Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really, really need to know by 9am.
1. #BUDGET11: The last stages of the Budget – the financial emergency measures bill – is going through the Dail today. If passed, it will see the minimum wage cut by one euro, reduce the salaries of the Taoiseach and Ministers and reduce public service pensions.
2. #AIB: Finance Minister Brian Lenihan has announced that future bonuses paid to bankers in guaranteed institutions will be taxed at 90 per cent The Irish Times adds that the executive chairman of AIB has told staff in an email that although the bank was “contractually obliged to pay” the bonuses, the issue “reflects the past and is not the way we intend to conduct ourselves in the future”.
3. #COWEN: Taoiseach Brian Cowen looks set to lead Fianna Fáil unchallenged into the next election after he got an overwhelming endorsement by the parliamentary party yesterday.
4. #GERRY RYAN: An inquest to establish the cause of death of RTE broadcaster Gerry Ryan is expected to be completed today, the Irish Independent reports.
5. #COURTS: The family of a brain-injured 25-year-old man, whose battered body was found dumped in a ditch in Kerry, have been speaking about their pain. John Walsh (45) who has addresses in Ballinlough, Cork and Mitchelstown, Co Cork, was sentenced to life for the murder of John McManus yesterday. He was out on bail at the time of the killing. In a statement published in today’s Examiner, his 18 year old sister has revealed how the family almost lost John before when he was knocked down by a car aged 13, and said he was loved all the more because he’d been given a second chance. “You will never know how it feels to see your Dad come home after identifying his oldest child and telling the rest of us that he was so badly beaten we couldn’t see him to say goodbye properly or to believe it was really him.”
6. #FÁS: Fetac has suspended the awarding of all certificates for Fás courses, pending an audit of all 17 centres that award certificates, Tanaiste and Education minister Mary Coughlan has confirmed. Bernard Allen, chairman of the PAC, told Morning Ireland that: “Fas’s credibility is shot…but it raises the question, what were Fetac doing when they didn’t detect the shortcomings in Fás?”
7. #BRITAIN:Prince Charles and Camilla were caught up in yesterday’s student protests in Britain as the windows of their vehicles were smashed and paint was thrown at their car.
8. #CHINA: There will be an empty chair at today’s Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo to symbolise the absence of imprisoned dissident winner Liu Xiabo. Chinese media are claiming that the West is using the “Nobel prize farce” to put China on trial, describing it as “China bashing”, Reuters reports.
9. #ZOO: Dublin zoo is inviting people to name its bouncing, 6ft 7, 40kg arrival – a newborn baby giraffe.The female calf was born to proud mum Maeve and dad Robin on November 4, but had to be kept inside when the weather turned icy “as she is still very delicate and they didn’t want to risk her falling.” Ah.
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