LAST UPDATE | 29 Jan 2022
GOOD MORNING.
Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
1. Russian military exercises some 240km off the southwest coast of Ireland are set to get underway from next Thursday.
The Journal first broke news of the development on Saturday morning last weekend. So what, precisely, is planned off the coast of Ireland next week? And what’s Russia’s broader aim?
In today’s lead story, Niall O’Connor speaks to security expert and author Declan Power about how the events are likely to unfold and what the military response from Nato countries and Ireland might look like.
Power, who is a former member of the Defence Forces, has said that the exercises must be viewed as part of a broader operation by Russia.
“The Russian ambassador would be sending regular reports back to Moscow. The Russians will know what is going on in Ireland and they will have identified this area as a good place to exploit a weak wobble point,” he said.
2. Dublin businessman Richard O’Halloran is on his way home to Ireland after a deal was agreed between Chinese authorities and the Department of Foreign Affairs which lifted an almost three-year travel ban.
O’Halloran’s flight home left Shanghai Pudong Airport on Friday evening, according to a family spokesperson. He is due to arrive in Dublin today.
The O’Halloran family is understood to be delighted with the news and is looking forward to finally having him home.
3. US President Joe Biden sought to maintain pressure on Russian leader Vladimir Putin over Ukraine on Friday, announcing a small troop deployment to eastern Europe even as top Pentagon officials backed a renewed push for diplomacy.
As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged Western leaders to avoid stirring “panic” over the massive Russian troop buildup on his country’s borders, Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed on the need for de-escalation.
Neither Putin nor his European and American counterparts had until now appeared ready to give ground in the weeks-long crisis, the worst in decades between Russia and the West.
But according to a Macron aide, Putin told the French leader in a call lasting more than an hour that he had “no offensive plans”.
4. Gardaí in Kerry have received the final report into the HSE-run South Kerry Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and are considering it in the context of whether there are grounds to commence a criminal investigation.
A review of the care of more than 1,300 children under the South Kerry CAMHS, published this week, found that 46 youngsters suffered significant harm.
The HSE report found that hundreds of children received “risky” treatment by a doctor working in the service. Gardaí said they are “fully aware” of the impact the report has had on a number of families in Kerry.
5. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson could finally get sight of the highly-anticipated ‘partygate’ inquiry as early as this weekend, after police insisted they had not delayed its publication.
Reports circulated of a potential outside challenger for the Tory leadership as the wait continued for the official investigation by senior civil servant Sue Gray into possible lockdown breaches in Downing Street and Whitehall.
It is widely believed that either Chancellor Rishi Sunak or Foreign Secretary Liz Truss are frontrunners to win the top job if the PM is ousted.
But the Daily Mail reported on Friday that centrist Tories are backing ex-soldier Tom Tugendhat to be Johnson’s successor.
6. There has been an increase in levels of enjoyment in the Irish population, but also been a sharp increase in the number of people who think Ireland is moving too quickly in its latest pandemic response, according to the latest Amárach Research public opinion survey on behalf of the Department of Health.
The survey gauging the Irish public’s attitudes towards Covid-19, restrictions and vaccines was carried out on Monday – two days after almost all restrictions had been lifted on businesses, and the requirement for Covid passes and mask-wearing to eat and drink indoors was removed.
Of the 1,600 people polled, the number of people reporting that Ireland is trying to return to normal “too quickly” jumped from 28% on 17 January to 49% on 24 January. But the number of people who reported feeling ‘enjoyment’ for a lot of the previous day had risen from 44% three weeks ago to 58%.
7. EU officials have said the system for checks on goods moving from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK is “not fit for purpose”.
The draft report, compiled following an audit carried out by the European Commission in June last year, is highly critical of the current system of agri-food checks and recommends a series of changes.
Officials say the UK Government has “failed to ensure that sufficient resources – human and structural – have been made available to the responsible competent authorities in Northern Ireland”.
Since the UK left the EU, new trade arrangements have created economic barriers on the movement of goods between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the aim being to avoid the creation of a hard border on the island of Ireland.
8. The Government has no plans to drive research on the role of climate change in specific extreme weather events in Ireland.
An emerging field of research called weather event attribution could help in the fight against climate change.
It allows scientists to study how much of a role human-caused climate change plays in a specific event like a heatwave or a flood and that research shows policymakers how to understand and assess the risks that weather extremes caused by climate change pose to society.
However, there has been little such research carried out in Ireland to date and the government has no identified plans to focus on it in the near future.
9. And finally, the weather.
Today will start cloudy and breezy with a narrow band of rain in the north quickly moving southwards across the country, according to Met Éireann.
Drier, brighter and cooler weather will follow from the north to all areas throughout the late morning and afternoon as winds turn northwesterly and ease. Highest temperatures will be in the morning, ranging from between eight and 11 degrees.
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