In The News

It was Micheál Martin’s worst week in the job as leader of Fianna Fáil and it began on late on Sunday evening when the party’s campaign for the presidency imploded. Its candidate Jim Gavin resigned following media reports that, 16 years ago, a tenant had accidentally overpaid him by €3,300 and despite repeated requests, the former military man and presidential hopeful had refused to return it. The...

So now we know what’s in Budget 2026 but for most people, what’s not so clear is what’s in it for them. As he has done every year on the day after the budget Irish Times personal finance expert and assistant business editor Dominic Coyle put a call-out to readers for their own queries and then he answered them. For In the News he picks out the ones that exercised people the most and explains how h...

What is in Budget 2026 for you? Not a lot, probably - as expected, Ministers Paschal Donohoe and Jack Chambers have delivered a much tighter package than recent years. Out are universal payments to help with steep energy bills and most bonus social welfare payments. But the budget did deliver some help for some groups. Conor Pope runs through the main points. Plus: Cliff Taylor on why, eleven mont...

It’s budget day and one thing we can almost certainly expect in Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe’s spending announcements is an increase in the price of cigarettes. This year, the cost of a pack of cigarettes is set to increase by 50 cents, bringing it to almost €19 for a pack of twenty. And while this price hike may help reduce smoking levels in Irish society, and improve the overall health o...

Fianna Fail’s presidential candidate Jim Gavin's sensational withdrawal from the presidential race has plunged Fianna Fáil into crisis. There’s dismay among party backbenchers, anger at Taoiseach Micheal Martin, and uncertainty over what kind of presidential election race we now have.  Earlier today, Jack Horgan Jones and Ellen Coyne talked to Hugh Linehan on our sister podcast Inside Politic...

How can it happen that a doctor who has been sanctioned or even struck-off in one country can simply move to another and continue working? Shouldn’t the various medical registration bodies have robust recording and information sharing systems that would make that impossible. Most patients will assume that to be the case but a new global investigation has found serious flaws in the system. And it i...

The long-awaited MetroLink line, which will finally connect Dublin Airport to the city by rail, has been approved by An Coimisiún Pleanála, three years after planning permission was sought. The 18.8km rail line, expected to cost more than €10 billion, was first proposed a quarter of a century ago and is anticipated to begin operations in the mid-2030s. Travelling mostly underground, the remote-con...

The body of 23-year-old Kelly Lynch was found in a canal in Monaghan on the morning of St Patrick’s Day 2024. For 30 hours, her mother Julieanne had been unable to get in contact with her daughter who had travelled over the Border to visit her boyfriend. Increasingly worried, she got in the car to drive to Monaghan to find her. While she was in the car she received a call from the Garda with the n...

The Irish Times is continuing to develop its podcast offering and would like to invite some of our current listeners to take part in a research study to listen to, and discuss, a new podcast pilot. This will involve listening to 2 short versions of a news briefing podcast and taking part in an online forum to discuss your reaction. You will be free to take part and contribute to the discussion at...

The Irish Times is continuing to develop its podcast offering and would like to invite some of our current listeners to take part in a research study to listen to, and discuss, a new podcast pilot. This will involve listening to 2 short versions of a news briefing podcast and taking part in an online forum to discuss your reaction. You will be free to take part and contribute to the discussion at...

On September 17th, partial skeletal remains of a child were discovered on waste ground in north Dublin following an extensive search by gardaí. While DNA analysis has yet to be concluded, the remains are believed to be those of Daniel Aruebose. He was last seen when he was 3 1/2 years of age and had not been seen in four years. The discovery of his body was a significant step in the investigation...

When the owners of the 751-acre Barne Estate in Tipperary put the property on the market in 2023, billionaire businessman John Magnier thought he had struck a deal to buy it for €15 million. The oral agreement he had reached during a kitchen-table meeting was, as far as he was concerned, binding. When the owners then sold it to someone else, Magnier went to court in a bid to make the them honour t...

The aid flotilla which is attempting to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza has been attacked by drones in international waters off the coast of Greece. The move is widely seen as an escalation of Israel’s attempts to stop the flotilla from reaching its destination. The organisers said at least 13 explosions were heard on and around boats and objects were dropped on at least 10 boats from drones...

Last weekend, over the course of 24 hours, two men were stabbed and seriously injured in separate incidents in Dublin’s city centre. An English tourist was hospitalised on Saturday night after he was stabbed in Temple Bar and on Sunday, a 17-year-old teenager was left in a critical condition after he was repeatedly stabbed on Dublin’s Eden Quay. These latest attacks will undoubtedly reinforce beli...

Catherine Connolly, Jim Gavin, Heather Humphreys have secured their nominations for the campaign which will run for a month until the election is held on October 24th 2025. How have the three candidates backed by political parties – Connolly, Gavin and Humphreys – fared so far in their bid to become the next Irish head of state and what bumps in the road have they faced in their race for the Áras?...

Last Saturday, an estimated 25,000 people travelled from across the island of Ireland to gather in Dublin and march through the streets of the capital calling for the protection of the Irish language. Participants in Cearta, the first major Irish language demonstration in over a decade, demanded action from Government on housing, education and funding for Gaeltacht communities and Irish speakers....

Last year An Garda Síochána made payments totalling €278,000 to an Israeli company, Cognyte, which manufactures sophisticated surveillance software. It is not known exactly what was bought or what it will be used for but the purchase was made under the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) framework. That means other State agencies such as Revenue , Fiosrú and Military Intelligence can use the ne...

Gardaí searching for a child who went missing when he was three years old have found human remains at a site in Donabate, north Dublin. Confirming that skeletal remains had been discovered, Garda HQ also named the boy as Daniel Aruebose. It is the first time he has been named since his disappearance and assumed death was placed under investigation three weeks ago. Conor Lally reports from the scen...

On Tuesday, Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns returned to the helm of her political party for a think-in dominated by the controversy over TD Eoin Hayes. The previous night, Mr Hayes issued an apology for wearing brown make-up on his face and hands while dressed up as former US president Barack Obama, at a party 16 years ago. Mr Hayes was previously suspended from the Social Democrats last Dece...

Last week, Brazil made history when its supreme court convicted the country’s former far right president Jair Bolsonaro, and seven other defendants, of attempting a coup after his failed re-election bid in 2022. Bolsonaro was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison. The verdict brings an end to Brazil’s historical leniency in dealing with military men who have tried to overthrow democratically e...

As Pope Leo XIV turns 70 we look back at his first months in office, the messages he has been giving to his flock of 1.4 billion Catholics and what they reveal about the direction of his papacy. Since May the Pope has used his Wednesday audience to condemn the actions of Isreal in Gaza and to call for peace in Ukraine. What he has chosen to wear and where to live has signalled a return to traditio...

In June 2024 French President Emmanuel Macron took a political gamble – and lost heavily. Hoping to strengthen his centrist alliance he dissolved the National Assembly triggering an election. The result has been chaos – a legislature with no dominant political bloc in power and leading this week to France naming its fourth prime minister in 12 months and riots on the streets of Paris. At the centr...

At just 18 committed Christian and college drop out Charlie Kirk established Turning Point USA, an organisation with a mission to spread conservative ideals at liberal-leaning US universities. On Wednesday, now aged 31 and a father of two young children, Kirk was once again at a university campus to debate and spread his socially conservative viewpoint. A roof-top sniper shot him dead in what is b...

An escalating series of threats made to Tánaiste Simon Harris in recent weeks went from an online threat to kidnap his children to co-ordinated bomb warnings on his Wicklow home. Politicians say online trolling and verbal abuse now goes with the territory; dealing with it is part of the job. Some have also had to face threats to their families with those against Harris being the latest. It has pro...

Earlier this year, US president Donald Trump sent shock waves across America’s medical and scientific community by appointing Robert F Kennedy jnr, one of America’s most prominent vaccine-sceptics, as secretary of health and human services. Since then, the controversial health secretary has caused large upheaval within America’s public health system, making appointments and changing vaccine polici...