EVERY WEEKDAY EVENING, TheJournal.ie brings you the five stories you need to know before you head out the door.

1.#STORMWATCH: High winds and rain battered much of Ireland today, with Cork, Galway and Clare taking the brunt of the damage. In better news for the affected residents of those areas, the Minister of State at the OPW, Brian Hayes, said that extra funding for the councils would be ‘inevitable’.

2.#LIMERICK: In the ongoing row over the Limerick City of Culture programme, board chairman Pat Cox has come out swinging. Cox today said that he had ‘never asked’ for his one-time adviser Patricia Ryan to be appointed as CEO of the project. Ryan has since stepped down, but Cox maintained he had not asked her to.

3.#DEATH: A post-mortem is to take place after the body of a 22-year-old man was found  in Waterford yesterday evening. The man’s body was found in Dunmore East at around 5pm yesterday.

4.#OUCH: German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be forced to rest for up to three weeks after fracturing her pelvis in a skiing accident. Merkel was due to fly to Poland and Luxembourg in the coming weeks, but has been forced to shelve those plans.

5.#CHARITY: The head of the non-profit Rehab group today called for salaries of top staff at charity to be “transparent”, but then refused to disclose her own earnings. Angela Kerins declined to answer when asked by RTÉ Morning Ireland presenter Gavin Jennings if she earned €234,000 a year.