LAST UPDATE | 29 Nov 2022

GOOD MORNING.

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

Job fairy

1. In our lead story this morning, Eimer McAuley reports that the government is trying to woo 1,200 Spanish workers to Ireland to take “hard-to-fill” jobs – but the housing crisis did not feature significantly in an online event.

Over 15,000 Spaniards tuned in to hear about Ireland’s competitive minimum wage, an estimated 22,000 jobs going in the country’s hospitality sector, and the opportunity to improve their English abroad.

But housing shortages did not feature prominently, except in the comments section of the live-streamed event.

Organ donation

2. Soft opt-out organ donation will be permitted in Ireland once legislation that is going before Cabinet today passes through the Oireachtas.

The measure is included in legislation that Health Minister Stephen Donnelly will seek Government approval for today.

Under the bill, consent will be deemed unless a person has, while alive, registered his or her wish to not become an organ donor after death.

Bankers

3. Bonuses for bankers could be back on the cards with Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe set to seek Cabinet approval today to lift pay caps and remove the bonus ban for executives working in bailed-out banks.

The review was carried out due to the amount of change in the retail banking sector in Ireland, including the withdrawal of two banks.

China protests

4. Beijing and Shanghai are blanketed with security in the wake of nationwide rallies in China calling for political freedoms and an end to Covid-19 lockdowns.

The country’s leadership is facing a wave of protest not seen in decades, fuelled by anger over the unrelenting lockdowns as well as deep-rooted frustrations over China’s political direction.

A deadly fire last week in Urumqi, the capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang region, was the catalyst for public outrage, with protesters taking to the streets of cities around the country over the weekend.

Climate action

5. Nearly four in five young people would be in favour of imposing fines on businesses that emitted more than a certain amount of greenhouse gases.

New research from the Economic Social and Research Institute (ESRI) studied young people’s attitudes to climate, their personal actions, and their opinions on hypothetical future climate policies.

Elon Musk

6. Twitter owner Elon Musk has opened fire against Apple over its tight control of what is allowed on the App Store, saying the iPhone maker has threatened to remove his recently acquired social media platform.

The billionaire CEO also tweeted that Apple has “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”

Apple has not commented on the claim.

Missouri

6. A man convicted of murder is to be put to death in the midwestern US state of Missouri today in an execution that his 19-year-old daughter has been barred from witnessing.

Kevin Johnson, a 37-year-old African American man, was sentenced to death for the 2005 murder of a white policeman in a suburb of St Louis.

AirBnB

7. Nearly half of Airbnb’s $6 billion in earnings last year came through the main Irish arm of the company.

The Dublin-based Airbnb Ireland Unlimited Company operates the Airbnb online marketplace for the company outside the US, China and a portion of Japan.

The $2.82 billion in revenues recorded by the Dublin-based firm account for 47% of Airbnb’s global revenues of $5.99 billion (€5.7 billion) last year.

Housing

8. A quarter of small landlords say they are likely to sell their rental properties in the next five years, an Oireachtas Committee will hear today.

The Joint Committee on Housing will meet at 3pm to discuss recent trends in the private rental sector with representatives from the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB).

St John’s Ambulance

9. One of the survivors who reported being sexually abused as a child by a senior volunteer at St John’s Ambulance has called for the board to publish an independent review investigating historical child abuse within the organisation to be published “without delay.”

The organisation previously stated that they would publish the finished report after legal scrutiny has been carried out.