EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you all the news you need to know as you start the day.

1.#COVID SURGE: Qualified nurses and midwives who are in teaching or supervising roles are to be redeployed to help the healthcare sector battle the Covid-19 surge.

2. #SUNDAY POLITICS POLL: The Mail on Sunday/ Ireland Thinks opinion poll has put Sinn Féin as the most popular party for the first time.

3. #MOTHER AND BABY HOMES: Could criminal investigations into Ireland’s mother and baby homes happen? Here’s a look at the possibilities.

4. #COVID VARIANT: Last night, Dr Tony Holohan said the spread of the variant from the UK is “likely making our challenge more difficult”, while Dr Cillian De Gascun said that it is “inevitable” that the UK variant will become the dominant variant in Ireland.

5. #BREXIT: A look at two weeks of Brexit: Empty shelves in Northern Ireland, trucks queuing to travel between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland, and British companies such as DPD and Lloyds stopping their services to Ireland.

6. #THE BELLS: RTÉ said it has no plans to cease broadcasting the Angelus, and said it aims to strike a balance in considering the “diversity of views” on the matter.

7. #FAST TRACK: Joe Biden’s top aide said that the incoming president would sign about a dozen executive orders on his first day in office.

8. #STATUES: After controversies with colonial statues last year, a British minister has said in the Telegraph that such monuments “are almost always best explained and contextualised, not taken and hidden away”.

9. #PARLER: The Guardian reports that at least nine Tory MPs joined Parler – a social media app favoured by the far right – in an apparent show of support for free speech following Donald Trump’s clashes with Twitter over remarks he made following the death of George Floyd.