Astronomers from NUI Galway have been working with Croí na Gaillimhe on an intergenerational project involving an active retirement group and students from Our Lady’s College Galway. The project is part of a wider project, Making Space, celebrating 200 years of the Royal Astronomical Society. Every Tuesday for the past three months the University has worked with a local artist Finbar McHugh who created new art works which demonstrate different scientific ideas. The programme included trips to the University and to Birr Castle where the latest astronomical observatory in Ireland, the i-Lofar Radio Observatory, is based.  On Tuesday, 21 May, there will be a celebration of the event showcasing the work and the presentation of certificates. The event will be introduced by Professor Walter Gear, Dean of the College of Science and Engineering, NUI Galway, and the certificates will be presented by Professor Steve Millar from the Royal Astronomical Society.  Croí na Gaillimhe will also mark the end of their Galway 2020 ‘Small Towns Big Ideas’ project, Mill Street Quilters by hosting a graduation ceremony in the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway. The project brought together two groups, the sewing group at Croí na Gaillimhe and the intergenerational group Young Hearts, to create three quilts based on the Galway 2020 themes of Language, Landscape and Migration. Under experienced tutor Marcella Morgan, the Mill Street Quilters group met regularly and the quilts were hand sewn to encourage more intergenerational connections between the young and the old. This event is presented in partnership with the NUI Galway Physics Department. Professor Andy Shearer, Centre for Astronomy, NUI Galway, said: “Our intention with Making Space is to bring astronomy to communities which don’t normally take part in scientific outreach. We also wanted to explore different ways of communicating scientific ideas, can artists help scientists tell the public what they do? We were delighted to work with Croí na Gaillimhe to develop better links with community groups outside of the University.” Loretta Needham, Manager of Croí na Gaillimhe, spoke about the importance of Making Space available to the community and the acknowledgement by NUI Galway and Our Lady’s College Galway of learning what is happening in places other than the class room, saying: “It is true to say that young and old participants have broadened their horizons. Community Education is what Croí na Gaillimhe is about, it is learning that promotes change and transformation, and promotes empowerment for those marginalised or oppressed. I would like to thank NUI Galway and RAS200 for extending the programme into the community and Galway 2020 for the quilting project.” -Ends-

NUI Galway researcher develops a new bioengineered cardiovascular stent  A new type of cardiovascular stent, coated in antibodies to improve its incorporation into blood vessels, has been developed by scientists and engineers in Ireland and Poland. Professor Gerard Wall, a microbiologist and investigator of the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research in Medical Devices (CÚRAM), based at NUI Galway, led the EU-funded project which has designed and produced a novel stent. The stent is the first of its kind to use human antibodies for cell capture, to avoid activating the patient’s immune response. The antibodies are isolated in the laboratory using phage display technology, a genetic engineering approach that mimics the human immune system, followed by production in E. coli bacteria for tethering onto the lattice structure of the stent under sterile manufacturing conditions. Coronary artery disease occurs when the coronary arteries become hardened and narrowed due to the buildup of plaques on their inner walls. This can lead to stenosis, or narrowing of coronary arteries, reducing blood flow to the heart. This is the most common cause of death in Europe, resulting in approximately two million deaths each year. While surgical insertion of stents to re-open arteries is now commonplace, arteries can become re-blocked over time when cells such as macrophages and smooth muscle cells from the patient’s blood grow over the stent surface. It is this problem that the new stent design addresses: steel stents produced by the manufacturing partner in Poland are coated with human antibodies, produced in the NUI Galway laboratory, to capture endothelial cells from the patient’s blood and the surrounding artery. This leads to stents becoming rapidly “camouflaged” within the walls of the native blood vessels, enabling them to avoid rejection by the patient’s immune system while providing the mechanical strength necessary to keep the artery open. Professor Wall, Head of Microbiology and CÚRAM Investigator at NUI Galway, explains: “The prototype stent arises from the combined expertise of stent manufacturers, protein engineers and interventional cardiologists. It has demonstrated its effectiveness in preclinical studies and is now under development by the manufacturer in Poland with a view to reducing restenosis (reoccurrence of a narrowing of a blood vessel) events in patients and improving the long-term outcome of surgical interventions.” Professor Abhay Pandit, Scientific Director at CÚRAM in NUI Galway, said: “The development of this new cardiovascular stent addresses a critical patient need, which drives all research at CÚRAM. By partnering with leading research institutions in Europe, this unique team brought together a critical skill set to design and produce a real solution that will have a very significant impact for those who urgently need it. The outcome of this partnership is a testament to the power of collaborative research.” The work, published in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, was carried out at NUI Galway, Poland’s Wrocław University of Technology and Wrocław Medical University, and Comenius University in Slovakia, as well as stent manufacturer Balton in Warsaw. It was funded under the EU’s Marie Curie Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways (IAPP) scheme and provided cross-sectoral research training for researchers from the three participating countries. To read the full piece in Journal of Biomedical Materials Research, visit: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jbm.b.34380 -Ends-

Large differences between local council spend and income, but as it should be as it reflects differences in localities and constituents Rural/urban divide remains a big and challenging issue, with cross-council fiscal disparities getting bigger since the last local elections An end to austerity with some big increases in council spending since 2014, both on the aggregate and at individual council level Based on data on commercial rates, local property tax, and local services that they fund, a need to reconsider the balance between business and non-business taxes Friday, 17 May, 2019: Researchers Dr Gerard Turley and Stephen McNena from the Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway have developed an online platform that allows taxpayers to see how their money is spent locally. Initially designed for PublicPolicy.ie with funding from Atlantic Philanthropies, the www.nuigalway.ie/localauthorityfinances website shows local council revenue incomes and spending on local public services. Aimed at improving transparency and accountability but also at informing the public on how local councils raise and spend taxpayers’ money, the interactive web application can be used to readily access individual council income and spending budgets, but also cross-council comparisons with a view to identifying best and worst performing councils. Using local authority budget data from the website, the researchers find big differences in the local authorities, in terms of both council spending (and changes over time) but also council income, and, in particular, commercial rates. Among other explanations, differences in local authority spending can be accounted for by variations in expenditure needs, arising from differences in the socio-economic and demographic profile of the area and its population. Of the eight functional areas that local councils provide, four service divisions account for 75 per cent of total current spending. These are housing (€351), roads (€208), environmental services (€152) and recreation and amenities (€102), with the national average spend per person in 2019 for each of these service divisions reported in brackets. Across the 31 local authorities there are sizeable differences in terms of how much councils spend per person, with the highest and lowest spend per head in Dublin City Council and Meath County Council, at €1,751 and €635 per inhabitant respectively. More specifically, expenditure per person on housing ranges from €686 in Dublin City Council to €86 in Galway County Council. On roads, the range is €396 in Leitrim County Council to €92 in Fingal County Council. For environmental services, including the fire service and street cleaning, Dublin City Council spends €362 per person whereas Meath County Council spends €84 per person. On recreation and amenities, spending per capita ranges from €223 in Galway City Council to €44 in Meath County Council. Dr Gerard Turley, Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway, says: “As for spending changes over time, in general it is the more urban, eastern local authorities that have witnessed the largest increases in day-to-day spending since the last local elections, with the more rural local authorities experiencing the smallest increases and even some recording reductions in spending since 2014. In contrast, all local authorities experienced reductions in current (and even more so in capital) spending between the local elections of 2009 and 2014, coinciding with the years of austerity. Notwithstanding the recovery in the general economy since the last local elections, the issue of the rural/urban divide remains a serious challenge for our policymakers, both local and national.” Funding sources also differ, reflecting differences in tax bases and economic activity. These revenue income differences are particularly true for rural versus urban councils, with the more urban densely populated councils able to rely more on own-source incomes such as commercial rates, retained local property tax (LPT) and user charges, resulting in a greater degree of fiscal autonomy for these councils, while the rural less populated county councils have to depend more on central government grants to provide local public services. Stephen McNena, Whitaker Institute at NUI Galway, explains: “As most tax revenue for local councils is in the form of commercial rates and not local property tax, we looked at the commercial rate called the Annual Rate on Valuation (ARV), for 2019. For those local councils that have not revalued the commercial rates base recently, the tax rate ranges from 79.25 in Kerry County Council to 56.77 in Tipperary County Council. Where local councils have undertaken a recent revaluation of industrial and commercial properties liable for commercial rates, the tax rate ranges from 0.2760 in South Dublin County Council to 0.1500 in Fingal County Council. Of the four Dublin councils, two of them are amongst the councils that levy the highest commercial rates in the country, but, on the other hand, the other two Dublin councils have the lowest rates nationwide. As for these cross-council differences in the ARV, the rate in 2019 in any local council is a reflection of that council’s rates levied in the past.”  As a tax on business property, commercial rates account for about 30 per cent of total revenue income, as against the local property tax which accounts for only eight per cent of revenue income. Given the Government’s recent decision yet again, to defer the revaluation of residential properties for local property tax purposes, this imbalance between business and non-business taxes to fund local public services is an issue that requires more analysis and discussion, with the 2019 local elections an ideal opportunity for voters and policymakers to debate this and other local concerns.  These cross-council differences in budget income and spending are not unexpected, given the variations in the profile, circumstances and choices of the different areas and their constituents. The argument in favour of decentralisation and having local councils (and elections) is to bring government closer to the people, so that citizens get what they want given their differences in preferences and willingness to pay, rather than the uniformity than comes with central government provision. For more information on this research visit, www.nuigalway.ie/localauthorityfinances or contact NUI Galway economics lecturers Dr Gerard Turley or Stephen McNena at gerard.turley@nuigalway.ie or stephen.mcnena@nuigalway.ie. -Ends-