In The News

Earlier this week, an Irish Times investigation revealed a rising number of foreign students from outside the EU are using forged documents to secure study visas to work in Ireland. The Irish Times spoke to a number of people who availed of the scam and admitted to obtaining forged enrolment letters, medical insurance and attendance certificates when applying for student visas. Reporter Isabela Bo...

Paedophile Bill Kenneally is serving an 18-year sentence for the sexual abuse of 15 young boys in Waterford in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. But it took until 2016, decades after the abuse occurred, for the former basketball coach to be sentenced for those crimes. That’s despite first coming to Garda attention in the mid-1980s when a brave young boy went into the Garda station on his own to report the a...

In discussions around empire and colonisation, including popular movements such as Black Lives Matter and Rhodes Must Fall, Ireland likes to think itself on the “right” side of history, as colonised victims of empire. But as Trinity College Dublin historian Prof Jane Ohlmeyer explores in her new book, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, and the Early Modern World, it’s not as simple as that. On t...

Ireland has the highest reported rate of gonorrhoea infection across 30 European countries, with a record number of cases reported in Ireland in 2022, according to research published last week. What is driving this surge in infections in Ireland and how concerned are younger Irish people about contracting sexually transmitted infections? Today, on In the News, consultant of sexual health and HIV D...

In February 2016, just three days after the notorious Regency Hotel Shooting, 59-year-old Eddie Hutch was gunned down outside his home in Dublin’s north inner city. Hutch’s murder was the first in a two year killing spree by the Kinahan cartel following the Regency ambush. To this day, no one has been charged with Hutch’s murder. However, that could now change. Gardaí have sent a file to the Direc...

The death was announced yesterday of broadcaster and journalist Charlie Bird. The former RTÉ chief news correspondent, who was 74 when he died, was diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 2021. One of Ireland’s best-known journalists, he reported on of the biggest stories in Ireland and around the world through the 1980s, 1990s and into the 2000s. However, in many ways, it was Charlie Bird’s final...

When "Niamh" began house-hunting in Dublin's suburbs, she soon noticed that viewings were often attended by agents who were using phones to live-stream the property to potential buyers in China - some of whom then outbid her. Estate agents have confirmed that it is now commonplace for wealthy Chinese nationals to bid strongly on houses in South Dublin. But why? The answers lie in the details of a...

A large provider of accommodation for children in care, Ideal Care Services, has been found to have put young people at risk by failing to carry out proper background checks on staff. The company run by Jossy Akwuobi (45), from Tyrrelstown, Dublin, and his partner, Karen Akwuobi (39), has already been paid €9million by Tusla, the child and family agency. An internal Tusla report found Garda vettin...

Cillian Murphy looks unbeatable for the Best Actor gong. But who else should win at the 96th Academy Awards on Sunday night? And who will win? Irish Times chief film correspondent Donald Clarke says that it’s shaping up to be Oppenheimer’s year at the Oscars . But what about Barbie? And could Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things, produced by Dublin-based Element Pictures, also do well? This time last ye...

On Monday, Russian media published an audio recording of high-ranking German military officers discussing weapons which could be used by Ukrainian military in the war against Russia. German officials immediately rejected any claims that the audio indicated Berlin was preparing for war against Moscow. The leak follows comments from German federal defence minister Boris Pistorius of how his country...

If you're not sure how you're going to vote in Friday's referendum, you're not alone. According to an Irish Times / IPSOS B&A poll in February, 53% of those surveyed admitted to hardly knowing anything at all about the ballot taking place on March 8th. What seemed like a straightforward proposal to expand the definition of the family and remove the reference to women's 'duties' in the home, ha...

Dublin’s office market is likely to get worse before it gets better with no relief in sight until 2027 amid a collapse in demand and a glut of new developments coming on stream. Last week the Central Bank aired its concerns over the situation. So will there by a crash in the office market sector and what might that mean for the economy? John McCartney from BNP Paribas Real Estate explains why the...

The death last month of a 33-year-year old first-time mother at University Hospital Limerick once again put the troubled hospital in the headlines. Shortly before that tragedy, a teenage girl with breathing difficulties died in the emergency department, while in 2022 Aoife Johnston (16) who had endured a long wait for care, died there. The HSE has apologised to her family. And UHL’s chaotic trolle...

Health and family editor Damian Cullen had already ticked off a long list of diets before he hit on intermittent fasting and three years later, and 16kg lighter, he has stuck to the plan. He eats in an eight-hour window. At the more extreme end of intermittent fasting, British prime minister Rishi Sunak follows the so called “monk fast” of eating nothing for a 36-year period every week. As a way o...

When Diarmuid Hayes send a strange tweet from his employer MEP Luke 'Ming' Flanagan's account, the resulting mockery caused huge damage to Flanagan's life and reputation. But why did Hayes do it? Naomi O'Leary and Jack Power report. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Last week’s FAI’s appearance before the Public Accounts Committee did not go particularly well. Members of the committee expressed concern regarding the role of the chief executive after Jonathan Hill explained that an €11,500 payment in lieu of holidays not taken was just a “miscalculation”. His request for this payment at the end of an email was just a joke, he said. But many of the documents su...

It’s been another awful week for the national broadcaster. Last Friday, RTÉ board chairwoman Siún Ní Raghallaigh resigned after her position was undermined by Minister for Media Catherine Martin live on television. RTÉ's board reacted with anger following what is being viewed politically as the forced resignation Ms Ní Raghallaigh, which came amid a deepening row over big exit payouts for departin...

Two years ago, what would become 105,000 Ukrainians began arriving in Ireland to seek refuge from the Russian invasion of their country. They were dispersed all around the State, including to Bundoran in Donegal, a seaside town and for generations a welcoming holiday destination. How have they adjusted to living so far from their war-torn homes? Sorcha Pollak travelled to Bundoran to talk to the n...

Renegade solicitor Michael Lynn stole €18 million from the banks at the height of the Celtic Tiger property boom. It took until this week for justice to be served, when Lynn was sentenced to 5½ years in prison. After the sentence was handed down, the prosecution dropped a bombshell – gardaí believe the fraudster may still control some of the stolen money and suspect him of attempting to launder it...

For decades concerns were raised at Government level that the Russian Embassy in Dublin was an espionage hub, with the sheer scale of the Soviet diplomatic mission to the State prompting suspicions over spying. However, the war in Ukraine emboldened the Government to take action. Russian diplomats have been expelled, new visas refused and now the embassy’s staff in Dublin has been reduced from 30...

Last week, a consignment of synthetic drugs, thought to be crystal meth worth €32.8 million, were seized in Cork Port. It is believed the shipment, which was destined for the Australian market, was owned by the Sinaloa cartel, Mexico’s deadliest drugs gang. Gardaí are now investigating whether a number of Irish men based in Cork and Kerry have been acting as agents for the cartel. So far, they hav...

On Monday, An Bord Pleanála met for its first hearing in 15 years into Dublin’s planned underground rail line. The €9.5 billion MetroLink, as it is now known, has been put on hold numerous times since it was first announced as the Metro West plan in 2005. The proposed underground line would run from north of Swords to Dublin Airport, then on to Ballymun, Glasnevin, O’Connell Street and St Stephen’...

Previously on In the News, Irish Times Europe correspondent Naomi O’Leary explained how Dublin-based landlord Marc Godart deployed CCTV to monitor tenants in their homes, faced accusations of unlawful eviction and failed to pay compensation to former tenants as ordered by the Residential Tenancies Board. On today’s episode Naomi shares a new cache of audio files and documents that show how Luxembo...

Jon Jonsson, 41, vanished in Dublin in 2019 while in Ireland to play poker. A father of four and a taxi driver in his native Iceland, he was travelling with his fiance. For some reason he left his hotel, The Bonnington, on a bright February afternoon; CCTV cameras capture him walking along the busy road. After the second sighting near the hotel, he vanishes. He didn’t know the area and had no frie...

Nearly two and half years since passed since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in after the US withdrew the last of its troops from the country. Since then, the country has grappled with a humanitarian crisis which has forced millions of Afghans abroad. Women’s rights and freedoms have been severely restricted since the Taliban takeover in 2021 and girls in Afghanistan can no longer attend s...