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The relationship that Irish society has with alcohol has long been identified as dysfunctional - a strain on our health service and the cause of crime on our streets, abuse in homes, and deaths on the roads.

To lay it out in stark terms, the cost of alcohol related crime is estimated at one point two billion annually; there are two thousand hospital beds taken up each night as a direct or indirect result of drink...and that costs the taxpayer well over three billion euro.

We are told that moderate drinking is not harmful, but drawing that line between moderate and excessive is where many of us fall down. Coming out of the Christmas period, many are resolving to cut back or cut out drink altogether – and we will speak to one such martyr Ciaran Hanna, editor of InsideIreland.ie and to look at how alcohol impacts on society, Myles was also joined in studio by Professor Joe Barry who is the Professor of Population Health at Trinity College Dublin.

Tributes have been paid to Irish adventurer Ian McKeever who died on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.

The 42-year-old was leading a group of climbers, including several people from Ireland, when it is believed they were struck by a lightning storm three days into the climb.

Myles spoke with John O’Regan, ultra marathon runner and Ian Taylor, a mountaineer who both knew Ian McKeever.

Change to telephone allowance scheme

If you are aged over 66, the bill for your landline is set to rise from February. That is because the telephone allowance provided by the Department of Social Welfare is decreasing in line with last December’s budget.

If you fall into that category it means an increase to your bill of between approximately €13 and €18 per month.

Tina Leonard was here to explain exactly what the changes are and how you can negate this loss by getting a better deal either from your phone provider or by switching to another.

What is the change?

If you are aged over 66 you will receive a monthly telephone allowance. This allowance is universally applied to everyone over the age of 66.

In the December 2012 budget the government announced a reduction in the telephone allowance that is part of the Household Benefit Scheme and so the Department of Social Protection has reduced the amount given.

The allowance was €22.58 but from 1st February will be reduced to €9.50. This means that if you are over 66 the first telephone bill you receive after that date will increase by at least €13.08. (VAT inclusive).

Why do I need to know about this now?

The majority of customers who fall into this category (270,000) are with Eircom and will already have received letters (or are about to receive them) from that company as the letters are being sent in batches from December 27th last. Eircom reports many calls already about this to their customer service line and has set up a dedicated helpline for this matter.

If you are over 66 and with another provider for your landline (the minority) you may hear directly from your provider in the coming days or weeks.

But you may not. For example UPC landline customers who avail of the telephone allowance do so directly with the Department of Social Protection and UPC do not process it.

In either case the change or reduction will be automatically applied, so you don’t have to do anything.

(Note that for over 66’s without a landline but who have a mobile, they apply for this allowance directly from the Department of Social Welfare for the mobile and it is paid via welfare payments. The amount will reduce accordingly also.)

So how much exactly will I lose?

If you are a Vodafone landline customer for example, it’s straightforward. Previously a credit of €22.58 would have been added to your bill and this was the telephone allowance. In your bill from February this credit will reduce to €9.50.

However, if you are an Eircom customer you are set to lose more. This is because Eircom are currently also providing additional subsidies and these are set to end too.

Eircom

So, the government allowance of €22.58 did not cover the cost of Eircom’s line rental so Eircom added their own benefit of €3.20 to cover the extra. In addition, some customers receive an Eircom call allowance of a further €1.52 and for those customers renting handsets Eircom add a further 79c allowance.

However, these Eircom allowances will cease from 1st February along with the reduction in the government allowance. The call credit of €1.52 that Eircom added will go from 1st April as it is paid in arrears.

This all means that some Eircom customers will see these credits reduce from €28.09 down to €9.50, which means a monthly bill increase of €18.59. (With other operators as there had been no additional benefits the bill increase will be €13.08).

What you can do to negate the increase in what you pay.

Whether you are going to be paying an extra €13.08 or an extra €18.59 per month, for some customers that is a big difference and may be too much.

1.
If you are worried about the increase call your landline provider. It may be that there is a cheaper package you could be on that will cancel out the reduction in the allowance, so ask. In fact this is what most callers to Eircom who have already received the letter are currently asking. (Their dedicated number for this issue is 1800 661 622).

Before you make the call, think about how you use your phone. Do you just have it for security and only take incoming calls? Do you make calls in the evenings, at weekends or all the time? Do you call mobiles or landlines or overseas? Knowing this information will aid the customer service agent in suggesting the best package for your needs.

For example, one third of Eircom’s customers that are in receipt of the allowance are on a line rental and rate per call deal, rather than an ‘all-in’ monthly tariff. But once you’ve answered the questions above you could most likely do better on a monthly tariff or deal.

Eircom has a packge for €25 that includes all landline calls at weekends, €30 for free off-peak calls (7pm to 7am) and €40 for unlimited landline calls anytime. Note that these prices include line rental, but if you make calls outside of the deal, they will be 5c or 6c a minute and calls to mobiles would be 22c or 25c per minute if not a Meteor / eMobile mobile (they are 5c to 10c). So be careful.

Vodafone for example has a deal for €30 for off-peak calls to landlines and it includes line rental and 200 off peak minutes to Vodafone mobiles, or €37 per month for calls to landlines at any time plus 200 minutes to three vodafone mobile numbers. Remember if you call outside the deal, your bill will rise.

But there are other providers too, such as UPC, but others again that you may not even have heard about i.e. Pure Telecom, Imagine, Hive Telecom, IFA Telecom, CAN, Worldlink, so there is choice out there.

You can compare costs of landline for your needs and results from all these opertaors will appear on www.callcosts.ie (a web site run by Comreg, the Communications Regulator.

(You can check and compare costs of landline plus broadband packages on that site also, if your landline is part of a bundle).

2.
It is also worth noting that a small number of Eircom’s over 66 customers rent a handset. You can rent a cordless, corded or big buttoned phone and the cost is €2.82 per month. This comes to €33.84 per year and you can easily buy a handset outright for less than that, and that will save you plenty of money in the long run.

3.
Within the next few weeks Eircom will announce a new specific package for vulnerable customers who will really feel the impact of the allowance decrease. They are currently finalising this with the Regulator. So bear this in mind.

4.
If you don’t fall into the over 66 category, but know someone who does, perhaps someone who lives on their own and isn’t great at knowing where to look for deals, see if you can help them out with getting a better deal.

Are you unemployed or facing redundancy and wondering how you're going to get on with your life? Well, this might not be the answer for everyone but this morning we're going to tell you about some people who have created their own jobs in what is a very difficult climate...and it's working for them.

Myles was joined in studio by Rosemary Ryan from the Malthouse Design Centre in Dublin, which is a very interesting cluster group of small businesses and Valerie Cox has been meeting some people who have created their own jobs.

Close to 90,000 persons left Ireland in the year to April 2012, leading some to comment that we are experiencing near Famine levels of emigration. It is estimated that some 200 emigrants per day are leaving these shores and for those who made it home for Christmas, the past few days saw many of our emigrants return to their lives overseas. Brian O’Connell spent time this week in both Shannon and Cork Airports and talked in particular to the families who accompanied their departing loved ones to these airports and he joins us now from Cork.

Legend Ray Lynam has played all over, thrilling fans from Wembley to the home of country music – Nashville. I've been a fan of Ray since those days in the 1970s when The Hillbillies burst onto the scene.

Ray Lynam and The Hillbillies were often described as the best country band this side of Nashville. Few would disagree with that moniker. The other members of the famous band were Kevin Sheerin, Billy Condon, John Ryan, Mick Lube, Billy Burgoyne and Ray's brother Johnny, who sadly died in 2007.

Well for the next 3 nights at The Helix take a journey back to the Golden Era of the Irish Showband Scene. It was a more innocent time when musicians put the show into showband! The order of the day was snazzy suits, choreographed dance steps and wonderful musicianship.

Along with Ray there will be Brendan Bowyer from The Royal Showband, Sonny Knowles and Sean Fagan from The Pacific, Susan McCann from The Storytellers, Ray Lynam from The Hillbillies and a host of others as they take you back to the time when the favorite chat up line was “Are You Dancing?”
Ray and Danny Sheerin came into studio this morning to sing a song or two and maybe get some memories from those days.