LAST UPDATE | 22 Jul 2022

GOOD MORNING.

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

Mary Lou McDonald in Australia

1. In our lead story this morning, Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said that Ireland cannot be a bargaining chip in the British Government’s Brexit “power play” or in its negotiating stance with Brussels.

Speaking yesterday during her trip to Australia, McDonald described the outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s interactions with Ireland as “wholly negative” and his stance as “really dangerous”.

Lisa Smith

2. Ex-Defence Forces member Lisa Smith is due to appear before a Dublin court today for sentencing.

Smith was found guilty in May of membership of the IS terror group but was acquitted of a separate charge of financing terrorism after a nine-week trial at the non-jury Special Criminal Court.

6 January 2021

3. The US House committee probing the assault on the US Capitol last year has laid out a searing indictment of Donald Trump’s refusal to halt or condemn the violence and insisted he should be held accountable for a gross dereliction of presidential duty.

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson, speaking at the televised finale of a series of public hearings, said Trump “recklessly blazed a path of lawlessness and corruption” as he sought to overturn the results of the 2020 US election. 

Housing report

4. A working group tasked with assessing the scale of construction defects at Celtic Tiger era apartments and duplexes is expected to finalise its report today and will shortly present it to the Minister for Housing.

The report is expected to show that as many as 100,000 apartments or duplexes are affected by fire safety, water ingress and other defects.

Drugs meeting

5. A group of anti-cannabis doctors say they did not raise specific concerns about the Government’s medical cannabis programme when they met with the junior drugs minister last year.

The Cannabis Risk Alliance said that it only briefly raised the use of language around the Medical Cannabis Access Programme during a meeting with Minister of State Frank Feighan in January 2021.

Cashless banks

6. AIB is set to appear before the Oireachtas Finance Committee early next month over their decision to go cashless at 70 branches around the state.

The bank made the announcement yesterday, which led to widespread concern across the political spectrum, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin calling on the bank to reconsider.

Grain deal 

7. Ukraine and Russia are set to sign a deal today to unblock grain exports and relieve a global food crisis, as a critical Russian gas pipeline to Europe reopened.

However, there was no respite in the conflict on the ground, with Russian artillery yesterday pounding Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, already scarred by weeks of shelling.

Courts

8. Notorious paedophile and former “singing priest” Tony Walsh was sentenced to another four years in prison for indecent assaults of three schoolboys in the 1980s.

RIP

9. Shonka Dukureh, who played Big Mama Thornton in this year’s movie about Elvis Presley, has been found dead in a bedroom at her home in Nashville, according to police.