EVERY DAY, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of all the day’s main news as well as the bits and pieces that you may have missed.

• The government has announced that a referendum will be held on the EU fiscal compact treaty. The announcement comes on foot of a recommendation from the Attorney General that one be held. The opposition parties have welcomed the news and the campaign starts now as TDs pointed out on Twitter.
• But already thoughts are turning to the possibility the electorate may reject the fiscal compact, in which case Justice Minister Alan Shatter has refused to rule out the possibility of a second referendum if it’s a ‘No’ first time round.
• That announcement might well have pleased Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh who was threatening to be the story of the day after it emerged that he had spent over €50,000 on ink cartridges for printing literature over a two year period. One children’s charity wants him to donate the spent cartridges to raise funds.
• Residential property prices continued their rapid fall in January according to the latest figures from the CSO. While in other economic news, retail sales dipped in January when compared to figures at the same time last year.
• Children detained in a special care unit in county Cork feel unsafe because of bullying and assaults by other residents according to a report by the health watchdog, HIQA, which issued a report on the Gleann Alainn unit in Glanmire today.
• The board of the proposed National Children’s Hospital has said it continues to be committed to the project and the review group which has been set up in the aftermath of An Bord Pleanála’s decision to refuse planning permission for the hospital’s construction on the site of the Mater in Dublin.
• It has emerged that the Metropolitan Police in London loaned a horse to the former editor of the News of The World Rebekah Brooks for three years. Apparently this happens often.

• Protesters from the Occupy London movement – one of whom is pictured above – were evicted from their campsite outside St Paul’s Cathedral in the British capital overnight. The camp has now been cleared entirely having been there since last October.
• The Japanese government withheld information about the full scale of the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima plant last March following the devastating earthquake and tsunami. A new report delivers a scathing assessment of how leaders played down the risk of meltdowns at the stricken nuclear plant.
• The former first minister of Northern Ireland Ian Paisley has been released from hospital. The Unionist leader, 85, has returned home after three weeks of treatment for a heart problem.
• Good news for students, Irish Rail has announced that train fares are to be reduced by as much as 47 per cent in some cases from April. Students will need only their college ID to avail of the new discounts.
• Good news too for fans of the Boys in Green. The FAI has announced that an extra 2,300 tickets have been secured for Ireland’s games at Euro 2012 this summer. The extra allocation works out at around 700- 800 per group game.
• The comedian Hal Roach has died. Having spent more than 60 years in show business, the iconic comedian passed away today, aged 84. Fellow comedian Brendan Grace has led the tributes.
• Finally, from TED YouTube’s trends manager Kevin Allocca explains why videos – perhaps like this one – go viral on the internet:

YouTube: TEDtalksDirector