Early Edition

An enormous post budget row has erupted between the government and RTE over a shortfall in funding for the broadcaster agreed in this week’s budget. A solicitor known for establishing the Co Laois music festival, Forest Fest, has been suspended from legal practice by the High Court. Security concerns for Jewish people in Ireland have prevented Dublin’s primary synagogue from organising a public-fa...

The Government has unveiled an €8.5 billion Budget package bringing public spending to a record €125.6 billion next year. Tighter spending controls on policing major events after a review of the policing operation around last year’s Europa League final in Dublin, Garda Commissioner Justin Kelly is expected to tell an Oireachtas committee. A workplace dispute involving HIV Ireland has heard evidenc...

The Government will unveil another giveaway budget today, Tuesday October 6th, which will include reductions in tax for middle income earners worth up to €1,500 for a couple with a combined income of €100,000. “ Drumcree is the theatre of the absurd , straight from Monty Python’s Ministry of silly walks,” according to Fintan O’Toole, who’s column this week focuses on the eruption of sectarian tens...

Irish drug gangs are now making as much money from cannabis as they are from cocaine, according to new Gardaí figures. Housing, energy costs and childcare are among the main concerns people have been voicing ahead of Budget 2027. Ireland’s borrowing costs are a fraction of bigger economies like France, the UK and the United States. Garvaghy Road residents are in court today as the dispute over an...

The opposition parties have laid out their alternative budgets ahead of the government’s Budget 2027 next week. Grinds 360, Ireland’s biggest online education platform, was plunged into a boardroom battle after its CEO was temporarily suspended in a dispute over company finances and governance. Next week, the European Union and China head into what could be one of their most consequential trade sh...

An American conservative Catholic university, founded by Domino’s Pizza billionaire Tom Monaghan, is facing questions over plans to open an Irish campus at the former Mount Melleray monastery in Co. Waterford. Irish unification stirs widespread debate but the decision for a vote on the matter falls to one person under the Belfast Agreement; Northern Ireland’s secretary of state. Rachel Lavin exami...

An Irish citizen has pleaded not guilty in a Hungarian court to the murder of his ex-wife, a Japanese national, and to setting fire to her apartment in an alleged attempt to make her death look like an accident. The price of fuel at the pumps could be as high as €2.30 a litre by December. Pricewatch editor Conor Pope is drilling into why . The DUP and the Orange Order have made complaints to the P...

The standoff between residents of Garvaghy Road, Co. Armagh, and the Orange Order shows no sign of resolution. Ireland is spending less per student across its education system than the average developed country, according to an OECD report. Almost 30,000 people have opted out of the State’s new auto-enrolment pension scheme, but the Government says participation remains far stronger than expected....

Permission for an Orange Order march on the Gervaghy Road in Portadown expired at midnight with 35 Orangemen blocked by thousands of nationalist protestors. The Government is facing fresh pressure on the public finances, after a €700 million spending buffer set aside earlier this year was completely used up. More than 328,000 homes are in electricity arrears according to new figures. A controversy...

There’s a heavy few days in store for Heimir Hallgrímsson’s Republic of Ireland squad as they get ready to travel to Hungary to face Israel on Sunday. It’s after their one nil loss to Kosovo in Pristina last night. The wife and mother of German fraudster Hendrick Holt, also known as, the “wind power swindler” , have established two companies in Dublin that have links with his business. Only a smal...

Help with the cost of energy and home heating is the top priority for voters in next month’s budget, according to the latest Irish Times/Ipsos B&A opinion poll. The HSE is appointing doctors from outside of the EU to work in hospitals without having assurances about their competence in the English language or that they had no criminal records in Ireland or abroad, internal auditors have mainta...

A French judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said the “rule of law” is at steak over US sanctions on judges. A newly released filing has highlighted Ireland’s dependence on a handful of multinationals for corporation tax, with Apple and Microsoft contributing 98% of the tens of billions collected. Criminal exploitation by drug gangs is now the biggest concern among organisations workin...

Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan Snr is unlikely to face criminal charges unless new information emerges, The Irish Times has established. Dissident republican Colm Murphy “sat like a spider at the centre of the web of the plan to detonate a bomb in Omagh ”, the inquiry into the 1998 atrocity was told on Monday. The Irish Times has heard from victims of racial attacks in Belfast of how they...

The German Chancellor Freidrich Merz has described state elections won by the far right AfD and the far left ⁠Die Linke, but he is refusing to resign. Housing Minister James Browne is continuing to push for a significant expansion of the Help to Buy scheme ahead of Budget 2027. The overhaul of the Leaving Certificate is facing fresh turbulence, with the country’s largest second-level teachers’ uni...

Ireland’s tax receipts from tech giants should be redistributed amongst European countries, the French finance minister has told The Irish Times. Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney has described the aim of welcoming Canada as an “associate member” of the European Union as a “positive move”. The Health Service Executive (HSE) is facing fresh questions over hospital productivity, after new analysis...

Dublin’s Metrolink project could pave the way for 77,000 additional homes along the route between Swords, Co. Dublin and Dartmouth Square. President Catherine Connolly is spending the second day of her official visit to Scotland in Glasgow, as she continues a four-day programme aimed at strengthening ties between Ireland and Scotland. Ursula Von Der Leyen has backed Canada to become an ‘associate...

Crime gangs are disguising cocaine as coal, paper and treacle to smuggle it into the State and are changing the genetics of cannabis plants to circumvent Irish drugs laws, the head of Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) has said. Updated cost projections for the Metrolink now estimate the project will cost somewhere in the region of €14.5 bill to €17.5 billion. The Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brie...

Most Irish drivers still have no idea just how much it’s really costing every year, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute. An Irish Times investigation has found that the Minister for Agriculture, Martin Heydon, is the largest farming landowner in the Oireachtas. Fewer victims are reporting crimes to Gardaí, with many saying they don’t believe anything will be done, or that the i...

Authorities in Northern Ireland say they don’t know how many immigrant families displaced in the summer race riots in Belfast have been able to return home. The Irish Times looks at the fall out after Donald Trump said he’s “love” to see a united Ireland. Tusla’s chief executive has warned that vulnerable children and families could face poorer outcomes if the agency is forced to absorb budget cut...

The attacks of September 11 were perpetrated 25 years ago today ushering a new era on which our correspondent Denis Staunton reflects. The European Unions foreign policy chief has told The Irish Times sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Banks would be justified. The son of Gerry Hutch, Jason Murphy, has appeared in court charged in connection with organised crime following his extradition...

Four HSE regions are to be stripped of their powers over day-to-day spending by the Government in response to an overspend of hundreds of millions of euro, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers has said. Of 12 teenagers before Dublin Children’s Court on Wednesday, facing charges including for theft, assault, stealing cars, possession of drugs, and carrying weapons, just one had a solicitor...

Clamper vans will but disappear from Dublin city centre in what’s to be the biggest shake up in parking enforcement in almost 30 years. Hospital incomes have been hit by the move to public-only consultant contracts, notes a confidential HSE report seen by The Irish Times. Minister for Public Expenditure, Jack Chambers, will be on the Inside Politics podcast with Hugh Linehan later today. Paddywago...

There has been a sharp rise in children living in households below the poverty line, according to new figures for 2024 from the Economic and Social Research Institute. Carrigaline, County Cork, has the lowest rate of commercial rental vacancies in Ireland showing a busy local economy and strong competition for consumers. Ireland’s most senior civil servant has criticised Government departments for...

Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has claimed the largest share of the vote in elections in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. New data centres could be offered lower gas connections if they agree to have their supply interrupted during periods of extreme demand. A special cost recovery team has been deployed to Naas General Hospital amid concerns it could go over budget by as muc...

Ireland was one of only two European countries to increase spending on foreign aid last year, with €1.9 billion spent on official development assistance. The government has defended public transport fares rises, coming in January, saying it will help fund new services. The HSE remains significantly over budget, despite efforts to tighten spending controls across the health service. An investigatio...