The Irish Independent reports that Senators will pick up over €1,300 on average for each day the Seanad sits this year.

The salaries for members of the Seanad, who are all part-time, have more than doubled since Fianna Fail and the Progressive Democrats came to power.

Senators are in line for a wages and expenses payout of €112,500 each on average in 2006.

Their wages have grown even faster than TDs, yet reform of the outdated upper house of parliament is highly unlikely to be delivered by the next general election.

Senator Mary O'Rourke, the leader of the Seanad, said last night senators were "well paid" but the taxpayer does get value for money.

The 'minimum wage' for senators now stands at €62,000 - nearly twice the average industrial wage.

But only a third of the senators are on this rate as the rest benefit from long service bonuses, serving on committees and holding special positions.

When all the pay is added, the average wage of the 60 senators is just short of €69,000. On top of that, they will pick up an average of €43,500 in expenses this year, bringing the total financial package to €112,500 each.

The Seanad has only sat for an average of less than 85 days each year over the past three years. That means senators will rake in over €1,300 for each day the Upper House sits this year.

Senators argue that their work also includes serving on Oireachtas committees, examining legislation, helping members of the public and playing an international role.

The dramatic rise in salaries is identified in the first comprehensive study of all 60 senators' wages, conducted by the Irish Independent.

Senators' wages are now fixed at 70pc of a TD's salary, so they get all the same increases as paid to TDs.

TDs are the only public sector workers to benefit from two special pay awards, along with partnership deal pay rises, and senators have piggy-backed on these rises.

The salary and expenses details are based entirely upon documents released under the Freedom of Information Act from the Houses of the Oireachtas and figures from the Department of Finance.

Senators picked up an average of €43,500 in expenses in 2005 and it is not unreasonable to estimate that this will be repeated in 2006 as the average claim in 2004 was €44,400.

The basic rate of pay for a senator in July 1997, when the FF-PD coalition came to office, was just €29,058. Today it is €61,989 - a jump of 113pc over nine years. This doesn't even give the full picture of all the increases, however, as long service bonuses were introduced in the meantime and 60pc of all senators are entitled to benefit from these.

Senators with seven years service in either the Dail or Seanad are paid €63,967 and those with 10 years service in Leinster House get €65,944.

When the numbers entitled to the new long service bonuses are factored in, the average basic pay actually works out at €64,000 - a rise of 120pc since 1997.

No matter what way the figures are interpreted, senators have done better than any other politicians in terms of pay rises.

Yet there are no guarantees that recommended reforms of the Seanad will be in place by the next general election.

Environment Minister Dick Roche is chairing yet another all-party group to come up with a plan for reform of the Seanad.

A reform package put together by the Seanad itself was published two years ago. Although the proposals will need changes to the Constitution and new laws to be passed, no referendum is planned and no legislation is being drafted yet.

Despite her efforts to raise the profile of the Seanad, Mrs O'Rourke does not even come in the top five highest paid members of the Upper House.

Last night, she said she hoped some of the reforms would be in place by the next election.

"I think we are well paid," she said.

"I think we have tried to up the profile of the Seanad, but it is quite difficult. I think the country does get good value for money.

"We are a legislative assembly. Usually the debates are good and quite searching and confident types of ministers, like Minister McDowell, will take amendments. I think it is a very good chamber. It's not as adversarial as the Dail," she added.

The opposition's leader in the Seanad, Fine Gael senator Brian Hayes, said being a senator is a full-time job.

"I don't know any senator who is part-time. I work as hard as I did when I was a TD," he said.

He acknowledged the delays in reforming the Seanad were damaging it in the public eye.

"I don't think anyone is saying there doesn't need to reform. The reform agenda is long overdue and it is now time to just get on with it," he said.

Finance Minister Brian Cowen argues that the setting of pay rates is an independent process.

Showing the slow pace of change in the Seanad, a referendum was passed in 1979 to allow a wider number of college third level graduates to elect the university senators.

The Irish Independent also reports that there is a sense around Government at the moment that Ministers want to clear their desks of a lot of stuff that has been hanging around for a long time. Sources close to Government have suggested that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is in a mood to get several things dealt with and out of the way before the next General Election.

This is a change of tack from the Taoiseach who has, in martial arts terms, become a fifth dan black belt in the application of the deadly weapon of 'the long finger'.

Governments should push through many decisions if they are functioning properly, but I'm talking about certain types of issues here. The kinds of issues that Bertie instinctively wanted to leave gathering dust for as long as possible.

These are controversial issues that don't have an easy solution. Very often, there is an obvious logical right thing to do, but each one of them brings its own baggage. The baggage varies from upsetting the unions to upsetting the builders or other vested interests. The last few months has seen some government decisions on a number of these items. Because in many cases they have been ignored for too long, the fact that the Government is doing something about them now leads to a degree of cynicism and a sense that mistakes have already been made. Nevertheless, it is still probably better than ignoring them for even longer.

The first example is the abolition of certain tax reliefs which enabled the wealthy to reduce their tax bill by investing in various projects, from urban renewal schemes to building hotels and car parks. Last week saw the publication of reviews into these schemes which highlighted the urgent need to abolish them.

Brian Cowen was on radio saying he is the minister who has acted on this issue by phasing them out. The truth is that it has been obvious to everyone that they have not been required for at least five years now and their continuation up to now has been an appalling example of the Government's neglect on this issue.

Another was the cap placed on how much money can be placed into a personal pension plan while still retaining full tax relief. Once again, Brian Cowen is rightly claiming credit for doing something about it - but only after the scandalous situation where, at its worst, two people got tax relief on personal pension funds with €100m in them.

Another is the decision to buy out National Toll Roads from the West-Link bridge. Again, a controversial decision, but in this case the catalyst seems to be pending traffic chaos on the M50. Just as work is about to begin on expanding the M50, the Government can at least tell motorists it is spending the money to take down the toll barriers on the bridge.

Another is the likelihood of a deal being done to do away with drift net salmon fishing. Something that was killing the salmon industry and depriving the tourism sector of a potential millions of euro, finally looks set to be axed. It will cost millions to buy out the fishermen, but it should have been done years ago. In this instance, the catalyst for finally doing something about it is the ridiculously depleted wild salmon stocks.

Another is the long-awaited decision to sell the Great Southern Hotel chain. Years too late, the Government has allowed losses of millions to of euro to be racked up at the taxpayers' expense.

Last year, the hotels lost €6m and are on track to lose €8m this year. There are nine hotels in the group and some are doing better than others. But let's suppose that throughout the year, they collectively achieved an average of 60 guests per night staying in each hotel.

That means that last year we, the taxpayers, stumped up €30 per night for each guest to stay at a Great Southern Hotel. This is at a time when the country is awash with hotels.

It is even more ironic that when they are finally sold, the hotels will most likely be bought by a property developer/hotelier who has got rich on the back of tax reliefs. The taxpayer loses on the double.

Nevertheless, the Government does seem to have finally decided to green-light the sale. In this instance, the catalyst may have been the refusal of the directors of the hotel chain to sign off on the accounts because they were in danger of being accused of reckless trading.

If there tricky decisions finally being taken, irrespective of the catalysts in each case, what others are coming?

Here are some possibilities. The flotation of Aer Lingus is one. Finally, after years of flaffing around and lost opportunities, we are now about to see something happen. And again, it will be after the optimum privatisation time has passed, and it has lost its excellent previous chief executive, Willie Walsh.

Secondly, benchmarking II. Watch out for more payola without productivity gains.

Thirdly, a more effective policing system for exploitation of workers. We will probably see some improvement made in this area on foot of Pat Rabbitte highlighting it as an issue.

The Irish Times reports that America's two largest banks have "inappropriately" claimed that AIB was so immersed in illegal activity that it should be blocked from taking a $500 million (€420 million) claim against them for their involvement in the John Rusnak trading scandal, a New York federal judge has ruled.

In a written ruling outlining her decision earlier this month to allow AIB to take its case against Bank of America and Citigroup, US District Court judge Deborah Batts said that AIB's former US subsidiary, Allfirst was not an "active, voluntary participant in the unlawful activity that is the subject of the suit".

Judge Batts said such a defense against AIB's claim would only work if Allfirst or AIB had broken the law in cooperation with Bank of America or Citigroup. However, Judge Batts was satisfied Allfirst "did not fraudulently conceal information from itself" and was not an "active, voluntary participant" in the fraud of its currency trader, John Rusnak, who lost $691 million before his scheme was uncovered in February 2002.

AIB's New York legal team said disclosure in the case is expected to take more than a year and that the case could go to trial in 2007.

Judge Batts cited a case involving two gangster rap moguls to show that Bank of America and Citigroup must answer AIB's claims of fraudulent concealment. AIB alleges that Bank of America and Citigroup disguised Rusnak's massive losses and lent him $200 million to keep him trading with them. AIB has presented the court with emails between Rusnak and employees of the two banks, allegedly showing how they helped him disguise his losses.

Citing previous New York case law, Judge Batts said AIB would be working against its own interests by allowing Rusnak to accumulate such losses with these trading partners. Someone like Rusnak "though ostensibly acting in the business of the principal, is really committing a fraud for his own benefit" and it would be "most unjust" to charge AIB with knowledge of it, she said.

Outlining details of the case, Judge Batts noted that Bank of America and Citigroup had allegedly lent Rusnak $200 million in early 2001 while disguising the loans as "options". These "options" allowed the two banks to purchase Japanese yen from Rusnak "at a rate strikingly lower than the current market rate", Judge Batts said, noting that AIB alleged these options were "lose-lose situations" for Allfirst.

She also noted AIB's claim that Bank of America and Citigroup "charged Rusnak an exorbitant interest rate on these transactions" and therefore should have known the loans were designed to hide Rusnak's massive losses.

Judge Batts also cited a case involving the ownership of work by gangster rapper, Ja Rule, to show that Bank of America and Citigroup had to answer AIB's allegation of fraudulent concealment.

"According to AIB's Complaint, defendants BofA and Citibank certainly made statements requiring clarification," she said, noting that the defendant banks had allegedly hidden confirmations of Rusnak's trades from his bosses at Allfirst.

The Irish Times also reports that Glanbia has announced a major new development in the area of food nutrition technology that is expected to help the company double its market share in the functional foods category of the fresh dairy product market.

This product innovation is the first significant initiative for the Consumer Foods Division and results from a €15 million investment by Glanbia and Enterprise Ireland in the Glanbia Group Innovation Centre in Kilkenny.

The innovation means that Glanbia products using the technology can attract consumers from the healthy fresh dairy product market, which is valued at €230 million and the vitamins and supplements market.

The breakthrough from the Glanbia innovation centre enables Glanbia to condense naturally occurring nutrients into shot sized yogurt based drinks that will deliver specific health and lifestyle/nutritional benefits.

The breakthrough is particularly important in the Irish market which has a rapidly ageing population.

In addition, with the huge growth in consumer interest around the role of diet and health, market research shows that consumers do not feel that they are doing enough to meet their nutritional and health needs.

Glanbia's new technology will enable dairy shot products to deliver a boost to the system by combining scientifically proven ingredients with a live yogurt base into a 60g shot aimed at a specific health goal, such as increasing vitamin D or potassium in the Yoplait Essence range.

The Irish Examiner reported that Ireland's entire research spending is less than the budget of a major multinational company, according to the Higher Education Training Award Council chief executive Séamus Puirséil.

The importance of research has become something of a mantra in this country but few understand its importance, he said.

As the highly influential Roberts Report, Set for Success, pointed out: "Continuous innovation is key to the future survival and growth of businesses operating in what are increasingly competitive global markets".

Not all innovation is based on scientific R&D, but the need for human ingenuity in making discoveries and creating new products meant the success of R&D is critically dependent upon having talented scientists and engineers to hand, said the report.

Given what this country needs to achieve, Mr Puirséil said all institutes of higher education and the higher education system overall need to "urgently review their approach to doctoral (PhD) education".

Speaking in Sligo at the signing of an order giving Sligo Institute of Technology the power to grant certain doctoral degrees, Mr Purséil said: "As we move up the economic value chain, which is Government policy, we have to be careful that we don't lose focus and concentrate our research efforts too widely. We should concentrate on what we are good at."

This country succeeds when we play to our strengths, but to maximise our research strengths we have to be "far more serious about how much money we spend on R&D", he added.

It is also important to appreciate that in science and engineering, doctoral education is necessary for the development of the highest level of skills, particularly in the high-technology fields. Innovation too is vital, he said.

It is important to encourage institutes of technology in building their applied research capacity and to provide specific funding mechanisms to support that goal, he said. In some fields in science and engineering however, that distinction between basic and applied research is not practical.

Restriction of activity to 'applied' areas is difficult to reconcile with the realities of the research process, the principle of a student's academic freedom and the sustainability of research activity, he said.

The Financial Times reports that plans to create a "flagship" European Institute of Technology, with a start-up budget of up to €2bn, will this week enter a critical phase, amid warnings from academics that the scheme will be a white elephant.

José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, believes an EIT would act as "a pole of attraction for the very best minds, ideas and companies from around the world" but he is meeting strong resistance to the idea.

Officials in the EU's executive in Brussels will this week try to hammer out final details of the plan, which will be sent for approval to European leaders at an economic summit next month.

The EIT plan is further evidence of the Commission's obsession with Europe's failure to invest as much in research and development as its competitors.

R&D represented 1.93 per cent of EU gross domestic product in 2003, compared with 2.59 per cent in the US and 3.15 per cent in Japan, according to a report given to the Commission last month.

Leading universities and the Commission's own research advisers have criticised the EIT idea as being a "top down" project, sucking money and attention away from separate plans to back high-level research through a European Research Council (ERC).

But a draft copy of the EIT plan, seen by the Financial Times, shows Mr Barroso's determination to see through the scheme, which aims to emulate the close links between academia and business embodied in the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.

"The problems are less than the potential benefits," the paper says. "Europe needs a flagship knowledge project, and the EIT comes at the right time."

Jan Figel, the EU education commissioner, is expected to make changes to the draft this week ahead of a final decision by the 25-member Commission on February 22.

Officials in Mr Barroso's team say the plan is not finalised. But the proposals in the draft paper give a clear idea of the way the Commission's thinking is developing:

•The EIT would be set up in 2009 and would need a budget of between €1.5bn ($1.8bn, £1bn) and €2bn in the years to 2013; •It would be a virtual university, with a central administration awarding degrees and overseeing the funding of research, but with real work being done at existing universities; •A series of "knowledge systems" would be created to carry out research in specific areas, drawing on academics seconded from existing university departments, laboratories or the private sector, possibly working at a central campus; •Funding would come from the EU budget, member states and the private sector.

Business has expressed interest in the idea. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, recently praised the EIT idea at a conference in Lisbon attended by Mr Barroso. (The two are better known for being locked in a legal battle over Microsoft's alleged abuse of its market position.)

But Mr Barroso acknowledges there are many in the academic community who believe the fledgling ERC is a more sensible way of channelling money to centres of excellence in the EU.

EURAB, the Commission's own advisory body on research, said recently: "We see the risk of an EIT-like institution to distract from the objectives of an ERC, including a reduction in funds."

Universities UK said: "Better science will flow from a well funded ERC, which will ensure that the EU is able to support excellent research wherever it is found."

Governments in the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK are anxious that any new EIT is a "virtual" entity that devolves work to centres of excellence, many of which are found in northern Europe.

An alternative model, championed by some members of the European parliament, is to base the EIT in Strasbourg – the parliament's official seat – and to switch parliamentarians' work permanently to Brussels.

The FT also reports that Capital Group, one of the biggest and most highly respected money managers in the US, is suffering heavy outflows of institutional money amid performance concerns, even as it remains the top-selling fund manager for retail investors.

American Funds, Capital's mutual fund arm, had net inflows of $80bn last year, making it easily the best-selling mutual fund group for the fourth year in a row. This inched it close to overtaking Vanguard, the US fund manager known for index tracking funds, to become the largest, according to Financial Research Corporation.

However, Capital Group International, which manages institutional money globally, had estimated outflows of more than $40bn, in spite of the increase in value to its underlying portfolios due to rising world stock markets. The outflow resulted in assets under management dropping from $317bn in 2004 to $305bn.

Chuck Freadhoff, a spokesman for Capital, said the group began two years ago to take action to turn around its international performance. He said that last year its international portfolio returned 20 per cent, easily outperforming the world market return of 14 per cent, as measured by the MSCI EAFE index, a key indicator of international equity performances.

"There were a couple of years from 2002 where our results in international equities were not what we would have liked," he said. "We encourage our clients to look at five-year and ten-year performance."

Some consultants, who spoke anonymously, warned that the outflows might continue amid concerns about the group's performance in markets outside the US, especially in emerging markets.

Capital, which has $1,000bn under management and was one of the first US fund groups to invest abroad, typically makes big bets on individual stocks, which has helped it achieve above-average returns in the past However, some bets in recent years have turned sour. It is one of the largest shareholders in UK's Vodafone, for example, with a 7 per cent stake. Vodafone shares have fallen by more than 10 per cent in the past year.

Dozens of pension funds in the UK, Europe and the US last year put Capital under review or ended contracts with it.

The New York Times reports that in advance of what could be harsh Congressional questioning this week, Yahoo plans to issue a statement today outlining its belief in openness and freedom of speech — even when it is forced to violate those beliefs by laws in China.

Yahoo and three other technology companies are to testify Wednesday before a House human rights subcommittee about their business dealings in China.

"We are deeply concerned by efforts of governments to restrict and control open access to information and communication," an advance copy of the statement said. "We also firmly believe the continued presence and engagement of companies like Yahoo is a powerful force in promoting openness and reform."

In addition to pledging to work with industry, government and other groups to develop policies for doing business in restrictive countries, Yahoo, which censors the results on the Chinese version of its search engine to meet government demands, also said it would strive to make those restrictions apparent to users.

Yahoo's general counsel, Michael Callahan, will join executives from Google, Microsoft and Cisco before the House subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations on Wednesday.

All four companies have come under fire for their dealings in China — from agreeing to censor their search or blogging tools to providing hardware that makes government surveillance of Internet users easier.

The Paris-based group Reporters Without Borders revealed last Wednesday that a Chinese division of Yahoo had provided information to authorities that contributed to the conviction in 2003 of Li Zhi, a former civil servant who had criticized local officials online. Mr. Li is serving eight years in prison.

It was the second disclosure of such an incident in the last six months. Mr. Callahan said the company welcomed the opportunity to discuss these issues with Congress.

"There is no question that complying with Chinese law in the way that's come to light has led to things that have caused our company to reflect hard on these issues," he said.

The NYT also reports that when the journal Science recently retracted two papers by the South Korean researcher Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, it officially confirmed what he had denied for months: Dr. Hwang had fabricated evidence that he had cloned human cells.

But the editors of Science were not alone in telling the world of Dr. Hwang's research. Newspapers, wire services and television networks had initially trumpeted the news, as they often do with information served up by the leading scientific journals.

Now news organizations say they are starting to look at the science journals a bit more skeptically.

"My antennae are definitely up since this whole thing unfolded," said Rob Stein, a science reporter for The Washington Post. "I'm reading papers a lot more closely than I had in the past, just to sort of satisfy myself that any individual piece of research is valid. But we're still in sort of the same situation that the journal editors are, which is that if someone wants to completely fabricate data, it's hard to figure that out."

But other than heightened skepticism, not a lot has changed in how newspapers treat scientific journals. Indeed, newspaper editors openly acknowledge their dependence on them. At The Los Angeles Times, at least half of the science stories that run on the front page come directly from journals, said Ashley Dunn, the paper's science editor. Gideon Gil, the health and science editor for The Boston Globe, said that two of the three science stories that run on a typical day were from research that appeared in journals.

Beyond newspapers, papers from journals are routinely picked up by newsweeklies, network news, talk radio and Web sites.

"They are the way science is conducted, they're the way people share information, they're the best approximation of acceptance by knowledgeable people," said Laura Chang, science editor for The New York Times. "We do rely on them for the starting point of many of our stories, and that will not change."

There are limits to the vetting that science reporters, who are generally not scientists themselves, can do. Most journal articles have embargoes attached, giving reporters several days to call specialists in the field, check footnotes on an article and scrutinize the results.

"Scientific discoveries are more difficult because they often require in the generalist reporter a good deal of study, follow-up interviews and some guidance on how to make sense of technical matters," said Roy Peter Clark, a senior scholar at the Poynter Institute, which studies journalism. "But I think the scandals do require both a new level of skepticism on the part of the reporter and also maybe some new protocols between scientists and journalists."

The Hwang case was not the first time journals had been duped: recently, editors at The New England Journal of Medicine said they suspected two cancer papers they published contained fabricated data. In December, the same journal said that the authors of a 2000 study on the painkiller Vioxx had omitted the fact that several patients had had heart attacks while taking the drug in a trial. A study on the painkiller Celebrex that appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association was discredited when it was discovered that the authors had submitted only six months of data, instead of the 12 months of data they had collected.

While the journals have a peer review process that is in part meant to filter out fallacious papers by checking research techniques and conclusions, perhaps the greatest difficulty for science reporters is trying to catch what journal editors have missed.

After hearing the news of Dr. Hwang's fabrications, Mr. Gil of The Globe said he immediately remembered his newspaper's coverage of the stem cell papers.

"We were blown away, in part because we had written those stories on Page 1," Mr. Gil said. "And when we wrote them, we called the leading experts in the world on all this embryonic stem cell stuff, who are here in Boston. And they were as hoodwinked as anybody else."

Despite the fraud cases, most of what the journals publish is basically credible, said David Perlman, the science editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Among the most prestigious science journals that reporters consult regularly are Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine and The Journal of the American Medical Association.

"I think they and we have been burned enough that they're making efforts," Mr. Perlman said. "They're being more careful now, and I think reporters are too. I definitely have more of a 'Hey, let's look more carefully' attitude now that I did 5 or 10 years ago."

Donald Kennedy, the editor of Science, said in a statement in December that the journal itself was not an investigative body. But when reporting on journal findings, most news outlets fail to caution that studies must be replicated to be truly authenticated.

"Beyond Hwang, the more fundamental issue is that journals do not and cannot guarantee the truth of what they publish," said Nicholas Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times. "Publication of a paper only means that, in the view of the referees who green-light it, it is interesting and not obviously false. In other words, all of the results in these journals are tentative."

The journals' own peer review processes, which are intended to be the first barrier against fraud, have come under criticism lately. A cover story in the February issue of The Scientist said that the top-tier journals were receiving more submissions every year, overtaxing peer reviewers and weakening the screening process.

After the Hwang scandal, Science announced it was considering a set of changes to better prevent fraud: Dr. Kennedy said in January that new rules could include "requiring all authors to detail their specific contributions to the research submitted, and to sign statements of concurrence with the conclusions of the work," as well as "implementing improved methods of detecting image alteration, although it appears improbable that they would have detected problems in this particular case." (Through a spokeswoman, Dr. Kennedy declined to be interviewed and said the editors were currently conducting a review of the episode.)

Some newspapers have adopted guidelines of their own to check for conflicts of interest involving authors of journal articles. The Globe instituted guidelines last July requiring reporters to ask researchers about their financial ties to studies, and to include that information in resulting articles. In its weekly health and science section, The Globe outlines any shortcomings of a study under the heading "Cautions."

Kit Frieden, the health and science editor for The Associated Press, said: "We've always had our own peer review process, where on the major studies we seek outside expert comment. We've always regarded scientific research cautiously because mistakes can be made, and I don't think that's changed."

The growing competition for the most important research among the journals may contribute to mistakes and fabrications, even in the most prestigious of the bunch. But in the end, the severe consequences of presenting fraudulent research generally act as a deterrent, said Mr. Dunn of The Los Angeles Times.

"Unlike financial fraud, where you can bamboozle somebody of their money and disappear and then start over again, in science the researchers are in one place," he said. "If they get caught in this type of thing, their careers are over."