In The News

In hard hats and high-vis jackets, Taoiseach Micheál Martin , Tánaiste Simon Harris and Minister for Housing James Browne looked the part at Thursday’s launch of “Delivering Homes, Building Communities, 2025-2030″, the Government’s latest grand plan to tackle the housing crisis . By 2030, it is committed to delivering 300,000 new homes. It’s an ambitious target. But who is going to build these new...

Few conflicts have caused as much horror and devastation to people’s lives as Sudan’s civil war. And yet, the country’s ongoing death and destruction remains largely unnoticed, and often ignored, by the rest of the world. An estimated 150,000 people have been killed, and 14 million people displaced, since the country was plunged into civil war in April 2023 after a power struggle broke out between...

Last Friday, two men appeared before Portlaoise District Court as part of a Garda investigation into an alleged terrorist plot by an extreme right wing group to attack Galway Mosque. The two men were arrested on Co Laois on Tuesday during a cross-Border antiterrorism operation and were charged with possession of explosives. A video found by gardaí on one of the men’s phones revealed a ‘practice’ r...

On Monday, the COP30 climate summit officially opened in the Brazilian city of Belém at the gateway to the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian organisers have insisted this will be the “COP of implementation” where measures needed to combat the climate crisis will take precedence over more promises and never-ending negotiations. This year’s global summit marks a decade since the highly lauded Paris Agree...

For most people, the process of buying a house can be quite disheartening. The lack of housing supply across the country means houses often sell for way above asking price and usually after an excruciating bidding war.   While the Government promises to address the supply issue, is there anything that needs to change about the way we buy houses?  In the UK, a major reform of the house-bu...

Every November, Irish Times restaurant critic Corinna Hardgrave looks back at her year to produce a list of the top 100 restaurants across the country. This year, with the help of the writer Joanna Cronin, readers are treated to a plethora of options for every occasion from new and quirky eateries to heritage restaurants which have stood the test of time. It’s also an exciting period for the Irish...

On Tuesday New Yorkers elected socialist and Democratic Party candidate Zohran Mamdani as mayor. Mamdani, the city's first Muslim and African-born mayor and the youngest in over a century, was harshly criticised by President Donald Trump throughout the campaign. But his win, along with the election of several other Democrats in races across the country, has forced Trump to start taking seriously t...

On Saturday, the story broke that broadcaster and former Fine Gael politician Ivan Yates had provided interview and debate coaching to Fianna Fáil presidential candidate Jim Gavin before he dropped out of the race. This was at a time when he was co-presenting the political podcast Path to Power and doing stand in shifts on Newstalk radio. The story gained momentum in the days that followed as news...

On Monday afternoon, in a packed courtroom at Dublin’s Circuit Criminal Court, former Kilkenny hurler DJ Carey was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for fraud.  In July, the disgraced sportsman pleaded guilty to ten counts of deception involving thirteen individuals.  It’s a stunning fall from grace for the Kilkenny man, who was once the most celebrated hurler in the country.&...

There are many things An Garda Síochána know about the woman whose skeletal remains were found in 2021 during the construction of a greenway in Co Cork . They believe the woman was 70 years or older when she died, that she was 157cm tall and had a large frame. They think she wore dentures made in the 1960s while she also suffered from arthritis. Carbon dating suggests she died between 1985 and 198...

Saipan: it’s the one word that can, even 23 years later, cause a row and Irish football fans still divide into two camps. When it comes to events in Saipan where the Irish team were acclimatising before heading to Japan for their first game in the 2002 World Cup, everyone has an opinion. You’re either Team Roy or Team Mick. A new movie that captures the simmering tension and eventual blow up betwe...

In the early 1970s Mary ‘May’ and Seamus ‘Shay’ McGee were parents to four young children. On her second and third pregnancies, May had experienced complications so severe that her doctor advised that her life would be in danger if she had any more children. The GP prescribed a diaphragm and spermicidal jelly to help prevent pregnancy. These had to be imported and were seized by customs with the c...

In early September, worshippers gathering for dawn prayers at several locations across Paris discovered a gruesome and spiteful scene – bloodied pigs’ heads discarded on the doorsteps of their mosques. A deeply offensive act, Muslims are forbidden from eating pork and consider pigs to be unclean. Soon after, a farmer in Normandy in northern France, who had seen news reports of the dead animal head...

Journalist Khadija Haidary left her home in Afghanistan in October 2024 after spending three years trying to survive as a working woman in a Taleban-controlled country. When universities closed to women in late 2022, Haidary joined an underground “resistance” network teaching maths, physics and English to girls. Ms Haidary, who is editor of the Zan Times, now reports from her new home in Pakistan....

A Belfast court delivered a not-guilty verdict on Thursday in the trial of a former British Army paratrooper accused of the murder of two young men in the Bloody Sunday shootings in Derry 53 years ago. It was the first-ever trial of a former British soldier accused of killing unarmed civilians during the massacre. The veteran, referred to as Soldier F for legal reasons, was accused of the murders...

Crimes carried out by a loose syndicate of about 60 teenagers spread across north and South Dublin, who are more interested in capturing their joyriding escapades on social media than making money, are on the rise. Known as the Lucky Dip Gang, these groups of young, low-level criminals focus on burglaries and vehicle theft. These often failed and haphazard attempts to steal bikes and cars contrast...

In chaotic and violent scenes reminiscent of the street riots in Dublin city centre two years ago, around 1,000 protesters outside the Citywest IPAS centre in Saggart threw missiles, set fires, used fireworks as weapons and roared racist chants on Tuesday evening. They had gathered in response to news that a man had been arrested in connection with the alleged sexual assault of a 10-year old Irish...

On Tuesday, almost six months after she took her own life, the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre went on sale. ‘Nobody’s Girl’, which was completed by Giuffre before her death, details how she feared she might “die a sex slave” at the hands of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Giuffre also says she was made to have sex with Prince Andrew on three occasions. Prince Andrew, who has always...

Shortly after 9.30am on Sunday, when the Louvre in Paris had just opened its doors to visitors, alarm bells started to ring out through the halls of the world-famous museum. Four thieves had managed to access the building via the first floor balcony facing the river Seine. Seven minutes later they escaped on motorbikes carrying priceless French crown jewels. The robbery has sparked outrage across...

Scam call centres are paying up to €1,200 per person for the contact details of potential Irish victims. And once they have a name and number, it’s game on, with highly-trained fraudsters working the phones to persuade victims to part with their money via bogus investment “opportunities”. Analysis by The Irish Times has identified 31 Irish victims who lost a combined total of nearly €300,000. This...

Eleven years after the bodies of Anthony Keegan (33) and Eoin O’Connor (32) were discovered buried on Inchicup Island, Dublin woman Ruth Lawrence (45) has gone on trial for their murder. She has pleaded not guilty. The prosecution has laid out its case: alleging that Lawrence worked “as a unit” with her South African boyfriend Neville van der Westhuizen to kill O’Connor, a drug dealer and his frie...

Irish Olympic swimmer Shane Ryan can now take all the performance-enhancing drugs he wants as part of his training plan. And if anabolic steroids, human growth hormone (HGH), or testosterone supplements show up in his system next May when he competes in Las Vegas, the organisers will congratulate him for playing by the rules. The Enhanced Games dubbed the Steroid Olympics – was dreamed up by Austr...

The number of people falling victim to online fraud, and in some cases losing their life savings as a result of being scammed, is skyrocketing. Banks have warned of a sharp increase in phone calls and text messages from criminals purporting to be delivery companies or Government agencies. However, in some of the most disturbing cases, victims are targeted with the promise of love and romance. Roma...

On Monday, more than two years after the conflict in Gaza began – a war which has killed tens of thousands, including an estimated 20,000 children – the remaining living Israeli hostages returned home. Meanwhile, about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners – including 1,700 from Gaza who have been held by Israel without charge – were released and reunited with family. The return of hostages and release of p...

Michael D Higgins will shortly finish his two terms as President of Ireland, having served 14 years as head of State. In 2011 he said his tenure would be “a presidency of ideas”. But what are they and where in his background and in his impressive and varied pre-Áras career did they come from? And how has his outspokenness on a wide range of subjects, from foreign affairs to army pay, been received...