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LAST UPDATE | 3 Jan 2022
GOOD MORNING. Here is all the news you need to know as you start your day.
1. A convent building and site beside Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital was sold by the Sisters of Mercy to the HSE for over €2.7m earlier this year – despite being listed for €1.9m just six months earlier, a Noteworthy investigation has revealed.
The HSE has said the building has a “strategic value” due to its location adjoining the hospital campus and its “sustainability for the relocation of non-core hospital functions”.
2. Irish army bomb disposal officers have told The Journal that a large amount of information on the internet about how to construct explosive devices could be aiding criminal gangs who use them to carry out attacks and intimidate rivals.
In recent times pipe bombs and other devices have become a feature of Irish organised crime gangs’ threats against rivals – with frequent callouts in recent years to parts of Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Louth.
Experts said due to the improvised nature of the devices, they have no way of knowing when they are called to a scene whether a device will work the way the bomb-maker intended “or go off in some other way”.
3. Gardaí are appealing for witnesses to an assault on a teenage girl on Ballyfermot Road in Dublin on the night of 30 December.
They are also appealing to anyone who was in the area at the time and who may have camera footage to make it available to them.
4. All children aged 5-11 can be registered for a Covid-19 vaccine from today, RTÉ reports.
Up until now registration was only open to children in this age group if they were high-risk or living with someone who is considered high-risk.
5. Seven people were taken to hospital yesterday evening after a two-car collision in Co Meath.
Two men and two women aged in their 70s and 80s, a man and woman in their 40s and a teenager were taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. All seven are understood to have non-life threatening injuries.
6. Hospitals are continuing to face pressure with upwards of 6,000 healthcare staff on Covid-related leave alone, according to The Irish Times.
As the health service faces into the busiest week of the year, there are concerns about how services will operate with this level of staff shortages.
7. A man is being detained in connection with a massive fire in South Africa’s houses of parliament, which burned down the the entire National Assembly where parliamentarians sit.
No casualties have been reported . The man who was arrested is facing charges of arson, housebreaking and theft.
8. More than two months after a coup and following another deadly crackdown on protests, Sudan’s civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok resigned last night.
“I have tried my best to stop the country from sliding towards disaster,” Hamdok said last night, addressing the nation on state television. Sudan “is crossing a dangerous turning point that threatens its whole survival”, he said.
9. There have been calls for harsher penalties for interfering with a defibtilator following a number of incidents in recent weeks.
At least four public defibrillators were vandalised, according to the Community First Responders Ireland Network (CFR Ireland).
Three of the devices were damaged and one was stolen from a bus depot in Co Mayo.
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You can’t cut cut and cut and expect the same results. This is a pure cause from a cheap government
Yes you can if there is huge inefficiency. The cuts were financially necessary but the reorganisation hasn’t happened. Listen to the various Garda units…..
War on drugs require large large budgets and lots and lots of man in woman in blue. Self feeding and extremely lucrative cycle. ( Not for the taxpayer, user, addict or Guarda of course)
Really really shocked ‘respectable’ families are affected. Who would have guessed people with lots of money dabble in drugs. Keep fighting windmills with all we got, it’s important!!
a sensible drugs policy which keeps profits and victims away from cartels is still many years away
It’s a police service now not a police force. More about PR than fighting crime.
Until you stop criminalising the issue will you see positive results, but that makes too much sense to happen in Ireland.
This is the effect of public sector cuts and no investment in resources for 6 yrs . Government has buried their heads in the sand and pray nothing happens. Not just Guards , firefighters nurses, ,ambluance,prison service,customs,army etc all destroyed because of cuts
Have you done a Rip Von Winkle? The Gardai are an administrative and management mess. Until there is reform it would be madness to put more money in.
They have no support. Not long enough prison terms, no prison spaces( we replaced a jail in cork with 20 less places), and legal lobby are happy as the repeat offenders are their main customers.
Legalise and regulate the trade entirely and offer safe spaces for addicts to go – that will resolve this issue.
Has anyone been around Talbot Street / Gardiner Street lately.
It’s like the zombie apocalypse with the junkies around there.
And how will legalising it reduce the amount of addicts?
It won’t – it will reduce the amount of crime associated though.
Until heroin becomes a middle class issue the establishment simply don’t care.
have your say