LAST UPDATE | 24 Jun 2021
GOOD MORNING. Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.
If public health experts recommend a delay of some or all of the 5 July restrictions, such as indoor dining, it would be close to impossible for the government to reject the advice, according to government sources.
“Too early to say” was the resounding answer from ministers when they were asked yesterday if the government will renege on the easing of restrictions next month, Christina Finn writes in this morning’s lead story.
The chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan is understood to have told Health Minister Stephen Donnelly that he is worried about the variant, and that a few weeks’ deferral could prevent a rise in hospitalisations and give more time to get people vaccinated.
Ireland’s economy is expected to show “substantial growth” this year, providing Covid-19 restrictions continue to be eased in the months ahead, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute’s latest quarterly economic commentary.
The ERSI now projects Ireland’s GDP to increase by just over 11% this year.
The new report said that foreign and domestic sources of growth are “likely to contribute considerably to the performance of the economy for the rest of the year”.
Additional searches have been carried out in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park for Dublin man Cian McLaughlin after authorities received new information related to his disappearance.
The 27-year-old was last seen in the national park on 8 June.
In an update last night, the national park service said it had received additional information from a resident of Jackson, Wyoming who reported seeing and speaking with McLaughlin on the day he went missing.
US President Joe Biden has chosen Massachusetts state representative Claire Cronin as his nominee for Ambassador to Ireland.
Biden announced his intent to nominate Cronin along with 16 others to serve in key roles in an announcement last night.
Before she makes her home in the Deerfield Residence in the Phoenix Park, Cronin’s nomination will have to be approved by the US Senate, after a confirmation hearing takes place.
Brazil set a new record for daily Covid-19 infections, after 115,228 new cases were identified in the country over 24 hours yesterday.
The country, already one of the worst-hit countries in the world, has recently seen a surge in case numbers as it grapples with a third wave of the pandemic. Brazil is the second worst-hit in the world in absolute numbers of fatalities, behind the United States which has suffered more than 600,000 deaths.
Britney Spears urged a judge to end a controversial guardianship that has given her father control of her affairs since 2008 during a court hearing yesterday.
“I just want my life back. It’s been 13 years and it’s enough,” Spears said in the 20-minute
address via videolink as diehard fans chanted their support outside the courtroom.
The National Women’s Council of Ireland is urging the government to establish a 40% legislative quota for gender balance on non-state boards with “appropriate sanctions” in place for non-compliance.
A new report making the case for legislative gender quotas in Ireland found that the private sector had made the least amount of progress improving gender balance on boards – an average of 22.4% of Irish listed companies has female board members, while 19% of all companies had no female directors, according to the report.
Hundreds of unmarked graves have been found near a second former Catholic residential school for indigenous children in Canada.
Excavations at the site around the former school in Marieval in Saskatchewan began at the end of May. The find follows the discovery of the remains of 215 schoolchildren at another former indigenous residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia last month, an incident that sent shock waves through Canada.
A north Belfast woman who was subjected to abuse and missiles as she walked to school 20 years ago says she has still never had an explanation for what she and other pupils went through.
Alice-Lee Bunting, 24, was among dozens of girls who were forced to run a loyalist gauntlet on their way to Holy Cross primary school in Ardoyne in 2001.
Images of Bunting and her school mates crying and clinging to their parents in terror hit headlines across the world at the time.
Twenty years on, she still suffers flashbacks and nightmares about those scenes.
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