LAST UPDATE | 26 May 2022

GOOD MORNING. 

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

Inside the National Children’s Hospital

1. In our lead story this morning Lauren Boland takes us a tour of the long-awaited National Children’s Hospital.

Construction of the facility, located next to St James’ in Dublin 8, is well underway.

The structure has reached its final height, over 95% of the required concrete has been poured, and many of the wards are walkable and not far from being ready for equipment and furniture to be installed.

However, factors like Brexit and Russia’s war on Ukraine that have increased the cost of materials are another hurdle in a project that’s cost has risen again and again since its inception.

Jump in homes at risk from radon

2. New maps published by the Environmental Protection Agency have shown that the number of homes in Ireland thought to be at risk from radon gas has increased by over a third.

Radon is a cancer-causing radioactive gas that originates from the decay of uranium in rocks and soils.

Around 170,000 homes in Ireland are believed to be at risk of radon exposure above the national reference level, an increase of 45,000 homes from the previous estimate in 2002.

Texas school shooting

3. Democratic politician Beto O’Rourke was ejected from a press conference held by the state’s Republican governor Greg Abbott last night after confronting him about the mass shooting at a school in Uvalde.

O’Rourke, who has been calling for years for gun reform, confronted Abbott and pointed in the governor’s face and accusing him of doing “nothing” to reduce gun violence.

United Ireland survey

4. Almost two-thirds of people in Northern Ireland believe that Brexit has increased the likelihood of Irish unity.

The 2021 results of the NI Life & Times survey, a joint initiative between Queen’s University and Ulster University, also show 48% support for Northern Ireland remaining within the United Kingdom, a decline since 2016.

Zelenskyy rebukes West

5. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has issued a bitter rebuke to the West for not doing enough to help Kyiv win the war, as fierce battles rage in the country’s east and Russian troops draw ever closer to encircling a key industrial city.

Calling for help “without limits”, specifically shipments of heavy weaponry, Zelenskyy also blasted recent suggestions a negotiated peace could include territorial concessions.

Renting report

6. Just over half of people renting in Ireland are in receipt of some form of State support, according to a new report from the Economic and Social Research Institute.

The report also found that the percentage of households renting has risen from 18% to 29% over the past 20 years. This increase reverses a long term decline in the past century.

Monkeypox spread continues

7. The number of confirmed cases of monkeypox worldwide has reached 219 outside of countries where it is endemic, according to an update released by the European Union’s disease agency.

More than a dozen countries where monkeypox is unusual, mostly in Europe, have reported at least one confirmed case, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said in an epidemiological note released Wednesday night.

Medical scientists suspend strike

8. Medical scientists suspended their strike action next week and will return to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) to resolve recruitment and retention issues.

The Medical Laboratory Scientists’ Association (MLSA) has agreed to return to the WRC following recommendations from the Labour Court today, with three days of strike action next week being suspended.

‘How To Murder Your Husband’ novelist convicted of killing husband

9. A US romance novelist who wrote an essay entitled “How To Murder Your Husband” has been convicted of killing her husband.

A jury in Portland, Oregon, took just eight hours yesterday to return a guilty verdict against Nancy Crampton Brophy for shooting dead Daniel Brophy.

Prosecutors said the writer, whose “Wrong Never Felt So Right” series of novels include “The Wrong Husband” and “The Wrong Lover,” had been struggling financially before she shot her husband twice through the heart in June 2018 at a culinary institute where he worked.