The 90-year-old Irish writer will be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on Sunday
Edna O’Brien is to receive France’s highest cultural distinction, and be named commander of the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres this week.
Related: Edna O’Brien on turning 90: ‘I can’t pretend that I haven’t made mistakes’
Continue reading...Church court had objected to loving tribute to Margaret Keane for fear of arousing political ‘passions’
A grieving family has won its battle to erect a gravestone with an inscription in Irish after overturning a church court ban issued on the grounds that it might arouse political “passions”.
The family of Margaret Keane, a Coventry dinner lady who died aged 73 in 2018, now hope a Celtic cross bearing the words “In ár gcroíthe go deo” – “in our hearts forever” – will be in place on her grave in the grounds of St Giles church in Exhall, near Nuneaton, in time for St Patrick’s Day on 17 March.
Continue reading...In Holyhead, traffic has fallen 50% as hauliers stymied by Brexit find their way from Ireland to France without entering the UK
Perched on the shores of Anglesey, the island linked by road bridges to the north-west coast of Wales, Holyhead’s geography has given it a leading role in British-Irish trade since the early 19th century.
About 50 miles directly across the Irish Sea from Dublin, a journey of just three-and-a-quarter hours by ferry, Holyhead was until December the second busiest roll-on roll-off port in the UK after Dover. About 450,000 trucks rumbled through each year on their way to Dublin, with cargoes of meat and agricultural produce, secondhand cars and items destined for the shelves of Irish supermarkets.
Continue reading...Maroš Šefčovič tells Dáil in Ireland he wants new committee to find solutions to trade problems
The EU is seeking to “de-escalate” Brexit tensions in Northern Ireland with the establishment of a new “clearing house” committee to work out solutions to issues caused by new trade barriers including controls on supermarket and chilled meat supplies.
The European commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič said the introduction of the Northern Ireland protocol had been “administratively extremely challenging” but the EU was doing as much as possible to “calm down” and stabilise the backlash over checks and controls on goods entering the region from Great Britain.
Continue reading...Joint statement between UK and EU agrees to ‘spare no effort’ in implementing solutions
Michael Gove and the European commission’s vice-president have reiterated their “full commitment” to the Northern Ireland protocol following crisis talks in London.
A joint statement said Gove and Maroš Šefčovič had a “frank but constructive discussion” on Thursday evening, in which they agreed to “spare no effort” in implementing solutions.
Continue reading...Travellers from Middle East using Irish capital as a backdoor into Britain to swerve coronavirus rules
The Irish government has promised to crack down on travellers from the Middle East who use the “Dublin dodge” to enter the UK and evade coronavirus restrictions.
The number of people flying to Dublin from Dubai has increased since the UK added the United Arab Emirates to a travel ban list last month, prompting concern that passengers are using Ireland’s capital as a back door to Britain.
Continue reading...Two ringleaders receive sentences of 27 and 20 years after 39 Vietnamese people suffocated in container
The two ringleaders of the people-smuggling gang responsible for the deaths of 39 Vietnamese people who suffocated in a sealed refrigeration container as they were transported across the Channel from France have received prison sentences of 27 and 20 years.
Ronan Hughes, 41, who ran a haulage company and organised the lorries and drivers to transport the migrants, was sentenced to 20 years at the Old Bailey on Friday. He pleaded guilty last year to 39 counts of manslaughter and conspiring to bring people into the country unlawfully.
Continue reading...John Jobber, who is suffering from end-stage renal failure, prostate cancer and dementia, had a ticket for a March flight home
It was John Jobber’s dying wish to visit the UK, spend time with family and say his goodbyes before returning to Australia and entering palliative care.
The trip was meant to last four weeks, but a year later he is stranded in Ireland, disoriented and getting progressively sicker, and his daughter, Samantha John, fears Emirates cancelling all flights to Australia’s east coast, including his, will be a life sentence.
Continue reading...Error message greets visitors to site registered in name of Irish businessman who claims he does not know campaign group
Leave.EU has been forced to “Internexit” after the group’s EU domain name was temporarily suspended. It comes after the Irish businessman in whose name the pro-Brexit campaign group’s domain name is registered denied having any involvement with the organisation.
Now visitors to the site are greeted with an error message, and the EU’s online registry marks the domain as under a server hold, meaning it is “temporarily inactive and under investigation”.
Continue reading...Country has world’s highest rate of infection with critics blaming socialising over festive period
Ireland emerged from a six-week lockdown in early December with the European Union’s lowest coronavirus infection rate.
It eased restrictions in belief it could contain a rise in the virus over Christmas unlike, say, Germany and the UK, countries that had more than four times the level of infection. Then all hell broke loose.
Continue reading...‘No onward transmission’ from three cases found on Friday but UK variant still surging
Health officials in Ireland, where a more infectious variant of the coronavirus first discovered in England has been surging, said on Saturday they believe three cases of another new variant found in South Africa had been contained.
Ireland is grappling with a Covid-19 surge that has exceeded last year’s first wave. It confirmed the first cases of the more infectious variant found in South Africa on Friday in people who had travelled to Ireland from South Africa over the Christmas holidays.
Continue reading...RTÉ New Year’s Eve show included mock news report about God implicated in sexual harassment case
Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ, has apologised after an outcry over a television comedy sketch that depicted God as a rapist.
A countdown show on New Year’s Eve included a mock news report about God being the latest prominent figure implicated in a sexual harassment scandal.
Continue reading... Some 9,000 cases yet to be formally reported as chief medical officer says biggest worry is rise in hospitalisations
Ireland is bracing for 9,000 more Covid cases to be added to the official tally as the system struggles to handle a surge in positive results, with health officials warning hospitals will not be able to cope if the trend continues.
The sharp rise in positive results led to delays in formal reporting, said Professor Philip Nolan from the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET), though he said it “does not affect case management or contact tracing or our overall monitoring and modelling of the pandemic”.
Continue reading...As first ferries arrive under new trade rules, Simon Coveney warns of disruption to come
Brexit is “not something to celebrate”, Ireland’s foreign minister Simon Coveney declared after the UK formally severed ties with the EU, as he warned of trading disruptions due to fresh red tape.
Related: Political demands of Brexit now face economic reality
Continue reading...Graham Dwyer is challenging the use of his phone data as evidence, with implications for European data privacy rules
When Graham Dwyer was convicted of murder in 2015 it was a triumph for Ireland’s police and judicial system.
The architect had committed what prosecutors called “very nearly the perfect murder” but he was caught and sentenced to life in prison thanks to a meticulous investigation. Five years later, however, the conviction risks unravelling over the use of phone data – a twist that could see Dwyer walk free, and also have an impact on data privacy rules across Europe.
Continue reading...Intellectual property to be repatriated to the US after IRS said it was owed $9bn in taxes
Facebook is winding up Irish holding companies it has used to channel billions of profits to avoid paying taxes in the US, the UK and hundreds of other countries.
The company’s main Irish subsidiary paid $101m (£75m) in tax while recording profits of more than $15bn in 2018, the last year for which records are available. Facebook companies around the world paid the Irish holding company for use of its intellectual property.
Continue reading...New Ross reinvented itself as a shrine to the Kennedy clan. Can towns linked to Biden, the most Irish American president since JFK, do the same?
After its factories died and its port withered, New Ross, a town perched by the River Barrow in south-east Ireland, decided in the 1990s to tap a unique asset: John F Kennedy.
The US president’s great-grandfather had sailed from the quays of New Ross to America during the 1840s famine, leaving behind a modest homestead that JFK twice visited, including a few months before his assassination in 1963. Like many Americans, not least the current US president-elect, Joe Biden, Kennedy was proud of his Irish connections and keen to re-emphasise the links.
Continue reading...India joins France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Ireland, Bulgaria in flight bans over new strain; US aid bill should have votes to pass
That’s all from me, Caroline Davies. Thank you for your time. Handing over now to my colleague Aamna Mohdin.
The chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, Ken Marsh, has said there is “no way” officers will be knocking on the doors of “normal” households in London to check coronavirus restrictions were being followed now the city is in Tier 4.
“We won’t be knocking on people’s doors at all, unless there is a large group and noise, ie a party or something like that.
Continue reading...Prime minister tells Commons conditions for trade deal are unacceptable before later heading to Brussels for last-ditch talks
Scotland came close to eliminating Covid during the first nationwide lockdown, according to genomic sequencing for Sage of 5,000 samples of the virus, the Scottish government believes.
Jason Leitch, the Scottish government’s national clinical director, said analysis by scientists in Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews on the COG-UK consortium found that around 300 different strains of the virus were circulating in Scotland during the first wave.
That allows us to say this did get us incredibly close to eliminating the virus in our communities, but as we opened up, inevitably people began to travel across the UK [and] travel abroad. New strains were imported again into Scotland.
[This] indicates that, while lockdown in Scotland is directly linked with the first wave case numbers being brought under control, travel-associated imports (mostly from Europe or other parts of the UK) following the easing of lockdown are responsible for seeding the current epidemic population.
This demonstrates that the impact of stringent public health measures can be compromised if, following this, movements from regions of high to low prevalence are not minimised.
Public Health Wales has recorded 2,238 further coronavirus cases. That is a new record daily high for recorded cases. The previous daily record was 2,021, on Monday. A week ago today the figure was 1,480.
There have also been 31 further deaths. A week ago today the figure was 51.
The rapid COVID-19 surveillance dashboard has been updated.
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Progress stalls as robust lobbying from France alleged and tussle ensues over UK subsidies regulator
Brexit negotiations took a sudden step backwards Thursday afternoon Downing Street said, after furious French lobbying pushed the EU to make late demands.
The apparent eleventh hour hardening of the EU position was said to have destabilised the troubled talks, peeling back progress made over the previous 24 hours.
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