decent hills. Also, the roads are quiet. But, under the ground, it's anything but quiet - in fact it's a fascinating place. Pity the County Council and the Department of Environment haven't realised that.

As you'll see from the article, the locals are forced to use their own wells, with less than satisfactory results.

Rust damage from excess iron in the water.

More damage, this time to the inside of the cistern on the toilet of a house near Carbury.

One of the wells that was dug, but has since been capped. There's a trickle of water flowing from it, down to the ditch - hence the fresh green grass.

It will surprise most, given the general downturn in our national fortunes, to hear that a €154 million programme of investment was announced for Kildare in the past couple of weeks.
But the most surprising bit is that the investment, which was in various water service schemes, does not include anything for a proposed scheme that would provide a large section of the county with a public water service for the first time, a service locals have been fighting to secure for the past 20 years.
The furthest reaches of North West Kildare are one of the most remote parts of the county and is characterised by the rolling hills of the Esker Riada.
It's a place of large farms and small quarries, where 10 minutes driving in either direction could leave you in either Kildare, Offaly or Meath. Another ten minutes and you're in Westmeath.
Above the ground it's fairly quiet – a passing tractor or a far off dog barking being the only thing you'll encounter most of the time.
But under the ground is another story, with an abundance of underground lakes and streams. According to Seamus Langan, a local county councillor living in the area, there are several wells in the area that can produce up to a million gallons of water per hour.
On the one hand, this is great news because it could reduce the county’s dependence on water from the Liffey, which provides 90% of it. In an era where some are suggesting that water be piped across the country from the Shannon to Dublin, it's a pressing issue for a county with one of the biggest populations in the state.
On the other hand it adds a definite touch of the bizarre to this whole saga, because as it stands now, the population of a large area that stretches from Derrinturn to Johnstownbridge, from Clogherinkoe to Broadford, has no public water service.
Each house is dependent on its own, or a nearby well for water. Inevitably the quality of the water is mixed. While some households have no problems, as our pictures show, a high degree of iron in some wells has left some people with, in practical terms, no water.
But here's where it gets more complicated. Two decades ago, in 1990, the Balyna Group Water Scheme was established - the aim being to provide usable water to local people.
The Scheme's organising committee collected more than €219,000 from more at least 700 homes. The cost per household was reckoned to be approximately €800, and most households gave at least half.
Twenty years later, there's still no scheme. “We can't go back looking for the rest,” Frank Caffrey of the group told the Leinster Leader. “There's a certain loss of credibility.
“People are asking where the scheme is. And some are even asking for their money back,” he said.
In 2004 it was decided by the Water Services Section of Kildare County Council that because of the size of the proposed scheme and the infrastructure required, it should be included in their Water Service Investment Programme in order to put the supply of water on a more sound footing.
The scheme received approval and work started with wells being dug in a number of spots around the area.
The County Council even went so far as to publish more than 30 Compulsory Purchase Orders in this newspaper in 2005. And, the Leinster Leader understands, those plots of land have been bought and paid for.
But since then, the whole thing has come to a halt. Wells have now been capped and no further work has taken place in recent times.
Kildare County Council is on record as saying that it was proposed to abstract approximately eight million litres a day from groundwater under wellfields at Roberstown and Johnstownbridge
It was thought that a new €1.2 billion worth of investment in national water services might kick start the whole thing again. And the scheme was included in a needs assessment that had been submitted to the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government.
Minister John Gormley told Bernard Durkan in the Dail in March this year that the application was being considered. He added that his Department was waiting for documents from Kildare County Council, and that once they got these, “a decision will be notified to the Council as soon as possible in light of the finalisation of the Water Services Investment Programme for 2010-2012.”
However, on Tuesday, April 20, again in response to Deputy Durkan, he said it was “not possible to include the Ballyna Regional Water Supply Scheme amongst the priority contracts and schemes selected for inclusion”.
So, somehow the Ballyna Regional Water Supply Scheme, which locals have campaigned for 20 years and was to provide a basic water service to people who essentially, currently have none, fell down the list of priorities.
This left a lot of people in North West Kildare scratching their heads, and understandably, very angry.
At the May meeting of County Councillors from the Clane Area Committee, the Council confirmed the bad news and told Cllr. Seamus Langan, that the Council's “Water Services has since met with the Department Inspector to impress on him the importance and need for the Scheme and the desirability of progressing the Scheme through the Planning Stage.
“The Department requested that Water Services resolve all outstanding issues with Waterways Ireland in relation to the Grand Canal.”
And with a review of the Programme due at the end of the year, “there may be a possibility of further considering the position of the wellfields in this context, but only if the Waterways issue is resolved in the interim.”
An internal memo between engineers within the Water Services Section sent May 22, 2009 and seen by the Leinster Leader stated that “progress has been delayed due to the introduction of new forms of contract and their imposition on Local Authorities in 2008.
“In addition, technical issues have been raised by Waterways Ireland in relation to water table drawdown from the wellfields in Robertstown.”
However in response to a query from the Leinster Leader, the County Council said issues with Waterways Ireland were not responsible for the non-inclusion of the Scheme in the investment programme.
But at the time of going to press, yesterday morning, Tuesday, May 25, the Council has yet to explain why the Scheme was not included.
However Deputy Bernard Durkan said that he believed the Scheme had fallen foul of the Department of the Environment's new priorities which are to support schemes that aim to conserve water rather than increase the amount being used.
“This worked out badly for the people of that area.Their situation is critical. They have no drinking water, or it's tainted and discoloured.
“It's totally and absolutely unfair that they should be treated in that fashion.”
As to who or what organisation or person was responsible for letting the people of North West Kildare fall through the cracks, he concluded, in spectacularly Kafka-esque fashion that: “The local authority had pre-ordained which way it would go, in accordance with the Minister's wishes”.
But he swore he wasn't finished on the matter. “As far as I'm concerned, I don't intend to let it rest.
“There's more to this story,” he said.
And the Leinster Leader will keep you up to date.

Tells its own story really.

I had fun writing this one. Production needed more wordage than normal for space reasons, so I obliged with a little rant on the question of SUV's. Hope it makes sense.


MAKE AND MODEL: Kia Sorrento

DESCRIPTION: jeep/SUV

ENGINE: 2.2 litre Diesel

OTHER AVAILABLE ENGINES: None, but it's also available in automatic and two wheel drive

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: The kind of refinement normally found in Europe.

THE LOW DOWN: It's time to talk about SUV's.
There was once a time when a tall vehicle with a large diesel engine, four wheel drive capability, space in the back for a few bales of hay and a general robustness about it was known as a jeep.
It didn't greatly matter whether it was a Land/Range Rover, a Toyota Landcrusier, an Isuzu Trooper or a Mitsubishi Pajero, it was still a jeep.
Of course, 'Jeep' can't be the official name for them because, since 1987, it is actually a brand name that belongs to Chrysler. In fact the very word explains their true heritage. Back in the second world war, the rugged open topped cars the American army used to get around were known as General Purpose vehicles. This became shortened to GP, or Jeep.
So let us, for the purpose of this history lesson, call them jeeps with a small 'j'.
By and large, the only people who bothered to buy jeeps were farmers, builders and the horsey people – in other words the kind of people who actually needed one, and it was a sensible and responsible option.
Anyway, the Americans, who were loading them up with surf boards and mountain bikes or pulling horseboxes started to call them Sports Utility Vehicles. And if they'd left it there, that would have been fine.
But then some jackass decided that, well seeing as some shallow urbanised Americans were buying them to make themselves look cool and rugged, but weren't actually putting surf boards in them, or ever going off road, that maybe we should go the whole hog and make them comfortable passenger cars.
And little by little, engine sizes became smaller, the seats got more padding, four wheel drive became optional or dispensed with, and the difference between an SUV and one of those God-awful people carriers became purely cosmetic.
The result? A lot of the criticism of what are now called SUV's is hopelessly misguided.
Consider a seven-seat 2-litre diesel-powered, two-wheel drive thing that looks like what we used to call a jeep and is called an SUV. Now consider a seven-seat 2-litre diesel-powered, two-wheel drive thing that looks like a beached whale and is called a people carrier.
What's the difference? One is the sensible option for people with big families – the other has single-handedly caused global warming.
Where the marketing people have gotten it terribly wrong is that they messed up form and function.
If it comes in the form of a jeep, its function is to pull bullocks out of a mucky field and to the mart.
If it comes in the form of a beached whale, its function is to pull children out of bed and to school, soccer, ballet and back home again.
The Kia Sorrento we drove at Dunleas in Kilcullen last Thursday morning is a perfect example of all that.
It looks like a jeep. It is in fact an extremely good-value comfortable people carrier.
This is the second edition of the Sorrento. The first one was very popular because it was good looking and good value. The second one is better looking again and even better value.
Driving it was a revelation – possibly because I had low expectations. Kia have managed to somehow give the driver the impression they are driving a car. Features are close at hand, comprehensive and yet easy to operate.
On the narrow roads around Two-Mile-House and Athgarvan it certainly didn't feel like you were driving a tank. The sway that you normally associate with tall vehicles wasn't as pronounced as I've experienced it – and it was also remarkably quiet – no louder than a car with a similar engine.
And yet every so often when I turned around I'd get a bit of a shock to see how far back it goes.
You would think that a 2.2 litre diesel engine would be on the small side for a machine that big, but it has plenty of poke and the six speed manual gear box the Leinster Leader drove is eminently forgettable – not in the sense that it's bad, but in the sense that it is smooth and refined and not likely to get in the way of enjoying the drive.
Machines that size often come with gear boxes that resemble that of a 40 year old tractor.
The inside of the car goes against the worst instincts of Asian and American cars – that is to say they've avoided trying to make it cheap looking. There's a definite mid-range European sensibility going on here – kinda like a Renault or Opel.
There are leather seats complete with uncomplicated electric position adjusters.
Dunleas are pitching this as a good-value competitor to the over priced Audi Q7 or Discovery – and they're dead right to do so. But they could also comfortably pitch it at large families (numbers and/or size).
We found it difficult to find information on fuel economy. Our usual source only had info on the previous edition of the Sorrento. The larger 2.5 litre diesel in that model needed 10 litres of diesel per 100 kms in the city, 5.9 litres on the open road and an overall average of 6.7. Assuming the 2.2 litre is more frugal, then that's something to smile about. Although bear in mind that the automatic won't be as good.
Unfortunately, on the emissions side, they missed out by one single gram of CO2 and it is in Band E which will make it a little hefty on the pocket.
If a comfortable seven seater for a large family is what you're after, then to hell with the begrudgers, get yourself one of these.

PRICES RANGE FROM: €39,595 to €47,595.

WHO IS IT FOR: Large families.

MARKS OUT OF TEN: 8/10 Paying that tax will hurt!

Orla Tinsley

One of the good things about this job is that every so often you get a chance to meet some extraordinary people. This young lady is definitely one of them. This is a profile piece I did on Orla way back in September 2008.




After I interviewed Orla Tinsley for this piece, we found ourselves at another event, and, as the Bebo generation tend to put it, we ‘hung out’.
It was great fun. She’s great ‘hanging out’ material. She’s easygoing and full of chat, instantly putting everyone around her at ease.
Some people recognised her from her recent television appearance when she was presented with a Rehab People of the Year award for single-handedly branding the disgrace that passes for services for cystic fibrosis in this country onto the national consciousness.
Anyone who approached her was greeted with an easy smile and a feeling that only some people like Bill Clinton and the last Pope can convey, that for a moment, you are the only thing in the entire universe that matters to them.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to the start, in 1987, when she was born. She grew up in what she cheekily calls ‘Kavanagh Mountains’ - an area of Hawkfield, near Newbridge, where members of the local Kavanagh family (including her mother) have built houses along a slight rise in the road. There, surrounded by her extended family she grew up and attended Scoil Mhuire National School and the Holy Family before starting in UCD three years ago, where she’s studying English and Ancient Greek and Roman Civilisation.
She’s in her third year there, and loves it. She especially loves English and dreams of becoming a writer when she graduates.
So far, so normal. Except that it’s not.
Three days after her birth she was diagnosed as having Cystic Fibrosis. CF is a hereditary disease affecting the mucous producing glands of the lungs, liver, pancreas, and intestines.
She became aware of the reality of the disease when she was about five or six and a girl whom she was friendly with in Temple Street Hospital, died.
“And I thought, oh God. I remember recognising something. It brought it home to you.”
Young Tinsley is nothing if not forthright when she wants to be and she makes it clear that she hates pity, and that despite the nature of her illness, there is nothing sad or morose about her.
“I hate people thinking that if you experience death you’re going to be sad and have a sorrow about you.”
With her childhood punctuated by hospital trips (a common theme for those with CF who are more susceptible to infection than most) her education was often split between lessons in the Temple Street Hospital and her schools in Newbridge.
Some other normal childhood activities were not engaged in – like getting exercise.
“I’m glad you brought that up,” she says. “Up until about 10 years ago it was believed that people with CF shouldn’t be playing sport.
“It was also suggested that you should have a non-fat diet, but actually that’s detrimental. “While the pancreas can’t digest fat, we take enzymes to digest it. But the better your weight is, the stronger you are to fight infection that comes along.
“However, as you get older with CF you start to lose bone density - and a way to counteract that is with exercise.”
“Up until last January, I mentally couldn’t get my head around the idea of exercise - as is the case with a lot of students.”
But under the guidance of her physiotherapist she took up weight-lifting and running, with which she is now happily obsessed.
“When I started, I could run for one minute and now I can go for 30 minutes. I’m doing a 5k run in October.
“I love running; it’s totally created a new perspective on life for me. It clears my mind, not to mention my lungs. It feels so great that I can do it. Running has made me so much more aware of my own body and my digestive system and the utter absolute importance of being hydrated. You need to eat complex carbs, and not going to three lectures without eating isn’t a good idea.”
Generally speaking, eating is an issue for those with CF. One of the aspects of the condition is that the over-production of mucous interferes with the body’s ability to absorb nutrition and energy from food. As a result people with CF often have Michael Phelps-like appetites.
“I’m a chocolate fiend and a sucker – literally - for fizzy sweets.
“There’s a team of people who look after us, including a doctor, physio and a dietician. They can give you shakes with 700 calories in them.”
However, the importance of keeping weight on and eating enough is not an issue for Orla. “I never think of it, because I love food.”
Her situation is complicated because she has diabetes. “It’s tricky. I have to be careful, but generally I eat what I want, when I want.
“For instance, when I’m in hospital - and I’m not saying it’s all fun and games – but I order Chinese at night time. And I eat a load of Diet Coke and Pringles.
“People know not to bring me fruit!”
Once she turned 18 and therefore became an adult, Orla’s time in Temple Street came to an end, and when she required hospital treatment, it was to St. Vincent’s hospital she went.
“The thing about being in a children’s hospital, is that it’s geared towards the kids. There’s a playroom and distractions throughout the day. There are clowns and cartoons and famous people visit you, so it’s very interesting.
“When you move into an adult hospital there’s nobody entertaining you, so it’s a bit of a culture shock.”
But if that was her only complaint, it wouldn’t be so bad.
“You go from being the oldest person in the ward, to being in a room with five other people, the majority of whom are elderly, or you end up in a psychiatric ward.”
When people with CF go to hospital to recover from infection they need, obviously, to avoid any further infection. That means having their own en-suite room on a special ward with appropriately trained staff.
Up until August 2008 there were only two beds for 300 CF patients who attended St. Vincent’s. For 20 years it was the designated CF hospital, and there were plans to develop a unit, which came to nothing. Orla knows of a fellow patient who was asked, 10 years ago, to be in a photo-op to announce a new building that was never built.
In her late teens Orla found herself in wards with elderly or psychiatric patients. She has written about having to walk elderly women with dementia back to bed, of fellow patients crying and coughing all night, of not having simple things like pillows and of beginning to wonder if hospital was probably the worst place for her.
It was the Irish Times who took up her plight and gave her a platform from which to campaign for better services.
"The idea that someone is poor, fragile, incapable and not in control of his/her destiny terrifies me. Yet right here, in this shambles of a health system, the reality is that what we fight so hard not to become has become us, uncontrollably so.
“We deserve freedom from infection and from the poor, confused woman who you constantly have to guide back to her bed because there is nobody else there to do it.
“As I lie exhausted in bed and listen to the coughs around me, I think of all the people with cystic fibrosis in hospitals right now who fear for our lives. I think of how detached from the situation those in power must really be and I struggle to understand the utter stupidity of their inaction.”
Ah yes, inaction.
All of this would be, if not excusable, then perhaps vaguely understandable if CF was a minor problem in Ireland.
“We seem to have a more aggressive strain of it than anywhere else in the world. It’s something to do with the famine,” she explained.
“We have the highest incidence in the world and it’s the most commonly inherited condition in the country.”
Ireland also has the highest rate of CF carriers in the world. One in every 19 Irish people carries the gene.
In reality Ireland has every good reason to be world leaders in all things CF.
“But we’re not.”
There are two things to say about her writing. The first is that it ignited a national debate, a wake up call to a smug nation, Government and Minister for Health, and eventually action in the form of eight single en-suite beds in St. Vincent’s as an interim measure established last month.
If they go well, there could be six more added.
By 2010 there will be a fully equipped, fully and appropriately staffed unit, but with 20 beds.
“We need 32 beds,” Orla says. But she’s happy that they will be ringfenced – only available for people with CF.
The other thing was the Irish Times and their readers’ noticed was that the then 20 year old had an extraordinary talent with the pen.
Letters to the editor described her writing as ‘profound’and ‘eloquant’, and the newspaper, like all newspapers on the lookout for new talent, have retained her services and kept her busy.
She now writes for them about things that have nothing to do with CF, which is exactly where someone with talent and dreams of being a writer wants to be in their third year in college. Recently she had a piece responding to overblown media reports of general debauchery in college.
After college, she’s hoping to sustain her career in journalism and writing.
But for the time being, she’s living in Clonskeagh with a five month old cat called George and two friends. “He’s very clever. I think pets know instinctively when you’re not well.”
And she’s still an ordinary 21 year old who got a huge thrill when she met one of her heroes, Andrea Corr who presented her with her award on Saturday night, September 13.
“She’s absolutely lovely, gorgeous. We chatted several times that night.”
With a sponsored dress from Rococo, a boutique beside the Westbury Hotel she “felt like a princess!”
But the dress’s length proved a difficulty getting onto and off the stage.
“Going up, I was trying to hold my dress up, and all I was thinking was ‘Andrea Corr is on the stage, Oh God!’ I was so overwhelmed that she was there, but I felt pretty comfortable once I was up.
“We had to walk down the ramp together afterwards, and I said to her: ‘How are we meant to get down?’
“She said: ‘I’ll hold onto you and you hold onto me’.
“And we shimmied down the ramp!”