LAST UPDATE | 2 hrs ago
GOOD MORNING. HERE’S everything you need to know as another day gets underway.
The National Ambulance Service has insufficient funding and staff to manage and maintain its fleet of almost 700 vehicles with some emergency ambulances being kept in service beyond the recommended age limit of five years.
A report by HSE internal auditors also revealed that funding for the replacement of ambulances operated by the NAS in 2023 is 50% below the required level.
It showed that the annual budget for ambulance replacement has remained static at €14.5 million since 2016, although the total expenditure in maintaining and replacing the fleet in 2023 was €32 million.
Taoiseach Simon Harris has said that Ireland will not have its views silenced.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar announced on Monday that the country will close its embassy in Dublin due to the Irish government’s “extreme anti-Israel policy”.
Speaking yesterday, Sa’ar took aim at Taoiseach Simon Harris, who he called an “antisemite”, over the Taoiseach’s statement that “Ireland is unequivocally opposed to starving children and unequivocally opposed to killing civilians”.
US authorities say the person they believe carried out a school shooting in the state of Wisconsin was a 15-year-old female pupil.
Wisconsin Police confirmed her identity as 15-year-old student Natalie Rupnow, who went by the name Samantha.
The attack left a teacher and another teenager dead, as well as the 15-year-old. She was a pupil at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, the capital of the State, where the latest gun attack to rock the US took place.
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are working towards having a government formed by 22 January, however, senior sources state the time frame is “tight”.
Government formation talks are continuing this week, with the first sitting of the 34th Dáil taking place tomorrow.
Talks among all parties are due to wrap up on Friday or Monday for the Christmas period, with politicians expected to take time off over the the holiday period.
A senior Russia military official has been killed after an explosive device hidden in a scooter went off outside a building in Moscow, according to Russian investigators.
The commander of Russian armed forces’ chemical, biological and radiation defence troops, Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy when the blast went off as the two men left a building in southeastern Moscow early that morning.
People who identify as being middle-class tend to have a more negative attitude towards Travellers and Roma than working-class people, a new study has found.
Travellers and Roma face more prejudice than any other ethnic group in Ireland.
The new research confirms the prevalence of bias that members of these ethnic communities have long reported experiencing.
The Central Bank has raised concerns that the Irish economy could be massively negatively impacted by trade or tax changes Donald Trump could makes when he returns to the White House.
The financial regulator’s director of economics Robert Kelly has said that any major change to tax or trade arrangements by the US would “pretty much instantly put Ireland into quite a significant [budget] deficit – about 3% down to 2027″.
Ireland’s first medically supervised injection facility (MSIF) will finally open its doors in the coming days, almost a decade after it was approved by the then-Fine Gael/Labour government.
The facility, which cost about €5 million, will provide a safe space for people to inject drugs using sterile equipment under the supervision of a nurse, as well as counselling and other support services.
A man is due to appear in court today in connection with the assault of two off-duty gardaí in the Temple Bar area of Dublin, which left one man hospitalised.
The man in his 30s was arrested by gardaí in Pearse Street over the weekend, and will appear before Dublin District Court later this morning.
A second man in his thirties arrested in connection with the incident continues to be held at Garda Station in the Dublin Region, as investigations continue into the assault.
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