EVERY WEEKDAY EVENING, The Journal brings you five of the biggest stories of the day.
1. We’re 24 hours out from Budget 2024 and after a weekend of tense talks, some of the details remain to be hammered out today.
Intense negotiations took place on Sunday between ministers and coalition party leaders, with sign-off given on a welfare package of more than €1.1 billion now expected.
Here’s what we know so far about what’s to be announced.
2. Over 1,200 people have already been killed in violence in Israel and Gaza in the worst violence seen in the region since 2014.
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on the long blockaded enclave and stressed what this meant for its 2.3 million people: “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.”
Follow all the latest updates here.
Cork University Hospital to investigate racism allegations
3. An investigation is to be launched into alleged discrimination and racism against an Indian nurse who worked at Cork University Hospital.
The Journal has learned that an external investigator was commissioned by the hospital after a formal complaint was made in relation to how one nurse was treated during the hospital’s adaptation programme by a senior staff member, as well as the manner in which she was told her employment would not be continuing.
The probe comes over a year after the hospital received a group letter, signed by 29 nurses making similar allegations, including that they went through “humiliating and degrading” treatment from a senior staff member while undergoing an adaptation programme at the hospital.
4. President Michael D Higgins will convene a meeting of the Council of State next week to consider the constitutionality of the government’s new Judicial Appointment Commission Bill.
Concerns have previously been raised, including by Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Jim O’Callaghan and Senator and former Attorney General Michael McDowell.
The new law, which was approved by the Seanad in July, will change how judges are appointed in the state through the introduction of a four judge and four layperson commission.
Government denies it refused to call Hamas a ‘terror organisation’
5. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs has said it is untrue that the Irish state refused to support the categorisation of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” in the EU’s initial statement on the war between Israel and Hamas.
European news site i24NEWS yesterday claimed that the EU wanted to issue a “harsher statement” on the war, but Luxembourg, Ireland and Denmark refused to call Hamas a terror organisation in the statement.
The DFA has called the report “categorically false”.
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