Holly Cairns announces birth of daughter on day of Ireland’s general election
• Ireland’s election: the parties, the issues and the voting
The leader of Ireland’s Social Democrats party has announced the birth of a baby daughter on the day of the country’s general election.
Holly Cairns, who is standing for re-election in the Cork South-West constituency, posted on Instagram: “She’s here. We are completely in love with her.”
Continue reading...Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin all on about 20% in opinion polls after short, sharp campaign
Ireland goes to the polls on Friday with voters expected to choose either a second term for the incumbent centre-right coalition or a left-leaning rainbow coalition led by a resurgent Sinn Féin, the former political wing of the IRA.
Opinion polls show a dead heat, with the two main government parties – Fine Gael, led by the taoiseach, Simon Harris, and Fianna Fáil, led by the former PM Micheál Martin – and Sinn Féin all hovering at about 20% of the vote.
Continue reading...Fine Gael had looked sure of victory on Friday before Simon Harris’s disastrous interaction with care worker
Ireland’s three main parties are almost neck and neck in the polls ahead of Friday’s general election, as the taoiseach, Simon Harris, struggles to contain the damage inflicted on his campaign by a disastrous interaction with an angry care worker.
In what has been called the “Simon slump”, Fine Gael, the centre-right party which Harris leads, and which seemed almost certain to top the polls, is now under pressure. An Irish Times poll on Monday showed FG had lost its commanding lead of two weeks ago and was down six points.
Continue reading...Figure costed for three multinationals repatriating to US after nomination for commerce secretary hits out at Ireland’s tax regime
Ireland’s prime minister has said the country could lose €10bn (£8.35bn) in corporate tax if just three US multinationals were repatriated to America under a hostile Donald Trump administration.
His remarks come just days after Trump nominated the Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce with direct responsibility for trade.
Continue reading...Incident revealed after civil court found MMA fighter had assaulted Nikita Hand in December 2018
A gang of masked men broke into the home of a woman who had taken a civil case against the mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor that accused him of raping her, it can now be revealed.
The incident was referred to at the start of the court case in Dublin but could not be reported until now as it emerged during legal discussion while the jury were not present.
Continue reading...McGregor ordered to pay nearly €250,000 in damages to Nikita Hand after he was accused of 2018 assault
A jury at a civil trial at Ireland’s high court has found that the Irish martial arts fighter Conor McGregor assaulted a woman who had accused him of raping her at a hotel in Dublin in December 2018.
McGregor was ordered pay nearly €250,000 (£210,000) in damages to Nikita Hand, who is also known as Nikita Ní Laimhín.
Continue reading...Viktor Orbán says he will not enforce ICC decision that requires court members to detain Israeli PM if he enters their country
Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said he will invite his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu, to visit in defiance of an international criminal court arrest warrant, as world leaders split over the ICC’s momentous decision.
The world’s highest criminal court issued warrants on Thursday for Netanyahu, his former defence minister Yoav Gallant and the Hamas commander Ibrahim al-Masri, commonly known as Mohammed Deif, who is believed to be dead, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Continue reading...Rich country budgets are stretched amid inflation, Covid and Ukraine war, Mary Robinson tells Cop29
Poor countries may have to compromise on demands for cash to tackle global heating, a former UN climate envoy has said, as UN talks entered their final hours in deadlock.
In comments that are likely to disappoint poorer countries at the Cop29 summit, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and twice a UN climate envoy, said rich country budgets were stretched amid inflation, Covid and conflicts including Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Continue reading...A year after Dublin’s anti-immigration riots, a tent camp for asylum seekers faces hostility while some locals try to support the new arrivals
In the small town of Newtown Mount Kennedy, a holding centre for people who have just arrived in Ireland seeking asylum lies in the wooded grounds of Trudder House, a former convent. The building itself is disused and off-limits. Instead, men arriving from countries such as Somalia, Sudan and Nigeria are housed in 12-16 makeshift tents, separated from the town by a 10ft-tall fence daubed with graffiti reading “Newtown says no”.
Craig Bishop, a retired GP who is part of Newtown Together, a group of volunteers trying to support the camp’s residents, said the barricade created an immediate sense of “them and us”. “They come all this way for protection only to be behind a 10ft fence to be protected from who? From the locals,” he said.
Continue reading...Best known as one half of D’Unbelievables, Kenny also starred in Father Ted and The Banshees of Inisherin
The Irish prime minister has led tributes to the comedian and actor Jon Kenny, who has died at the age of 66.
Kenny died on Friday evening in Galway Clinic, his wife, Margie, told the Limerick Leader on Saturday.
Continue reading...Yantar intelligence ship was seen operating drones in an area containing subsea energy and internet infrastructure
A Russian spy ship has been escorted out of the Irish Sea after it entered Irish-controlled waters and patrolled an area containing critical energy and internet submarine pipelines and cables.
It was spotted on Thursday east of Dublin and south-west of the Isle of Man but Norwegian, US, French and British navy and air defence services initially observed it accompanying a Russian warship, the Admiral Golovko, through the English channel last weekend.
Continue reading...Matthew Pennycook says Tory position now unclear on cap on tax rises that was in place when Kemi Badenoch was local government minister
A minister has criticised her Tory shadow for talking about “joy” in the health sector about the funding it received.
Karin Smyth, a health minister, said it was a strange word to use given the state of NHS finances left by the last government.
Many in the health sector would have been pleased to hear the announcement of the extra funding going into the NHS [in the budget], only for the joy to be struck down by the realisation of a broken manifesto promise not to raise national insurance contributions.
This was only compounded further on the discovery that a raft of frontline care providers – care homes, hospices, care charities, pharmacies, GPS, to name but a few – found themselves not exempt from the NI rises, leaving them with crippling staff bills and the threat of closure and redundancies.
He talks about joy. There was no joy when we inherited the mess that they left back in July.
The chancellor took into account the impact of changes to national insurance when she allocated an extra £26bn to the Department of Health and Social Care.
There are well established processes for agreeing funding allocations across the system, we are going through those processes now with this issue in mind.
The British government needs to start now indicating for them what they believe is the tipping point at which they believe a referendum would be called.
Continue reading...Regulator issues online safety ruling after finding weak processes leave networks ‘exposed to terrorist content’
Elon Musk’s X, TikTok and Meta’s Instagram have been ordered by Irish media regulators to take “necessary measures” to prevent terrorist content being platformed in order to comply with sweeping new online safety legislation.
The Irish media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, said it issued the ruling after its investigations determined that the social media networks were “exposed to terrorist content” due to weak processes.
Continue reading...Competition to resemble Normal People star is markedly lower-stakes than chaotic Timothée Chalamet event in New York last month
Two weeks ago, a mobbed competition to find a Timothée Chalamet lookalike in New York led to one arrest, a $500 fine for an “unpermitted costume contest” and a surprise appearance by the real-life Chalamet, fuelling further chaos.
But a similar event in Dublin on Thursday, this time to find a doppelganger for Paul Mescal, the star of Normal People and the upcoming Gladiator II, unfolded rather more sedately.
Continue reading...Saltburn actor tells Louis Theroux podcast about his difficult childhood and decision to keep his child offline
Oscar nominee Barry Keoghan has hit back at “disgusting” online trolls who he claimed use his relationship with his son as “ammunition” against him.
The 32-year-old Irish actor, who is dating US singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter, has a two-year-old son, Brando, with his former partner.
Continue reading...Election watchers in Europe, Asia and elsewhere will be tuning in – and some have a particular interest in the result
From Brazil to Ireland and Germany to the Caribbean, this year’s knife-edge – and more than usually momentous – US presidential vote will be watched at a multitude of election-night events, some with a particular interest in the outcome.
In St Ann Parish, Jamaica – and most particularly in Browns Town, where Harris’s father Donald was born and the Democratic candidate spent many happy childhood holidays – her supporters plan watch parties, drink-ups and other social gatherings.
Continue reading...Thousands lined streets of Irish capital waiting for falsely advertised Mácnas parade after website’s ‘human error’
A Pakistan-based company has issued an embarrassed apology to Dubliners after a “human error” on its events website led to thousands of people turning up on the Irish capital’s main thoroughfare for a nonexistent Halloween parade.
Footage on Thursday night showed throngs of people lining both sides of O’Connell Street waiting for a supposed procession of giant Halloween puppets made by one of Ireland’s best known theatre groups, the Galway performance company Mácnas.
Continue reading...Former pupils of Catholic schools say corporal punishment was ‘hourly occurence’ in 60s and 70s
The Irish government has been urged to extend the scope of a statutory inquiry into historical child abuse in schools to include corporal punishment, including a practice known as “leathering”.
Survivors of physical assault in Catholic schools have complained they were told there was no scope to include corporal punishment in an investigation into sexual abuse, announced in September.
Continue reading...Actor ran last part of course pushing friend Emma Fogarty who has genetic condition known as butterfly skin
Colin Farrell has raised €774,000 (£644,000) for a charity supporting people with a rare skin condition by running the Dublin marathon while pushing one of the oldest survivors of the disease in Ireland around part of the course in her wheelchair.
The actor, who was born in the Irish capital, raised the money for Debra Ireland, an organisation that supports people with the incurable genetic condition epidermolysis bullosa (EB), or “butterfly skin”, which causes people to have very fragile and blistering skin.
Continue reading...Rise in VAT, inflation and people working from home has led small business owners to demand government support
Blazing Salads, Dillingers, Assassination Custard and Brasserie Sixty Six in Dublin, Church Lane and Sage in County Cork, and Barnacles in Galway.
These are just some of the most recent additions to the list of more than 600 restaurants that have been forced to close in Ireland in the last year in what is being seen as a growing crisis for the country’s high street and tourist offering.
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