LAST UPDATE | 8 Dec 2022

GOOD MORNING.

Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.

Staff shortage 

1. In our main story this morning, Jamie McCarron reports that unions and student teachers have hit out at a proposal to change career break entitlements for teachers in order to cope with staff shortages.

A career break is a period of one school year (which can be extended for up to five years) in which a teacher can leave their position subject to approval from their employer.

One final year teaching student told The Journal that if implemented, any such proposal would “drive people away” from teaching. 

Status Yellow

2. It’s going to be another bitterly cold day today with weather warnings for low temperatures and ice kicking in.

A Status Yellow ice warning is currently in place for the whole country. This will remain in place until 12pm.

Met Éireann has warned there will be hazardous conditions as a band of wintry percipitation sinks southwards, leading to a potential for black ice and freezing rain on surfaces.

Redacted Lives

3. The fifth episode of Redacted Lives, a six-part documentary series by The Journal about mother and baby homes, is out now.

So far in the series we’ve heard from three mothers who passed through the system: Terri, Maria and Monica. We also met Mary, who was born into the system and ended up in an industrial school.

In the penultimate episode, I Hear You’ve Been Looking For Me, they tell us if they have found who they’ve been looking for.

Trump

4. In the US, at least two items marked as classified were found in a storage unit in Florida after lawyers for Donald Trump arranged for a firm to search for additional material, according to a report.

The Washington Post said the items were discovered by an outside team brought in by Trump’s representatives to search his other properties for any additional classified materials.

Pedro Castillo

5. Peru’s leftist president Pedro Castillo has been ousted by lawmakers and arrested after trying to dissolve the South American country’s Congress in a move widely condemned as an attempted coup.

The dizzying series of events in a country long prone to political upheaval resulted in even more history, with Vice President Dina Boluarte later becoming Peru’s first woman president.

CervicalCheck

6. Health Minister Stephen Donnelly is to draft an amendment to the Patient Safety Bill to make it mandatory for people to be told that they have a right to a review of their cancer screening results.

The amendment relates to a draft law being fast-tracked in memory of the late campaigner Vicky Phelan, and comes after Donnelly had been told the Bill “does not pass the Vicky test”.

Strep A

7. A child in Ireland died from invasive Group A Strep (iGAS), with the HSE contacting schools today with advice for parents about the bacterial infection.

Director of the Health Protection Surveillance Centre Dr Éamonn O’Moore said that “the news of a child death with Strep A will be worrying for parents, but it’s important to know that most children who get ill from a Group A Strep infections will have a mild illness which can be treated with antibiotics”.

Book Awards

8. The An Post Irish Book of the Year 2022 has been named as the non-fiction book My Fourth Time, We Drowned, by Sally Hayden.

The winner was revealed on a one-hour television special on RTÉ One this evening, hosted by Oliver Callan. Hayden’s book was among six titles competing for the award, all of which were category winners at the 2022 An Post Irish Book Awards.

Control of dogs

9. Minister for Agriculture Charlie McConalogue has written to Cabinet in an effort to tighten the laws around the control of dogs.

It comes after a young boy was attacked by a dog in Co Wexford last month.