The Spaniard was sick into a towel and gasping for breath but fought like a champion in a five-set marathon.

However, Shelton held his nerve in a dramatic deciding-set tie-break to win 6-7 (5) 6-1 6-3 1-6 7-6 (7) in a match which finished at 3.33am local time.

Three long matches on Arthur Ashe Stadium earlier on Tuesday meant Alcaraz and Shelton did not step on to court until gone 11pm.

Martina Navratilova was not impressed at yet another early-morning finish, the former world number one posting on X: “Something has got to give… this is not OK and it is not normal… no other sport might start at 11AM or 11PM. In the same event.”

More to follow...

A couple of weeks back, the British Medical Journal also issued a damning report establishing that “nearly a quarter of all former NFL players who died between 2016-21 had CTE neuropathology at death”. Those who drilled deeper into the findings by Boston University and Harvard researchers discovered the real percentage may be much, much worse. In 235 cases where families donated their loved ones’ brains for further examination, 215 of those tested positive for CTE, a disease that can only be diagnosed posthumously. CTE is a progressive degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head injuries and trauma.

“We continuously strive to make the game of football safer, including by implementing strategies to reduce concussions and head impacts,” said the NFL in a mealy-mouthed response. “The NFL remains committed to ensuring that the NFL community has access to a robust – and expanding – set of resources to enhance their physical and mental wellbeing.”

The medical evidence about the deleterious impact of grid-iron grows in direct proportion to America’s love of the game. When the Seattle Seahawks kick off the season against the New England Patriots at Lumen Field on Wednesday night, it will be one of the most-watched television broadcasts of the year. It always is. Fans have been salivating at the prospect of the return of the national obsession since the final play of February’s Super Bowl set up seven tortuous months of off-season.

For weeks now, irritating fantasy leaguers have commandeered water-cooler conversations and clogged up Whatsapp groups with forensic analysis of rosters and prospects. Can anybody stop the LA Rams? Are the Bills capable of going all the way? In a country socially and politically divided, this sport may be the one place where Americans of every stripe still come together each week, albeit to lustily cheer athletes shearing years off their life expectancy and ruining their frontal and temporal lobes with ever more percussive on-field collisions.

No matter how many reports emerge regarding the cruel, unusual punishment football inflicts, the astonishing thing is that nobody cares. Nobody. Not supporters, whose only genuine concern is whether an injured star can suit up the following Sunday. Not avaricious owners planning to extend the campaign to 18 and maybe even 20 bone-crushing, money-spinning games. Not television networks squabbling to pay billions for the rights to this legalised carnage and ratings gold. And, perhaps most shockingly of all, definitely not the players themselves who have signed up knowing fully the potential risks to their future health.

“At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” said former US president Barack Obama. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”

Twelve years have passed since Obama made that comment in the first flush of revelation and scandal about the true extent of brain damage suffered by previous generations. Last week, The Guardian ran a column arguing that the NFL is now indefensible as a spectacle. An argument that needed to be made. Yet, the reaction pieces greeting the publication of every fresh scientific indictment of the game are always accompanied by quotes from former players arguing they would do it all again. Never mind the consequences.

For his part in steering the NFL through this and other controversies across two decades, commissioner Roger Goodell will have earned $1 billion in salary by the end of his contract in 2031. Aside from introducing upgraded helmets and other safety initiatives, his league has paid lip service to compensating those who lost family members to CTE. They have just about fulfilled their legal obligations even as the morality of how the game is played becomes increasingly disturbing. Bigger, stronger players deliver bigger, stronger hits. With predictably horrific outcomes for players’ health.

“Football is a character-forming institution that channels strength,” wrote former senator Ben Sasse in his traditional defence of this carry-on for the Wall Street Journal. “In a world of instant gratification, it teaches perseverance through early practices and aching muscles. In an era of isolation, football creates community. It forms brotherhood through both misery and joy. In a culture of passivity, football privileges action. In times of peace, football prepares us for war. Football simultaneously celebrates and constrains violence.”

Back in the real world, Chris Johnson, the former Tennessee Titans running back, announced earlier this summer he was battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and needed a speech-generating machine to communicate. He is 40 years old. Amid the fallout, it was reported that NFL players are four times more likely to be diagnosed with this disease than any other demographic. Research is now trying to definitively establish whether this is because of all the jarring hits they deliver and receive.

In the meantime, enjoy the delights of another NFL season. Gift that keeps on giving. Sport that keeps on killing.

And while those physical structures bore the evidence of the work that has gone in to getting the site ready for an anticipated crowd of 70-75,000, with all the logistical issues involved, the anticipated presence of Doonbeg’s owner, US president Donald Trump, has brought further contingency measures into play.

A fortified helipad has been constructed for the landing of Marine One, which is expected late on Saturday and possibly while the third round is under way.

“It’s a possibility that that could happen,” said tournament director Paul Gillmon. “If that was to happen, it would be kept to an absolute minimum to not disrupt play and keep the players moving.

“We’re working with the relevant authorities to manage whatever the final schedule is, which at this point is still unknown, and if there is a scenario where it needs to come in during play, then we will work to mitigate against that as best we can.

“The White House and the (US) Secret Service keep the logistics close as to their own plans and will inform us of the exact timings in due course.

“We’ve put in place measures so that we can communicate with all stakeholders as to what’s happening. We’ve worked with the tournament team in terms of what the scenario would be if he has to come in during play and we will execute on that, if and when it’s confirmed.”

Certainly, this will be an Irish Open like no other, given all the different contingencies that have been put in place, both from a security point of view and a logistical one with the links set amid high dune lands and special areas of conservation.

“It’s been an incredible 12 months working with Doonbeg, the venue, and also the local community who’ve been really engaged, been really supportive. We’re at a world-class golf links, an absolutely fantastic course, and the work that they’ve done on the course in the last year has been incredible.

“We’ve also made various modifications to facilitate the spectators around the course. It’s no different to 2024 at Royal County Down, similar challenges with the high dunes and the tight sort of fairways. We’ve made accommodations and it should be a great viewing for everyone across the course,” said Gillmon.

The decision to take the Irish Open to Doonbeg was confirmed in June 2025, which left more than a year for the project to be planned and completed. Aside from the preparation of the links itself, which included a redesign of the 18th hole, there were also considerations to be made regarding possible protests around the tournament by those who don’t believe it should be staged at a Trump course.

“Everybody is entitled to their opinion. This is a world class links golf course. The Amgen Irish Open is always trying to play on the best golf courses that Ireland has to offer for the players and the spectators. That’s our position on us coming to Doonbeg,” said Gillmon.

“I think you’ve seen across the world of golf, there have been protests all around the world for various causes. We take it very seriously. We also respect everyone’s right to freely protest their cause, and we have protocols and things to mitigate and keep the tournament moving and keep everything civilised.”

The optics of a former president of Ireland stepping down as chairperson of a body charged to bring about integration of the three bodies is regrettable for all involved.

But when her exit is accompanied by a scattergun of scathing criticism directed at the GAA’s leadership – accusing the association’s management committee of being “less than impressive” and “lacking in vision” – it’s clearly a very damaging development.

McAleese says she does not believe integration of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association will happen under the current GAA leadership.

“Probably not under the current management, I’d have to say,” she told RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport programme on Tuesday evening.

McAleese was appointed independent chairperson of the Steering Group on Integration (SGI) in September 2022. In February 2024, a timeline for full integration in 2027 was announced at a press conference in Croke Park at which McAleese and the leadership of all three organisations were present.

And while McAleese had remained steadfast in her belief the timeline would be met for April 2027, there had been reservations expressed by some of the parties involved, and the GAA had indicated privately they did not believe it was possible to bring the organisations under the one umbrella by that date.

The GAA then wrote to the SGI on Monday formally seeking to pause the process and push out the target date by possibly up to five years. The correspondence proved one obstacle too many for McAleese.

GAA management committee ‘lacking in vision’, says Mary McAleese after stepping down as integration chair

And with her departure, so too goes the 2027 aspiration. It will not now be met.

“I’m absolutely devastated,” she stated. “I’ve given four years of my time to this and four years is a lot.”

McAleese believes the “momentum has faded” for integration within Croke Park and delivered a damning perspective of the GAA top brass.

“I did meet the management committee, and a body, quite frankly, that was less than impressive and very disappointing to me as a long-term GAA supporter to meet a body so lacking in vision for the future of the GAA.

“But it boils down to, in their view, finances, which incidentally we had taken great trouble to meet their concerns [about] and to have answers for their concerns that were more than credible and more than workable.

“But I also suspect, and I hate to say this, but I suspect that there are people who are not entirely happy about the idea of including women in decision making at the top level of Gaelic sports.”

The three fs of finance, facilities and fixtures have been big sticking points in the discussions but McAleese says progress had been made on those fronts.

“They’ve blocked our progress, they’ve blocked our plan and they have no other plan currently.

“I was shocked to hear the current president of the GAA [Jarlath Burns] say [in correspondence] that, in fact, he didn’t really support the idea, having supported it up to now at all our meetings, but that he was in favour of federation.

“Honestly, somewhere in recent months, the leadership is not evident and the commitment to integration has evaporated, in my view.”

On the impact of the fallout, she added: “I’m broken hearted for the players, and in particular I’m broken hearted for the parents of young girls.

“I think of my own daughter who is up to her ears in the local GAA, and the women who have given so much to the GAA, who will see this rightly, in my view, as a slap in the face.”

Camogie Association president Brian Molloy also expressed disappointment there had been a distinct move away from the agreed timeline.

Molloy said: “Like Mary, I too was disappointed with the decision to step back from the agreed goal of one Association by 2027. I believe that while there were significant concerns, none were insurmountable.”

The LGFA said it was surprised by McAleese’s resignation.

“This comes somewhat unexpectedly, given what we understood to be constructive discussions at the latest meeting of the steering group on Monday evening regarding the integration process,” stated the LGFA.

“The LGFA remains fully committed to the integration process and to working with the GAA and Camogie Association on its next steps. We continue to believe that integration represents the best opportunity to strengthen Gaelic games for current and future generations, creating a more unified, inclusive and sustainable structure that will support players, volunteers, clubs and communities across the island.”

The GAA is now to meet the Minister for Sport, Patrick O’Donovan, on Wednesday to explain their part in the unravelling of the integration project.

“We will see what they’re saying and outline our concerns with what we have heard,” the Minister said. “Integration is really important for the Government and remains an absolute priority for me as minister.”

Late on Tuesday night the GAA released a statement that thanked McAleese for her work over the past four years, and also stated:

“The next phase of the project will be to distil the substantial and constructive feedback received from a wide range of stakeholders into a refined set of key principles and structures, and to derive a detailed and sequential workplan, all of which will be advanced in 2027.”

Those next steps will be watched with interest.

Dublin Airport said airlines are operating a full schedule of flights on Wednesday following a “challenging day” on Tuesday, with about 90 flights to and from Dublin being cancelled.

Here’s everything you need to know if your flight is delayed or cancelled.

What happened with flights on Tuesday?

A “technical issue” at the air traffic control services provider Nats caused Britain’s third major stoppage in just over three years.

Nats provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports. The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.

By the time Nats said it had fixed its flight processing system almost four hours later, most flights scheduled to depart were yet to take off.

Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted.

Cancellations and delays continued through Tuesday evening, and British Airways said disruption would affect operations into Wednesday at least, with passengers offered free rebooking until Friday.

What exactly is this “technical issue”?

Nats initially announced at 1.46pm on Tuesday that it was “investigating a technical issue which was causing some disruption to flight departures”. It later identified the problem in its flight processing system, and announced at 4.40pm that it was fixed.

A spokesperson said the fault was not the same as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025. “We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery. We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline,” it said.

Further flight disruptions expected after UK air traffic control breakdown

The chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, was scheduled to brief the UK transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, on Wednesday over the breakdown.

The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.

Airlines have renewed calls for Nats to be overhauled.

So, what should I do?

The first thing is to keep in touch with your airline. It might also be worth keeping an eye on the airport’s live arrivals and departures pages as well as the airport you’re hoping to fly into.

Dublin Airport said airlines are operating a full schedule of flights on Wednesday but passengers should “keep in contact with their airline directly to get the latest updates on the status of their flight”.

The airport also said the “significant upheaval” on Tuesday means the possibility of some disruption across the wider flight network in Europe remains on Wednesday.

My flight has been cancelled. What are my rights?

Under EU Regulation 261 airlines are obliged to offer passengers affected by cancellations a full refund or a rerouting on the next available flight or at a later time that suits the passenger. If you opt for a refund, the airline’s responsibility to you ends there and then. If you ask to be put on the next available flight then the airline must provide care and assistance until you can be accommodated on an alternative flight.

Care and assistance? What does that actually mean?

If you are overseas and trying to get home, the airline must provide you with meals and refreshments. If necessary, it will have to cover the cost of hotel accommodation and transport between the hotel and the airport and you will have to be offered two free telephone calls and access to email.

There is no one from the airline at the airport and I can’t get through to their help desk. Who is going to give me money for the hotel? And indeed find me a hotel?

The days of airlines being on hand to ferry passengers facing cancellations to airport hotels have long gone in many instances, but that does not mean your rights are gone.

If you can’t make contact with the airline or it does not provide the care and assistance it is legally obliged to at the moment you need it, then you should make your own reasonable arrangements. It is to retain all receipts because you will need them to claim back the reasonable expenses.

Reasonable expenses? What does that mean?

The definition is pretty loose. If you check into a five-star hotel and eat and drink all around you at the fanciest of French restaurants while waiting to get home and then look to be reimbursed, you can expect to be disappointed. If you stay in a modestly priced hotel and eat in modestly priced restaurants while you are waiting for the problems to be resolved, then you will be able to claim that money back. Ultimately it is aviation regulators across the EU who decide what is reasonable.

How do I claim back expenses incurred?

Passengers should send copies (it is very important the original documentation is never sent in case it goes missing) of all receipts to the airlines on which they booked flights. Submissions should include booking references, passenger names, original and new flight details.

I don’t think my flight is going to be cancelled but it looks like it is being delayed. Do I have any rights in this case?

You do. If you are facing a delay, the airline must also provide you with care and assistance. If you are left hanging around in an airport it must cover reasonable cost of meals and refreshments. The point at which airlines must step in with help depends on the length of the journey. It should be after a two-hour delay on flights up to 1,500km, after three hours for flights of between 1,500km and 3,500km, and four hours on longer flights. If your flight is delayed by more than five hours, an airline must offer you the choice of continuing with your journey or a refund of the cost of your ticket.

Am I entitled to compensation outside of reasonable expenses from my airline?

That is most unlikely and we can’t stress that enough. The issue is likely to be considered an eventuality outside of the airline’s control, in which case compensation does not apply. We have heard of many instances where legitimate claims for expenses to be reimbursed are rejected by airlines because passengers mistakenly say they are looking for compensation.

Gold-plated government

When Singapore’s prime minister Lawrence Wong told parliament on Tuesday that his government was accepting the recommendations of an independent panel on ministers’ pay, he acknowledged the increases involved were more than many Singaporeans earn in a year. But he said even with a civil service that is the envy of the world, institutions don’t run themselves and good government depended on good leadership.

“Companies understand this very well. That is why boards spend so much time on succession planning. They know that people at the top determine the quality of decisions, the calibre of their team, and ultimately what the organisation can achieve,” he said.

The changes announced on Tuesday will increase Wong’s salary from S$2.2 million (€1.5 million) to S$3.6 million (€2.45 million) with other ministers, political office holders and members of parliament also getting big pay hikes. Wong said he would donate his increase to good causes, although he made clear that he did not want to set a precedent that would put pressure on his successors to follow suit.

Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of Singapore’s economic and governmental model since it became independent in 1965, believed high salaries were necessary to bring the best talent into government. Champions of high pay for politicians point to the fact that Singapore is one of the world’s most successful economies and one of the least corrupt.

A system introduced in 1994 and revised in 2007 benchmarks ministerial salaries against the median income of the top 1,000 earners in the country who are Singapore citizens, with a 40 per cent discount to reflect the public service ethos. Ministers can earn a bonus worth up to six months of salary based on four national indicators: the unemployment rate; real income growth for the lowest 5 per cent of Singaporean earners; real income growth for the median Singapore citizen, and GDP growth.

Only MPs can serve as ministers but the ruling People’s Action Party routinely recruits business leaders and senior officials to run as candidates for election with a view to appointing them to government. Wong told parliament on Tuesday that the most important quality in any minister is character and that if someone did not have the integrity, values and commitment to serve, it did not matter how capable they were.

“But character alone is not enough. Ministers also need competence – the judgment, ability and leadership to do the job well. And this is where remuneration becomes relevant. It does not determine who is capable. But it does affect whether enough capable people are prepared to step forward and take on the responsibility,” he said.

Wong said politicians in other countries shied away from the issue of politicians’ pay because of the public backlash but often allowed ministers and MPs to make extra money outside politics. Others saw former ministers earn large fortunes after leaving politics by leveraging their contacts in government as well as their experience and judgment.

“I meet many people around the world who study governments and public policy. Again and again, they point to Singapore as a model of effective government, and an inspiration for others. We have sustained these standards for so long that they can start to feel normal to Singaporeans. But they are not normal elsewhere – and they are certainly not guaranteed here either,” he said.

“We did not build this record of good government because Singaporeans are inherently better than others, or because good government somehow comes naturally to us. We achieved it through deliberate choices made over many decades about how our political system should be designed and how it should work. One of those choices was to deal with political remuneration openly.”

Please let me know what you think and send your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com

The attacks came after the US said it had destroyed five Iranian oil tankers, in a sharp escalation of the six-month-old war.

Increased attacks by ​both the US and Iran have shattered a month of relative calm, hitting military, shipping and energy assets, sending oil prices surging and drawing in regional allies in recent days.

The Americans said they destroyed five Iranian oil tankers on Tuesday. The US military’s Central Command posted video of the strikes, which it called a response to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) targeting a US warship twice with ballistic missiles over the previous two days. No Americans were harmed, the US said.

“Iran ​continues to try to hit US naval ships, and for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers,” US secretary of state Marco Rubio told reporters during a visit to Colombia.

Iran then carried out ⁠a ballistic missile attack on a base used by US forces near Al Azraq in Jordan, according to an IRGC statement on state media.

Although Iran said its missiles inflicted ‌heavy ‌damage, Jordan ​said its air defences intercepted 18 of the 20 Iranian missiles, with two falling in unpopulated areas, and that there were no casualties.

A US official said Iran’s strikes in Jordan were ineffective and all American troops were accounted for.

The IRGC said on Wednesday it also attacked 10 ships, including two ⁠US vessels and eight oil tankers, attempting to cross a “prohibited and unsafe” area ​of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital energy conduit largely choked off by Iranian attacks.

Iran has ​targeted US assets and allies in the region throughout the war, including in Jordan several times, killing at least two US military personnel during one strike in July.

Iran has also threatened oil tankers in Kuwaiti ‌and Bahraini ports, according to a statement carried by state media. A maritime ​security source reported a liquefied natural gas tanker was damaged in the Emirati port of Khor Fakkan, though it was unclear who was responsible.

Oil prices extended gains in early trade ⁠on Wednesday with Brent crude nearing $100 a barrel on market concerns over the disruption of ⁠oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. ​

Recent attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis on Saudi Arabia have added to supply concerns.

On Tuesday, Houthis launched an attack on several cities in Saudi Arabia, further undermining regional stability.

The Houthi attacks wounded 73 people and set oil installations ablaze in what appeared to be a major expansion of the conflict, which began on February 28th with joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

The Houthis, who control most of Yemen’s populated areas, including the capital, have further pressured US allies by periodically disrupting shipping on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, at the entrance to the Red Sea.

They said they had launched a broad operation deep into Saudi territory, using drones and missiles to strike a Saudi airbase in the southern city of Khamis Mushait as well as Saudi state oil company assets in the cities of Abha, Najran and Jazan.

Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition battling against the Houthis in Yemen for more than a decade, after the Houthis drove the Yemeni government from the capital. That war had calmed in recent years, but a ceasefire there has broken down. – Reuters

Those sliding doors are among the few artefacts still operational from the subterranean superstructure that existed underneath the World Trade Center complex a quarter of a century ago. The markings were made by rescuers two days after the atrocity which New York City will remember this weekend. The X denoted an unsafe area, the date of 9/13 confirms that it was searched two days after the towers came down.

On Tuesday, as the city bears into what will be a heavy week of remembrance, it was difficult to avoid the ongoing politicisation and political ramifications of the horrors of that day set against the rolling stories of extraordinary valour, and kindness, and heartbreak which sprang from it. In the morning, mayor Zohran Mamdani held a conference, flanked by family members of those lost to mark the release of some 170,000 previously withheld city records on the air quality in and around lower Manhattan in the days after 9/11.

An estimated 9,000 people, many of them among the secondary responders who worked for nine months through the unfathomable wreckage, have died from 9/11-related illnesses since. That figure will only grow in the years ahead, even as the day itself recedes into history.

“Now, close to twenty-five years later more people have died from 9/11-related illnesses than were killed on the day itself,” the mayor said.

“It would be one thing if government stood alongside survivors and provided them with everything they needed every step of the way. And yet we know that could not be further from what actually happened. People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air. And then, when they began to contend with the symptoms of the illnesses that followed the government that had not hesitated to send them into harm’s way was nowhere to be found.” Among the heavily-castigated city decisions that have come into focus was the advice given to downtown residents of homes close enough to have fallen under the extraordinary dust-cloud which rumbled through the lower part of Manhattan island that morning.

“The city began covering their ass three weeks in, in a memo; the memo is entitled ‘legislative alternatives to the fiscal responsibility for 9/11,” the comedian and television show host Jon Stewart, who has been part of the campaign group, said at the conference.

“These people had to fight sick and dying for years. There was poison on the ground and in the windowsills and in your air conditioners and covering your pets and your clothes. And it stayed there for months. Everyone knew. And now it’s very clear that the city knew as well. And rather than take the steps that would ameliorate the damage that would cause to its citizens, and to the people that were down there, they instead covered it up to get back to business as usual. But unfortunately, business will never be usual again. So, I just want to say that people standing up here are heroes.”

The jihadists who inspired 9/11 have something in common with Donald Trump

The release of the information was at once a victory for the campaigners and another example of the ways in which the after-effects of the al-Qaeda attacks continue to intrude on thousands of New York families.

“We knew that the air was not safe to breathe. We have to remember that the federal government and epa all said it was ... even though there was that horrible acrid smell in the air for days and weeks, we were told to stay downtown,” Julie Menin, the speaker of the New York City council, who lost her mother to a 9/11-related illness, said on CNN on Tuesday. She grew up in a home close to the World Trade Center.

“What the federal government did in those first few days was they told us to stay downtown. They told us time and time again that the air was safe to breathe even though it’s not rocket science to know clearly it was not: you could smell it in the air. In the first early days when the towers fell you could barely see a couple of inches in front of you and the toxins that were in there- asbestos and pcbs and environmental toxins were obviously incredibly detrimental.”

Almost a quarter of a century later, the complexity of how to remember 9/11, and honour those who were murdered, requires a kaleidoscopic lens by New Yorkers. It’s a deeply sombre and painful week for the city- and still unbearable for those who lost loved ones and who directly survived the attacks. It is also a heavily symbolic week of remembrance- a true inflection point- for the United States in general. The broadcast networks have run the famous documentaries about the day itself and a poignant feature on the history of the ‘Windows on the World’ restaurant, which was, briefly, the most sought-after restaurant table in the city. All week, individual fire houses are holding ceremonies. Social media has been filled with the brief tributes to the extraordinary lives of the unknown people who went to work in the towers that day, and of the first responders who rushed to their aid. The photographs of many young faces, dated and frozen in the fashion and hairstyles of the day, have acquired a terrible articulacy all on their own.

Against that, the hopeless partisan divide which has come to define American political discourse has begun to dominate the official element of Friday’s remembrance ceremony. Rudy Giuliani, feted as a hero as New York City’s mayor in the days and weeks after 9/11, has publicly called on Mamdani not to attend Friday morning’s official ceremony at the World Trade Center. “Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he is coming.”

In a separate request, John McDevitt, president of the Port Authority Retired Police Association, called for Mamdani and two other Democrat politicians not to attend, as the day should be ‘a solemn day of remembrance’ and not a ‘political occasion, a photo opportunity or a platform for public officials.’ An online petition started by Giovanni Galante, made a widower that morning, asking the mayor not to attend had gathered some 101,000 names by this week.

Mamdani, the first Muslim to hold the office of mayor, has become a figurehead for Republican politicians eager to spotlight the socialist dimension of the Democratic Party, often with blatantly Islamophobic messaging. He has been criticised for marking previous 9/11 remembrances with social media messages focusing on the deaths caused by the Bush administration war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan more than on those killed in the World Trade Center attacks.

This week will represent a solemn inquisition of his political skills and instincts. A new Suffolk poll found that 56 per cent of New Yorkers believe Mamdani is doing a ‘good or excellent’ job in his first year while a further 17 per cent find his performance fair. 74 per cent believe he should be at the World Trade Center ceremony.

For his part, Mamdani has been steadfast in his commitment to honouring those who lost their lives at Friday’s ceremony. All four living retired presidents- Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George W Bush – will be at the ceremony; president Donald Trump will be represented by his vice president, JD Vance.

“I think that the focus of memorial services should be on the New Yorkers who were killed that day, their families, the survivors, the first responders. I don’t think it should be on politicians,” Mamdani said on Tuesday, declining to comment when asked whether he believed then mayor Giuliani had ‘lied’ to the city about the air safety in the weeks afterwards.

“I leave it to New Yorkers to make their judgments. What we want to do is finally allow them the documents that they have long been demanding.”

25 years later: ‘A couple of days before every 9/11 you get that sick feeling in your stomach’

A confidential financial report for senior HSE management, dated August 28th, says income was down by €55.9 million to date, with hospitals “severely impacted by the move of consultants to public-only consultant contracts (POCC)”.

In a statement, the HSE later confirmed that the full income impact of the new POCC contracts indicate a 2026 shortfall in private patient income of approximately €145 million.

Under this new arrangement, senior doctors in hospitals received higher salaries in return for the elimination of rights to treat fee-paying patients in public facilities.

Both hospitals and doctors received money from payments made – predominantly by health insurers – in relation to private patients treated in public hospitals.

Private practice in public hospitals will be phased out over time as consultants with contracts allowing them to see fee-paying patients retire. Private practice rights for doctors who signed up to the new public-only contract expired at the end of last year. All newly appointed consultants work under the public-only contract.

The internal HSE Cost and Productivity Oversight Group report specifically says “income remains significantly challenged due largely to impact of POCC roll out” in the HSE Mid West region.

The report indicated the HSE had recorded an overall deficit to the end of July of €577 million.

“Overspend is system-wide, with all six health regions reporting adverse variances. (They) range from 3.3 per cent in the West/North West to 6.7 per cent in Dublin Midlands.

“Regions collectively account for €446.5 million (77.3 per cent) of variance while corporate and national services contribute a further €131.4m (22.7 per cent).”

The report indicates that while spending on staff for the health service secured through agencies – which is more expensive than personnel appointed through regular recruitment – had reduced, it is still €56 million more than projected.

“Year to date agency expenditure (is) €476 million versus ceiling of €419.6 million, an adverse variance of €56.4 million (13.4 per cent),” notes the report.

“Variance has improved compared to the June year-to-date position (14.7 per cent). Agency spend continues to reduce. July spend is €0.82 million below June spend (with July having 31 days – 23 working days) versus 30 days (21 working days) in June”, the report says.

In a statement, the HSE said that the new POCC contracts “continues to be monitored” but that “current projections indicate a 2026 shortfall in private patient income of approximately €145 million".

“The HSE received €100 million in additional Exchequer funding in 2026 in recognition of the anticipated shortfall in private patient income," it added.

At the weekend, Minister for Public Expenditure Jack Chambers said “additional controls” would be introduced by Government to ensure greater financial management of the health service.

He was responding to an Irish Fiscal Advisory Council report which found that the health deficit increased from €0.4 billion to €0.7 billion in August – leaving it on track to be the second largest health overspend in more than a decade.

Chambers told RTÉ Radio’s This Week programme: “There has been ineffective implementation by the HSE of the controls that were agreed and were directed by Government in the last number of months and I’m very clear that there’s going to have to be further corrective action taken within the HSE about ensuring that there’s a strengthened control environment.”

In May, HSE chief executive Anne O’Connor placed three regions – Dublin and South-East, Dublin Midlands, and the South West – in what is known as tier-three escalation, which introduced employment controls and greater scrutiny on spending.

Paddywagon was fined €3,000 and told to pay costs of €2,700 at Ennis District Court on Monday after it pleaded guilty to charges connected with ferrying people to and from the cliffs without a licence issued by the public transport watchdog.

Less than 24 hours after the court case went against it, the tour operator was still selling trips to the cliffs, which attract more than 1.5 million visitors annually making them the most popular tourist attraction in the State.

It was the most prominent tour listed on the Paddywagon website, with the company offering trips to the cliffs from Dublin, Cork and Limerick with tickets costing between €64 and €75.

Trips for smaller groups from Dublin city were priced at €129 with would-be travellers warned that they were popular and “likely to sell out” soon.

Not only were trips still on the table despite the legal bill that Paddywagon was left with for selling them earlier this year, the operator was encouraging people to sign up with the promise of discounts of more than 10 per cent to anyone who made a booking before midnight on Tuesday.

When The Irish Times went through the booking process, it was quoted a price of €65.60 for a tour leaving from Dublin’s O’Connell Street at 7.45am on Wednesday.

The case against the tour operator was taken by the National Transport Authority (NTA) and came after two of its agents posing as tourists boarded a Paddywagon service bound for Clare outside the Merrion Hotel in Dublin in April.

The court was told of aggravating factors including a conviction for the same offence 12 months previously and the fact that 24 hours before the court hearing the Paddywagon website was still advertising trips to the Cliffs of Moher.

The NTA also said it had issued 15 warning letters to Paddywagon over the continuation of the service.

Paddywagon’s legal representative told the court that the tour operator admitted the offence and said its application for the service was with the NTA but its licence application had yet to be approved.

The Irish Times has contacted Paddywagon for comment.

“But weren’t you at your grandmother’s family wake yesterday?” Well, exactly, I thought. Yes, I said.

“Did your whole family have a bender or something?” she asked, half-joking, half in disbelief. Fair question, I thought. Let’s see if I can actually explain this.

My grandmother had been to her own brother-in-law’s wake only a couple of weeks before she died, in Limerick. She delivered her famous rendition of The Hills of Shanagolden at the graveside in the afternoon, then drank everyone under the bar that evening.

After she died her funeral followed that familiar shape.

Her remains came home to the living room in which my grandmother had raised generations. There was no guest list. Neighbours, distant cousins, the postman, people I did not recognise, all of them were welcome to walk through the door, murmur a prayer and stand with my grandmother for a moment, see her one last time.

Twenty of us crowded into that same room hours later as the undertaker put the lid on the coffin. At Mass the next morning, the church was fuller than usual, with parishioners alongside those who hadn’t seen the inside of a church in years. At the burial, prayers that many only half-remembered, were recited as my grandmother was lowered into her grave.

And then, after the hotel lunch that followed, almost without anyone deciding it, the whole thing moved into the bar next door, where the stories started up again. My cousin asked if I’d have a drink in my grandmother’s honour, so I ordered her favourite cocktail, Sex on the Beach, which she always loved ordering for its fruity taste and risqué name.

The importance of ensuring a ‘good Irish death’ in Britain

My English friend found the drinking part bewildering. Surely a funeral isn’t meant to be some kind of party? But it was the part before that, I realised, that she actually couldn’t get past.

“Is this not a bit much?” she asked. “The body, I mean. In the living room. Is that not hard to look at?”

I told her it was hard, of course it was, but that the hardness was partly the point. Seeing her dressed in her own front room, in the place she had actually lived, and seeing she was no longer alive, was what let the whole thing become real. Seeing it was believing it.

My friend wasn’t being squeamish, I don’t think. She comes from a place where death is handled at a careful distance, and where that distance is its own kind of care: nobody is made to look at something before they’re ready, nobody’s last image of a person forced on them. I could see the sense in that, once she put it to me. I just couldn’t quite feel it.

I tried picturing her version properly, with a closed casket and a funeral arranged for whenever the family could manage it. Solemn, I thought, but only solemn. And contained, even in its seriousness.

“It isn’t really meant to have any joy about it,” she said.

“None at all?”

She thought about it. “Not really, not how you mean. You’re not supposed to look happy. Otherwise, people start to wonder whether you loved the person at all,” she told me.

That’s the bit I keep coming back to. Because the whole of what I’d just described to her, the rosary, the silence, the Mass, the burial, then the cocktails, doesn’t fit into one register.

We tell loud stories and we sit in silence. We cry and we celebrate. None of this gets rationed out in the correct order. My grandmother had just turned 80. She had three children, 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren and a 60-year marriage. How can all of that fit into sadness alone?

By the end of the call, my friend was still not about to change the way she planned her own family’s future funerals. We hadn’t agreed on much. We’d each worked out, a little better, what we actually believed and why. A bender, she’d called it, right at the start. A funeral, I told her. A bit of a bender, I guess. But it was so much more than either. It was our way.

Hugo Harvey is a writer and presenter from Cork who has lived across France and the UK.

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At least 177 flights scheduled for Wednesday to and from UK airports had been cancelled, plane tracking site Flightradar24 said, “nearly all at London Heathrow”. More than 1,000 were cancelled by about 8pm on Tuesday.

Dublin Airport said airlines are operating a full schedule of flights on Wednesday following a “challenging day” on Tuesday, with around 90 flights to and from Dublin being cancelled.

“Airlines worked throughout the night to reposition their aircraft, ensuring our busy first wave of flights was able to get underway as normal,” it said.

“Dublin Airport remained open overnight to accommodate and assist the many passengers who had been left stranded in Dublin as a result of yesterday’s disruption.”

The airport said the “significant upheaval” on Tuesday means the possibility of some disruption across the wider flight network in Europe remains on Wednesday. “Passengers, as always, should keep in contact with their airline directly to get the latest updates on the status of their flight,” it added.

The “technical issue” at the air traffic control services provider Nats caused Britain’s third major stoppage in just over three years.

The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.

We’re pleased to report that airlines are operating a full schedule of flights at Dublin Airport today (Wednesday).

This follows a challenging day yesterday, when air traffic control issues in the UK resulted in around 90 flights to and from Dublin being cancelled.

Airlines… pic.twitter.com/xdWNOliCFl

— Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) September 9, 2026

By the time Nats said it had fixed its flight processing system almost four hours later, most flights scheduled to depart were yet to take off. The disruption spread to include incoming flights to much of southern England.

Cancellations and delays continued through Tuesday evening, and British Airways said disruption would affect operations into Wednesday at least, with passengers offered free rebooking until Friday. Nats provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports.

Ryanair said more than 65,000 passengers had been delayed and 50 flights cancelled. The knock-on effects hit flights across Europe, according to EasyJet. Some inbound flights had to be held at airports abroad, said Eurocontrol, the European airspace co-ordinator.

London airports, as well as Manchester and Birmingham, were among the most directly affected. Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted. Heathrow said late on Tuesday that departures had resumed with disruptions but arrivals had been suspended for the rest of the night.

Nats initially announced at 1.46pm that it was “investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures”. It later identified the problem in its flight processing system, and announced at 4.40pm that it was fixed.

A spokesperson said the fault was not the same as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025. “We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery. We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline.”

The chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, was scheduled to brief the UK transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, on Wednesday over the breakdown.

The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.

Airlines renewed calls for Nats to be overhauled.

Ryanair repeated its demand for Rolfe to resign. The airline’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, said: “Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for Nats’ abhorrent failure.”

He said the British government should “stop making excuses for repeated Nats failures and appoint a new leader capable of running the UK ATC system”. Additional reporting: PA

Hospital incomes have been hit by the move to public-only consultant contracts, notes a confidential HSE report seen by The Irish Times.

Paddywagon, the well-known tour operator, is continuing to sell packages to the Cliffs of Moher in Co Clare despite earlier this week being hit with a legal bill of over €5,000 for running coach trips there without the necessary documentation.

The Irish Rugby Football Union has launched a search for a development partner to deliver its proposed Lansdowne Quarter beside the Aviva Stadium. The development would include a 257-room hotel on a site next to the Lansdowne Road level crossing in Dublin 4.

While post-Brexit Britain wrestles with issues of identity and national characteristics, our London correspondent Mark Paul gets a seat in first class and a lesson in Englishness.

In the biggest change to parking controls since clamping was introduced almost 30 years ago, Dublin City Council is implementing a new enforcement model concentrating more on towing and fining illegal parkers and less on applying clamps.

The council has ended its association with Dublin Street Parking Services (DSPS), which has been clamping cars in the city since 2004, and has awarded a new five-year €51 million enforcement contract to rivals Apcoa Parking Ireland.

Although clamping will remain part of the enforcement armoury, controls and penalties will be more geographically defined, with the punishments for motorists dependent on the zone as well as the offence committed.

The city will be split into six “patrol zones” with a “permanent patrol presence” in each zone during peak hours, the council said, providing a tailored response for the area.

The first four zones encompass the primarily residential suburbs surrounding the city. In these areas, enforcement will concentrate on a rapid response to public complaints of illegal parking and obstructions. “The new contract will make public requests a priority,” the council said.

Closer to the city, in the area within the canals but excluding the central business district, the focus will be on “the movement of traffic and achieving vehicle removals and relocations” by towing vehicles motorists have illegally parked, blocking bus lanes or other traffic.

In the city centre, patrols using clamping vans are no longer seen as effective, and a system akin to traditional traffic wardens issuing fines is expected to be implemented. “From our research, we found that high traffic volumes restrict the mobility of vehicular crews. In this zone, parking enforcement operatives will patrol on foot,” the council said.

Green Party councillor and member of the council’s mobility committee Feljin Jose welcomed the emphasis on keeping the city moving.

“I do want to see greater levels of towing and relocating. If a car’s parked in a bus lane, clamping it in place isn’t going to make things better. Removing it is what needs to be done. The priority should be on keeping bus lanes, cycle lanes and footpaths clear.”

DSPS had been the city’s parking enforcer since 2004 when it took over from Control Plus, which won the council’s first clamping contract in 1998.

Apcoa had been due to take over the contract last month, but a legal challenge was mounted by DSPS owner Q-Park. “The challenge has now been withdrawn,” the council said, and Apcoa’s contract will start on November 1st. DSPS will continue clamping until then.

The firm, led by chief executive Gerard Casey, has told the five staff on its bond desk that their jobs are at risk. However, sources said some are expected to be redeployed within the company.

Cantor Ireland has informed the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) that it plans to resign as a primary dealer.

There was a two-year period earlier this decade when Cantor Fitzgerald Ireland was the only local primary dealer, between the time Davy was dropped by the NTMA in March 2021 amid the fallout from a Central Bank of Ireland fine and reprimand and Goodbody Stockbrokers being recognised by the agency as a primary dealer in June 2023.

“Cantor is redirecting focus to where we can deliver the greatest value for our clients, particularly in the expanding Irish wealth and investment management market,” said a spokesman for the firm. “We’re working in close partnership with the NTMA to ensure a smooth transition for all parties.”

The decision has come as a surprise to industry observers. An expected surge in public and private debt issuance by semi-State and private-sector companies in the coming years, as investment in infrastructure and the green transition accelerates, has prompted both Davy and Goodbody to invest in recent years on building up their bond desks. By contrast, activity on the equities side of their capital markets divisions has been affected by a slew of companies exiting the stock market.

Cantor’s bond desk has been focused on government bonds. It is led by head of debt capital markets, Peter Blessing, and includes traders and debt salespeople. He joined the company in 2013 as a trader from PTSB’s treasury unit and reports to David Tilson, head of capital markets, who joined the firm from Bank of Ireland three years ago.

The company has also pulled back its corporate finance offering in recent times. Its wealth and investment management business has almost €11 billion of client assets under management or advice.

Davy started rebuilding a bond desk from scratch in late 2022 under the ownership of Bank of Ireland, after the previous desk was closed and the entire firm put up for sale in March 2021 in the wake of the firm being hit by the regulatory fine and rebuke over a breach of market rules in a 2014 bond deal involving junior Anglo Irish Bank bonds.

Davy was recognised again by the NTMA early last year as a primary dealer and has a nine-member team, led by Michael Cummins, who was hired three years ago, including staff working on private debt placings.

The Goodbody Stockbrokers team has grown to nine people, across trading, distribution and advisory, from a two-man desk when that firm was acquired by AIB in 2021. It is headed by Garret Grogan.

However, the primary focus of Davy, Goodbody and Cantor Ireland is wealth and investment management, which is seen as an area that offers strong growth prospects against the backdrop of rising household wealth, a growing but ageing population, and, more recently, plans by the Government to set up a savings and investment scheme for small investors.

Total Irish net household wealth has grown 124 per cent over the past decade to €1.4 trillion, with average net wealth standing at €729,000 at the end of 2025, driven by property assets, according to a report published during the summer by Fordel, a high-net-worth wealth management firm.

On the beautiful day when we visit (at the end of the last academic term), the girls are playing games on the AstroTurf pitches while the boys are playing a form of golf on the undulating green space behind the school.

Activities, including squash, camogie, Gaelic football, hurling, rounders and volleyball, are led by cinnirí who also double up as house masters/mistresses in what is Ireland’s only Irish-language boarding school for primary-school-age children.

There are no day pupils.

Like all boarding schools, the day is filled with routines for meals, class, sports, study and free time before bed. But, what is most striking here is this small group of pupils haven’t got the company of younger pupils they would have in a regular primary school or older students if they were in the preparatory year of a secondary school.

Classes in Scoil na Leanaí – a typical 1960s-style Irish primary school building on the Coláiste na Rinne 10-hectare campus – end at 3.30pm. The pupils then change into sports gear for games until their evening meal is served at 6pm.

Later their daily routine continues with supervised study, supper and more activities before bedtime at 9.30pm. At weekends they go to traditional Irish music concerts or take trips to local beaches or other places of interest. They return home every third weekend.

Following the Department of Education primary school curriculum for fifth and sixth class through the medium of Irish, Scoil na Leanaí is run by Coláiste na Rinne as part of its wider promotion of the Irish language with short residential courses throughout the academic year and the summer months.

Olive Croke, the principal of Scoil na Leanaí, explains that the majority of pupils come from English language primary schools. “In September, most of them have very little Irish so, in the first month, we don’t do English, history or geography,” she says. “We focus on oral language by singing songs, doing poetry and getting their tongues around the syllables of the language.”

Inside the only girls’ boarding school taught entirely through Irish

Most of the teachers and the school’s language assistant are native Irish speakers, and this year’s cohort of pupils includes seven who previously attended a Gaelscoil. Most come from Dublin schools, with a sprinkling from Waterford, Kildare, Kilkenny and Galway.

Fees are €16,000 for the year.

Muireann Ní Dhomhnaill, chairwoman of the school board, and a former teacher and pupil at Scoil na Leanaí, says the children first need to learn the everyday phrases to communicate with the cinnirí, the nurse and diningroom staff. “It’s about building friendships, going for walks. It’s a graded approach. We start with junior-infants-level Gaeilge,” she says.

Croke says the school accommodates different levels of Irish with a lot of emphasis on speaking, listening to and understanding Irish. “It’s about seeing Irish as a living language,” she says.

“Anyone with an ability is pushed, yet we take care of those with additional needs. We don’t put the same pressure on grammar or spellings for anyone with a learning difficulty,” she adds.

The pupils don’t have access to mobile phones, but they can receive phone calls from their parents at three different times during the day on one of nine landlines in the corridor next to the school office.

“It’s a screen-free year for them – no television, no iPads and no internet. They have no access to mobile phones. If they own one, it is kept in the office until their bus journey home,” says Croke. She adds that since she started in the school in 1993, she has never heard any child say they miss not being able to watch television.

Ní Dhomhnaill says one advantage she sees with these young boarders is the conflict resolution skills they learn at an early age. “If there is an issue in a [day] primary school, they bring it home and the parents often get involved and it [can] escalate,” she says. “But here, the onus is on the child to resolve it with the guidance or a teacher, a cinnire or the nurse. That makes them more resilient in preparation for secondary school.

“You can read on a child’s face if something is upsetting them. You learn to read their emotions and find out if someone has taken their toothpaste, if they are feeling excluded, or if the family cat died.”

Seán Mac Gearailt, one of the three Scoil na Leanaí teachers, says that for some students, being at the school is their first exposure to a coeducational school environment. “Initially we are mindful that the girls sit with the girls and the boys with the boys, but we encourage them to mix,” he says.

The children sleep in separate girls and boys dormitory-style two-bed cubicles in the main building overlooking Dungarvan Bay. Collages of photos of family members and pets and cards adorn the walls of these shared spaces.

The boarding house supervisor sleeps in a room at the end of the corridor, and the nurse’s room is just around the corner.

Life at Ireland’s biggest boarding school: ‘I have so much more independence’

Nurse Catherine O’Brien says it is great to see how the children mature over the year. However, she gets to see them when they at their most vulnerable. “Sometimes friendships can be overwhelming for them or they are homesick. Often, when they come to me, all they need is a good cry, a one-to-one chat or an extra phone call home,” she says.

The school is governed by the Department of Education and the Catholic Church. “It has a Catholic ethos, but we accept all faiths. That said, 38 out of the 41 attend Mass,” says Croke. Two year ago Scoil na Leanaí got official recognition as a Scoil Gaeltachta. “Since then, we have links with the local Scoil Náisúnta, the Níonra and Meanscoil St Nioclás, attending cake sales, table quizzes and concerts.”

The school holds annual open days to encourage new pupils. They also promote the school at an event in south Dublin every year. However, even with these events, numbers are a quarter of what they were in the 1990s, which Croke attributes to pressure on secondary school places. “If they leave their feeder school to come here, they will lose their place in the secondary school,” she says.

Back on the campus, cinnirí Vivienne Uniacke and Clara Coughlan explain the pupil’s daily routines include putting out their washing to following the rota for their 10 minutes’ shower time and tidying their rooms before classes begin.

“They cry when they arrive because they have left their parents and are homesick. But then they cry again when they are leaving because they are sad because they are leaving the good friends they made,” says Uniacke.

Pupils’ experiences at Scoil na Leanaí

Olivia Kelly from Naas, Co Kildare

“I found it exciting to come here. You can get lonely sometimes, but we have so many friends. It makes you more independent and I like meeting people from different counties in Ireland.”

Gráinne Phelan from Co Waterford

“I love the sports – camogie and basketball are my favourites – and having fun with new people. I think we will make friends for life here as we are all so much closer.”

Lelia McKavanagh, Kinvara, Co Galway

“Irish was never my favourite subject and I wasn’t very good at it. I wanted to improve. Being here has made me more confident about going places by myself. The nurses are very kind and you can speak to them in private through English if you are upset.”

Oscar Boyle from Mount Merrion in Dublin

“I came here to learn Irish and become more independent before I go to boarding school. You get used to being so far from home, and we can speak to our parents once a day in the morning time, at lunchtime or in the evening.”

Luca Cullen, Rathmines, Dublin

“I was in an Irish school before, but this is a good opportunity to improve my Irish. I like the idea of living in a boarding school. We go home every two or three weeks, so I don’t miss living at home.”

Cúán Ó Muirí, Monkstown, Co Dublin

“I speak Irish at home so I was already fluent in Irish, but my teacher gives me extra work. I’m the youngest of six boys, and four out of five of my brothers came here. They said it was the best year of their life.”

The ombudsman revealed the complainant was failed after officers took no additional statements despite there being three potential witnesses, and did not listen to an allegedly threatening voice message sent to the victim.

The PSNI has previously apologised for “unacceptable failings” in their investigation into the death of the 21-year-old showjumper.

Simpson, from Tynan, Co Armagh, died in Altnagelvin Area Hospital almost a week after an incident in Gortnessy Meadows, Lettershandoney.

Police originally thought she had taken her own life.

It was not until the following year that Jonathan Creswell, the partner of Simpson’s sister, was arrested on suspicion of murder.

The trial of Creswell (36), for the murder of Simpson ended in April 2024 after he took his own life following the first day of proceedings.

After Creswell’s death a woman made a complaint to the Police Ombudsman raising concerns on how police had dealt with a report she made in January 2016, that he exposed himself to her at a horse yard in Co Antrim some months prior.

The ombudsman found a number of shortcomings in the police investigation, such as the officer that was initially assigned to the case recording only one witness statement during the four months she was in charge.

I covered the Katie Simpson case from the start. The police failures were appalling

No statements were obtained from three other witnesses, including a potential eyewitness.

A second officer subsequently allocated the case did not obtain any further statements, and neither officer listened to a recording of an allegedly threatening voice message sent by Creswell.

Furthermore, the ombudsman found the file submitted to the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) by the second investigating officer was inaccurate.

It stated that Creswell was known to police only for motoring offences, when he had previously been jailed for violent offending against a woman; and incorrectly stated that there was no outstanding evidence and no other witnesses in the case.

The PPS subsequently directed that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute but advised that if Creswell was interviewed about the allegation in future, the file could be resubmitted for further consideration.

When interviewed by Police Ombudsman investigators, the police officer initially assigned to the case said she would have obtained the outstanding witness statements if she had kept ownership of the investigation.

The second officer, who was allocated the case five months after the initial allegation, said he had not been instructed to obtain any further evidence and believed his role to have been in a monitoring capacity.

He added that he had not considered Creswell’s previous violent offending to be relevant to the case.

The Police Ombudsman’s Director of Investigations, Nikki Davis, said police “failed the complainant, both as a woman and as a victim”.

“Indecent exposure is a serious crime and can indicate a potential for escalating sexual offending, so it is important that reports are robustly investigated,” she said.

“We also know that sexual crime is underreported, and that it takes great courage for victims to go to the police.

“Unless reports of sexual offences are properly investigated, victims will be less likely to come forward, offenders will remain free to reoffend, and efforts to combat violence and sexual offending against women and girls will be undermined.”

She added: “Indecent exposure is a non-contact sexual offence and a form of sexual violence, so the prior conviction was entirely relevant and should have been disclosed to the PPS.

“It is widely acknowledged that police should be looking at behavioural patterns across incidents and seeking to identify where repeat offending might indicate escalating risk.

“That clearly did not happen in this case.”

The Police Ombudsman also found that the officers had made inadequate inquiries to locate and interview Creswell.

Davis did note that the officers had attempted to contact Creswell by phone, visited an address associated with him, made inquiries relating to his equestrian background and placed alerts on police systems about two vehicles linked to him.

In a misconduct file submitted to the PSNI, the Police Ombudsman recommended that the two officers should be disciplined for failing to properly investigate the case and not providing adequate updates to the complainant.

After considering the file, the PSNI determined that the issues identified would be better addressed by taking measures intended to improve the officers’ conduct.

Police Ombudsman investigators were unable to complete their inquiries into a separate allegation involving a different police officer who retired during the course of the investigation.

The complainant believed the officer was trying to stop her from talking to the media. Before retiring the officer provided a statement that he had called her to advise of the intended police response to a media query, and about how information about the case could be reported and used.

Although the complaint to the Police Ombudsman’s Office was initially closed, a fresh investigation was commenced upon receipt of further correspondence from the complainant. – PA

The global benchmark is less than $1 from triple figures after renewed fighting across the Middle East, while West Texas Intermediate traded near $94. The US military destroyed five Iranian tankers carrying crude in response to attempts to hit a US Navy warship with ballistic missiles, Central Command said.

Tehran responded by firing missiles at Jordan and warning ships in the Persian Gulf. All tanker crews near Kuwaiti and Bahraini piers should “immediately abandon their vessels, whether at anchor or docked, as they will be targeted,” Iran’s state TV reported, citing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The US strikes follow fresh attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants on energy facilities in southern Saudi Arabia, forcing several sites to halt operations. Hostilities have flared across the Middle East over the past week, ending a period of relative calm and driving oil prices higher.

“The path of least resistance is a strong and steady grind higher as the war enters seven months,” said Darrell Fletcher, managing director for commodities at Bannockburn Capital Markets. “The fundamental picture for products remains bullish with global inventories and reserves deteriorating. In the typical pattern, the US and Iran continue their counterattacks and warnings.”

Brent is up more than 60 per cent this year and is closing in on the $100-a-barrel mark for the first time since late July. Refined products such as diesel have rallied even harder this year as the Middle East conflict has broadened to the Red Sea near Saudi Arabia, alongside the Russia-Ukraine war. European natural gas prices rose for a fourth session after the latest US strikes.

The destroyed Iranian tankers belonged to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to US Central Command. The strikes mark an escalation in the US campaign against Tehran, which already includes a naval blockade that has significantly reduced the country’s oil exports.

Previous US attacks on Kharg Island focused on military assets, but president Donald Trump has threatened to target oil facilities and at times floated the idea of seizing the hub. Lying 24km off Iran’s mainland, the island is the loading point for around 90 per cent of the country’s crude exports.

“When they try to hit US naval ships, they will get hit themselves,” secretary of state Marco Rubio told reporters while visiting Colombia. “For every time they do that, or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers.”

Following the US strikes, the UK Maritime Trade Operations said it had received a report involving a merchant vessel in Hormuz. Reports indicate the ship “was subject to interaction as part of ongoing military activity in the region”.

Before the Iran war, about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas passed through Hormuz to global customers. Some crude is still being exported through the narrow waterway, often on tankers with their transponders switched off, but vessels face a persistent threat of attack.

Separately, a resurgence in Chinese buying has helped tighten the global oil market and boost prices for some grades. The pickup marks a reversal from recent months, when refiners tapped ample inventories to limit imports and shield themselves from soaring prices. Smaller processors, however, are being squeezed by higher crude costs and may be forced to cut run rates. -Bloomberg

In Ireland’s case, most people recognise that in many sectors of the economy we need legal migration to sustain our economic growth. The controversy here centres, as elsewhere, on uninvited economic migrants: those who are not fleeing persecution but are using asylum and international protection claims to enter the country and demand to be housed and provided for, with hopes of eventual family reunification rights, on the bogus basis of fear of state persecution in their countries of origin.

The concerns of ordinary voters with this form of migration posing as asylum-seeking are totally legitimate. The cost to us of allowing it to continue has run to billions of euro. It is, in my view, undeniably a significant part of the housing shortage with which the current coalition is struggling.

Migration is also a factor in the rapid growth in support for the AfD party in Germany. The party appears to be close to political control of Saxony-Anhalt, one of Germany’s smaller ex-DDR states. But migration has not been the only factor in its growth by any means; migration is lowest numerically in the former communist states of East Germany.

Economic migration posing as asylum seeking is part of a major international racket facilitated by ruthless people smugglers who enable and control transcontinental movement of would-be migrants for vast streams of money, scraped together by people in search of a better life in advanced liberal or social democratic societies.

Seeking a better life in a prosperous foreign state is perfectly understandable in the mindset of people living in struggling or failing states. The Irish diaspora is testament to that. Our emigrants are no longer the poor and downtrodden victims of famine and colonial oppression; but our best and brightest still seek out foreign shores in pursuit of what they believe is a better life. And if a claim of persecution would have guaranteed entry to the US, you can be sure that the legion of Irish “undocumented” going stateside would have ballooned over the last half century. But the US was not so naive as to admit every Irish emigrant who made a colourful case based on fear of persecution here.

The EU is under stress. Dissatisfaction among voters with centrist parties and coalitions is easily exploited and exacerbated by internal and external political forces. When conventional politicians fail to deal with uncontrolled migration, the way is left wide open for others to exploit.

Whether it is the Trump regime’s disgraceful stated strategy of talking up migration in Europe and intervening to offer support for anti-immigrant politics and parties such as the AfD, or whether it is mainly indigenous political activity, the result is the same – polarised European politics of failure.

The remedy is simple: political honesty. To oppose the abuse of the refugee conventions as a smokescreen for illegal migration is not racist or xenophobic. Milton Friedman was not wrong when he pointed out that highly socialised, sophisticated societies cannot sustain open borders.

If Europe’s borders are not effectively controlled, results like those in Saxony-Anhalt will multiply and European cohesion, such as it is, will crumble. The Schengen area is already compromised. Our common travel area is under stress, with Irish holidaymakers using car ferries to Britain forced to get passports for their infant children.

The much-vaunted EU migration pact is relatively useless for Ireland in the context of the common travel area and an open border with the North. The recently negotiated returns agreement with Nigeria will have a negligible effect. The ludicrous sight of French gendarmes watching hundreds of migrants boarding monster inflatables bound for England says it all.

We need a very different approach to asylum and international protection where EU member states’ parliaments – not the Court of Justice in Luxembourg or Irish courts administering EU law – decide on asylum issues. That involves fully devolving competence in asylum matters to the member states, in the same way as they already decide ordinary legal migration policy.

The justice and home affairs ministers of the EU need to demand such a change – especially if they want to keep Saxony-Anhalt from replicating across the EU. Ireland’s Justice Minister, Jim O’Callaghan, should start campaigning to that end.

Wringing their hands over the AfD and blaming uncontrolled social media is a risible reaction from the EU establishment. The 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol were never intended as the cover for mass economic migration and the people-trafficking rackets into which they have mutated. How long must we wait for that to sink in?

Lying around in the foyer were flyers from a special screening for the actors and creative team of the final series of Babylon Berlin, a popular television show about the end of German democracy and the rise of fascism.

Inside the cinema, one of the trailers was for Heimsuchung (Visitation), the new film by celebrated German film director Volker Schlöndorff. It uses lakeside summer cottage – and its changing owners over the decades – to retell Germany’s dramatic 20th century. (And will be shown next week at Leitrim’s Adaptation film festival).

Finally came the main feature: Vaterland (Fatherland), a monochrome masterpiece about the 1949 return visit of exiled writer Thomas Mann to the ruins of his now divided homeland. As the opening credits began to roll, I wondered: “Without its past, would Germany even have a film industry?”

A day later, the past came crashing into the present when nearly 600,000 voters, in a state two hours southwest of Berlin, backed the AfD.

The party is many things to many people, morphing from a single-issue anti-bailout party on its foundation in 2013 to a strident anti-Islam migration voice in the subsequent refugee crisis. In its current iteration, it is a broad-based nativist populist party with an authoritarian approach and nativist world view. It flirts with Trump, spouts pro-Russian narratives and rails against progressive family models and climate “madness”. This is not a Nazi Party 2.0, as many claim, yet 44 per cent of voters in Saxony-Anhalt backed a party that wants to end decades-long efforts to understand Nazi crimes.

In the AfD world view, grappling with Germany’s fascist past is a “guilt cult”. In power, it has promised to reorganise schools and memorials to prevent successive generations being “taken hostage” by history.

This is why Germany’s remaining Holocaust survivors are as alarmed by Sunday’s AfD victory as the operators of the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial. It warned on Monday: “For the first time since 1945, a right-wing extremist party might be government, one that defames confrontation with National Socialist crimes, has announced a historical pivot on this front and would have the power and resources to enforce it.”

It’s important to remember that the AfD, on 28 per cent support nationally, is a pan-German political project. Many of its key leaders and ideologues were born and raised in the old West Germany. But they saw in the soil of the former East Germany – authoritarian politics, post-industrial trauma – the perfect pH level for their project.

A people who remember a cradle-to-grave welfare state, and have forgotten the high price they paid for it, are doubly sensitive to the uncertain polycrisis of modern life.

A people who have been mocked as deplorables for 30 years, meanwhile, are particularly open to the AfD’s new suffering-to-salvation narrative, where those who vote for them are part of a new political avant-garde.

Two further conditions are key to complete this wounded pride-for-votes transaction.

First: take for granted the hugely positive elements of the post-unification transformation. Second: embrace scapegoating for your current woes, but also for the worst crimes of the past.

Today’s Saxony-Anhalt is located in the vanished socialist East Germany that, for 40 years until 1989, adopted an anti-fascist state narrative. With a wave of its magic wand, East Berlin declared that all surviving Nazis were in West Germany because – according to this wonky logic – it is impossible to have fascists in an anti-fascist state.

Unification

Not all East Germans embraced this sleight of hand, but enough of them did. But after unification in 1990, many struggled with a new and very different approach to history: an us-not-them framing, imported along with the Deutschmark from West Germany.

This approach, only formalised in the 1980s, views coming to terms with the past not as a one-off task but a permanent practice. The terms and conditions of being German today, it argues, should include a moral responsibility to inform oneself about the circumstances that made Nazi-era crimes possible. It is not a guilt cult where blame is passed on in perpetuity to each successive generation.

Many Germans – east and west – continue to honour this approach. But after 36 awkward years, however, others are delighted to embrace what the AfD offers: a historical off-ramp. The tension arises because they know everyone is watching what they are up to.

As German writer Siegfried Lenz once noted: the past is never past, it interrogates us in the present.

In his most famous book, The German Lesson (1968), a character in Nazi Germany implores another to wake up and “look around” at the proud strut of their fascist friends and neighbours: “What many considered impossible, those people are doing it now – and dare to do it.”

Sunday was another step in the impossible becoming one again possible. And the impossible is already reality for millions of Germans – in particular its vulnerable minorities.

Jewish friends, even the Israel-critical ones, say the ongoing tragedy in Gaza is the perfect alibi for violent anti-Semites to come for them. Germany’s Turkish community has already appealed to the state for extra funding for security. Meanwhile Berlin’s LGBT community, still reeling from July’s Pride parade attacks in the Tiergarten park, has had a double blow in the weeks since.

First, unknown attackers demolished a memorial park bench, painted in rainbow colours. Days later, a memorial tree planted near the attack site was ripped up.

Like a school of sorcerers’ apprentices, 44 per cent of voters in Saxony-Anhalt have summoned spirits of the past that promise a better future by sidelining Germany in the present.

With perfect timing, the fifth and final series of Babylon Berlin, set in the fateful year of 1933, will be released in Germany on Thursday.

“This isn’t a dance on the volcano any more,” observes one character, “we’re at the heart of the volcano.”

Almost a century on, Germany is climbing a different volcano – but things are heating up.

Social media platform X is facing an investigation over suspected breaches of the State’s online safety code. The commission’s investigation is the first under its online safety code. Any social media platform found to be in violation of the code faces fines of up to the higher of 10 per cent of relevant annual turnover or €20 million. Dominic Coyle has the details.

How hard is it to get a fridge delivered to your home? For John McManus it was not as straightforward as you might imagine. He details his experience in his column.

The Government’s personal investment accounts have been long trailed, but what if we’re too cautious to take advantage of them? Joanne Hunt looks at the issues at play in Money Matters.

Apple will unveil what is expected to be the biggest overhaul of its iPhone in nearly 20 years this evening. Ciara O’Brien goes through what is at stake for the tech giant.

The final wind-down of the National Asset Management Agency left a bill of almost €8 million in termination payments for staff this year. Ken Foxe reports.

A medical doctor, retired travel agent, taxi driver and a farmer are among the 20 parties involved in tax settlements with Revenue totalling €11.6 million between April and June this year. Stephen Conneely has the story.

The rate of apartment construction has not significantly surpassed levels observed in recent years, despite a number of policy measures enacted by the Government. As Killian Woods reports, Dublin City Council assistant chief executive Mick Mulhern, who heads the local authority’s housing division, told a conference in Dublin only half of apartment schemes granted permission in the city are proceeding to the development phase.

In Commercial Property, Ronald Quinlan reports that the IRFU is to seek expressions of interest for a partner to design, build, finance and operate a proposed hotel and apartment scheme, known as the Lansdowne Quarter, under a long-term ground lease, with the IRFU retaining the freehold interest in the site.

Also in Commercial Property, Ronald reports that private investors and family offices looking for an immediate return on their investment are expected to run the rule over the sale of a bespoke scheme of 17 newly completed apartments in Dublin 8.

If you’d like to read more about the issues that affect your finances try signing up to On the Money, the weekly newsletter from our personal finance team, which will be issued every Friday to Irish Times subscribers.

Holly Hewson, incoming president of the organisation, says there can be a lack of awareness and knowledge of the UK’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (Ucas) among students in the Republic.

“We know there are students who are very much capable, able and passionate enough about subjects, that they would thrive and do well in an environment like Oxbridge, but find that there isn’t maybe the representation or accessibility, and there’s a lot of myths about getting into Oxbridge,” she says.

Founded in 2022 by Paddy Hickey, an Irish graduate of law at the University of Cambridge, the organisation offers advice about each step of the Ucas process.

The Ucas application process is “a very different system to the CAO”, notes Donnchadh O’Mahony, guidance counsellor and founder of Find My College Course.

“For example, in the CAO, you could apply for up to 20 courses, whereas through Ucas, you can only apply for five. In fact, if you’re applying for medicine, you’re only allowed to apply for four medicine courses.”

He says applicants cannot apply to both the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in the same undergraduate application cycle.

Deadlines differ from the CAO too. “You generally have two deadlines,” he notes. There is an October deadline for applying to Oxford, Cambridge and most medicine, dentistry and veterinary courses, and a January deadline for most other undergraduate courses.

The application process also consists of answering three personal-statement questions and, depending on the course you apply for, possibly a test or interview.

Applicants will also have to provide an academic reference, which O’Mahoney recommends obtaining from the teacher of a subject related to the course you’re applying for. “So if you’re applying for engineering, it might be better coming from a physics or maths teacher,” he says.

Successful applicants will receive a conditional or an unconditional offer, depending on whether they have their Leaving Certificate results. A conditional offer means the UK university will give you a place on a course if your Leaving Certificate results end up meeting their specific grade requirements. An unconditional offer may be given if you have your Leaving Certificate results already, or have PLC (Post Leaving Certificate) results.

University is a chance to remake yourself. No one knows if you were shy at school

Under the Common Travel Area (CTA), students from the Republic are entitled to “home-fee” status in the UK, provided they meet the relevant residency requirements. This means they are not charged the higher international student fees. For the 2026/27 academic year, the maximum standard undergraduate tuition fee for eligible students from the Republic is £9,790 in England, Wales and Scotland. In Northern Ireland, the maximum fee for students from the Republic is £4,985 per year.

O’Mahoney notes that students from the Republic in the UK “can get out student finance”.

“You don’t start paying that back until after you graduate and you’re earning a certain amount of money,” he says.

Students who qualify for the Susi (Student Universal Support Ireland) maintenance grant can use it in UK universities, but cannot get their tuition fees paid for by Susi.

For those considering making the move, the experience of studying in the UK can offer something beyond the academic, according to those who have made the move themselves.

State-backed lender asked to examine loan schemes for medical graduates and electric vehicles

Hewson, who is from Co Leitrim and is going into her second year of law at the University of Cambridge, says the style of learning at Cambridge can be “incredibly intense”. However, she has found “such a good community and such a good network at Cambridge. You’re all kind of in it together.”

She feels the community is “probably the most undersold aspect” of studying in Britain. “I think you can really underestimate how willing people are to find people and make friends. There’s a lot of people over there who go in with no one, so it’s really easy, I think, to make friends in Cambridge.”

That same sense of community was found by Barra Duffy from Co Louth, who has just completed a degree in occupational therapy at Cardiff University in Wales. “There were a lot of Irish in my course, and other healthcare courses”, he notes. “There’s Gaelic football teams, there’s Irish societies in basically every university that you come across. So you’re never actually too far away from other Irish people.”

Duffy was drawn to Wales by the NHS Wales Bursary, a funding scheme for eligible students taking specific healthcare courses that covers tuition fees on the agreement that students will work in Wales for a specific period of time after graduating.

When asked if he would recommend Cardiff University to other Irish students, he said he has “genuinely loved it since the day I got here”.

He says finding accommodation “was so easy – literally no stress at all”, with lower rents than in the Republic.

For Simon Lynch from Co Donegal, who studies computer science at the University of St Andrews, “the quality of life in Scotland is much better”.

“I get the bus for free. There’s a bus every eight minutes from St Andrews to Dundee, and then every hour from St Andrews to Edinburgh airport, so it’s just fantastic,” he says. Anyone under 22 in Scotland can travel on buses for free.

Before completing his Leaving Certificate, Lynch received a conditional offer for the course at St Andrews, which required him to achieve 580 points, with a H1 in maths. “So even if I got 613 points but I didn’t have the H1 in maths, I wouldn’t have gotten in,” he says.

He feels that if you’re looking for a university of “high enough academic standing”, it would be worth considering the move to the UK. He notes he “wouldn’t go to somewhere that you could get in the Republic of Ireland”, given the costs associated with moving away.

Of course, applying to the Ucas system doesn’t necessarily mean leaving the island. Ryan McGeoghegan, also from Co Donegal, is going into his final year of studying quantity surveying at Ulster University.

He says choosing to go to university in Belfast wasn’t usual among his secondary school peers as “it might be a bit cheaper for families to send their children [to a university] closer to home”, but he has seen an increase in students from the South coming to the city in recent years.

McGeoghegan wanted to “go somewhere different, where I didn’t know many people, and have the opportunity to meet other people”.

He says going to Ulster University was one of the best decisions he has made. This year, he will be the chairman of the university’s GAA club, noting the club has “three GAA pitches on the go at the minute”, with around 120 players last year.

While some students in Britain find a strong Irish community, others say the experience can allow you to step outside familiar circles.

Ellen Smith from Dublin, who is going into her final year studying history at the University of Oxford, says there are not many Irish students in her year group. “I don’t know that many, and my friends who are Irish are from the North. There’s not that many from the Republic that I’ve run into. I know probably three or four. I think it’s easier [for students from the North] with the A-levels, and it’s more advertised to them as well,” she says.

She applied for universities in Britain because she wanted to leave Ireland, feeling people “tend to move to college in the same group that they were in in secondary school, and I kind of just wanted a bit of a change”.

She applied for history courses at University of Oxford, King’s College London, the University of Edinburgh, Bristol University and Durham University.

She completed her application with the help of her school’s guidance counsellor, and used the website The Student Room for advice.

Regarding accommodation, she says: “We’re very lucky in Oxford, because it’s a collegiate system, so it’s divided into 30-40 smaller colleges. Within my college, they provide accommodation for all three years of your course, so I never had to find external accommodation.”

She has had a “positive experience” studying in Britain so far, saying it “forces you to step outside your comfort zone a bit”, and allows you to “see your home with new eyes, and kind of appreciate it more”.

For more information on undergraduate courses in the UK, the application process and deadlines, visit ucas.com

For new graduates entering the workforce, those nerves are now accompanied by a recruitment process that looks very different from the one previous generations experienced. Before even getting an interview, they may have to complete an online assessment, record a video introduction or adapt their CV for AI screenings. That interview may even take place through a computer screen.

There is no shortage of interview advice available online. But with so much information, knowing where to start can be difficult.

So, what you should actually know before sitting down for your first job interview?

Edel Smyth, guidance counsellor and career coach (edelsmyth.ie), is here to help.

I feel really nervous about the prospect of an interview − how can I alleviate this?

“Feeling nervous before an interview is completely normal, and when managed effectively nerves can help you perform better,” says Smyth. “It is important to remember that you were invited to the interview because the employer sees your potential and wants you to succeed.”

To combat nerves, preparation is the key. This can include researching the company in advance, matching the job requirements to your skills and practising questions with peers, a career service or an AI tool, says Smyth.

Another suggestion she has is practising box breathing. This is done by breathing in slowly through your nose for four seconds, holding your breath for four seconds, breathing out slowly through your mouth for four seconds, then waiting for four seconds before breathing in again.

My work experience is mainly in retail or hospitality settings. How do I talk about that?

Retail and hospitality “provide ample opportunity to use evidence-based experience for many of the soft skills that employers value,” says Smyth.

“In many cases, employers are most interested in the transferable skills that you have, rather than the industry or sector experience.”

She recommends using the Star (situation, task, action, result) method to structure your responses.

“Where relevant, conclude answers with a reflection to explain what you learned and how you would apply it in future.”

The dreaded question: ‘What is your biggest weakness?’

You may worry that telling the truth about a personal flaw might cost you the role.

Smyth recommends that candidates should “choose a genuine weakness that is not essential to the role”. They should “describe the impact of the weakness and the steps that you are taking to address it. This shows honesty, self-awareness and a proactive attitude.”

‘Do you have any questions for us?’

Another dreaded component of many interviews can be when the tables are turned and the interviewer asks if you have any questions for them. Smyth points out that having some questions prepared at the end of the interview “can make a strong and lasting impression”.

‘When it comes to the interview, cover the basics’

“Consider what is important to you in the role, such as the company culture, professional development and career progression.”

Here are some sample questions she recommends:

• “How does the company support employees’ ongoing professional development?”
• “Can employees gain experience by working across different teams or departments?”
• “What career paths have previous graduates taken within the organisation?”
• “Based on our conversation, do you have any hesitation about my experience or skills in relation to this role?”

What should I wear?

“You do not need to spend a lot of money on professional clothing,” Smyth says. The way to go is “comfortable, well-fitting business or smart-casual attire that best suits the role.” If you’re not sure what to wear, choose the more formal option.

Candidates should “avoid any distracting accessories or strong scents”, and for online interviews, “dress as you would for an in-person interview”.

Finally, don’t have your phone out on the table in front of you. “Place your phone on silent and leave it in your coat pocket or handbag on the floor.”

What should I not do?

Not knowing anything about the company can leave a poor impression. Smyth says you should research “its products or services, mission statement and values, recent news or media coverage. Much of this information is readily available online.”

Another mistake graduates can make is “not actively listening to fully understand the question asked, and rushing answers”. Give yourself some time to think before answering, and ask the interviewer to repeat the question if needed.

Just as you would in a college assignment, you need to back up your answers with supporting evidence. “It is not enough to state your skills; you need to show how you have used them using specific examples,” says Smyth.

Don’t underestimate the importance of “a firm handshake, good posture, comfortable eye contact, enthusiasm, polished presentation and professional attire”. It shows you’re confident.

Have new trends in AI and online assessments changed how I should prepare?

On top of all the traditional job-application requirements, graduates now need to be ready for technology-led recruitment processes, including “automated CV screening, online assessments and virtual communication”.

Smyth says many employers use some form of AI tools and applicant tracking systems to screen CV applications. “These AI systems scan CVs for specific qualifications, keywords and skills that match the job description.”

How do you get around this?

“Identify key words in the job advertisement and reflect them in the CV summary, skill section and work experience. Avoid complex formatting, graphics and tables, as some AI systems may not read them accurately,” says Smyth.

On top of this, you can use AI tools to prepare for your interview, “by identifying likely questions based on the job description”.

For online interviews or video applications, Smyth recommends using the same Star method to structure your answer as you would in a traditional interview. You can practice by recording yourself on camera. “Review your recording to assess your tone, pace and body language, then make any adjustments needed.”

Before an online interview, make sure you have tested your internet connection, microphone, camera and software. Get familiar with platforms such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Smyth recommends having the interview’s phone number saved, in case you have to contact them quickly due to technical problems.

Have employers changed what they’re looking for?

“Employers are increasingly shifting towards skills-based hiring”, says Smyth. “While qualifications remain important, employers now place greater value on job relevant skills and competencies.”

Now that remote and hybrid working is becoming more common, employers are putting more emphasis on soft skills, such as “communication, teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving”. These skills go alongside the technical knowledge you are required to have for the specific role.

Under plans being brought to Wednesday’s Cabinet meeting, Minister for Housing James Browne is proposing no change to the allocation of almost €750 million in LPT revenues to local authorities. However, he intends to change the rules for councils that generate excess funding.

City and county councils that gather more than a baseline level of funding – of which there were 10 last year – are allowed to keep 31 per cent of this for their own use, while those who fail to hit the baseline figure are topped up by central Government.

Local authorities are required to spend a portion of this excess on services in their area in lieu of central funding. To date, some of that has been used for roads, with the remainder allocated for housing. Browne will tell Ministers that from next year, all of any excesses arising must be spent on housing.

The Minister will also provide an update on Met Éireann’s efforts to develop a national flood forecasting and warning service. The aim is to make more detailed flood forecasts available to the public, local authorities and emergency services.

Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan is to tell the Cabinet of his plans to push for stronger online protections for young people.

He is to host a private meeting of EU ministers this week, on the fringes of an EU conference on online safety, to discuss potential age restrictions for social media access and other measures. The private discussions, a source said, will help lay the groundwork for negotiations on forthcoming European Commission proposals on child safety online.

O’Donovan will also brief Ministers on the annual report of the beleaguered Arts Council, which faced controversy last year when it emerged it had lost millions on a botched IT project. He will say the council received €140 million in State investment last year, awarding 1,865 grants, and that its accounts have given it a clean bill of health, with no control issues identified.

Elsewhere, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon is to brief the Cabinet on the impact of the extraordinarily dry summer on the agricultural sector, with grass growth declining and deteriorating across July and August.

He will tell colleagues that the weather has left farmers facing additional costs to source feed while also eating into winter fodder supplies. While recent rainfall has helped, some farmers, especially in the southeast, are facing fodder shortages.

The State has been allocated €15.4 million in EU funding for farmers affected by higher fertiliser and energy costs arising from the war in the Middle East, which can be topped up by up to 200 per cent by national governments. Heydon is expected to say there is significant demand from farm organisations to top up the funding.

Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan is also likely to update Cabinet on his plans to tighten conditions for those making citizenship applications, including introducing a language test and increasing the time an individual must have spent in the State before seeking naturalisation.

Taoiseach Micheál Martin will brief Ministers on plans to update the State’s national strategic risk assessment, which considers the risks to the State in the short, medium and long term. Previous assessments have focused on issues such as Brexit, pandemics and global trade disruption.

Martin is expected to say the next edition will involve a public consultation and an invitation to parties in the Oireachtas to make submissions.

While the likes of Thomas Detry and Tyrrell Hatton made advance visits to Co Clare in what amounted to a mix of social and reconnaissance trips, McKibbin’s first action on the course was to drive a 3-wood down the middle of the fairway.

His company for nine holes – five holes going out and then slipping across to play the last four home – were two-time Major champion Jon Rahm and Thomas Higgins, the 23-year-old from Roscommon who turned professional after missing out on Walker Cup selection, playing here on an invite.

McKibbin is also 23, but has accumulated a lifetime of experience in his short career, with wins on the DP World Tour (the European Open) and the Asian Tour (Hong Kong Open) as well as team success on LIV with Legion XIII.

Whatever about the disruptive noises about the fate of LIV, and the uncertainty hanging on how any iteration of LIV 2.0 will look, the Northern Ireland professional has sought to focus on his own game, aware that this week’s Irish Open in the Co Clare sand hills will provide a stiff examination.

Irish Open at Doonbeg: What are the tee times? When is it on TV? When is Donald Trump going to be there?

“From what I’ve seen, it’s very difficult. There’s a lot of bunkers and greens that have a lot of ... I don’t want to say big run-offs, but there’s some narrow targets and, with the wind and some of the elevated tee boxes, it definitely makes it interesting,” McKibbin said about what faces the 138 players in the field.

“It’s very hard when you don’t play much of it in a year to come back and sort of flip and hit different shots that you’re not used to, and especially this time of the year when it’s so cold that the ball moves a lot in the wind. But I definitely think if I can keep the ball in front of me and hit the ball the way I normally would, I could definitely have a good chance.”

“A win would be massive I think. I started to play very nicely around this time of the year last year, had a couple of close calls and then the win came [in Hong Kong]. I mean a win at any time of the year is nice, but especially so on this latter stretch of the season.”

Certainly McKibbin has found an admirer in his LIV team-mate Rahm, who said: “He’s got all the tools to win a major, and I hope he does some day. Technically, very few people are better than him swinging the golf club. He’ll keep gaining the right experience and definitely give himself a chance some day, but he has what he needs to win one.

“He’s got great technique and a great golf game. It’s a joy to watch him play golf. Every time we’re on the range warming up together I always go up to his caddie, Ricky [McCormick], and I tell him, ‘Does he ever get bored of watching the same shot over and over and over, because he really doesn’t miss’. I mean, it’s a one-way draw every single time. Beautiful swing and beautiful ball flight.”

McKibbin’s response to hearing what the Spaniard said of him brought a smile to his face and led to some reflection.

“It’s obviously a massive compliment to hear that from him. I think, as golfers, we always tend to put ourselves down a little bit. We’re always searching for better. Hearing stuff like that definitely puts your mind at ease a bit. And obviously coming from someone of a high calibre as him, and a player that he is, it’s pretty cool to hear,” he said.

McKibbin’s win in Hong Kong late last year brought with it the fringe benefits of playing in the Masters and The Open, but he missed the cut in both as well as the US PGA.

But those missed cuts were something of outliers, and his recent form – most recently sixth in the British Masters following a strong finish to the LIV season – has brought perspective.

“I think throughout the whole year I’ve been very steady,” McKibbin said. “I’ve started to putt quite nice and that’s allowed me to put in a couple of good results, which definitely excites me for the rest of the year.”

The business – which started as a grocery shop and went on to become an award-winning wine importer – is available for purchase as a going concern, or alternatively with full vacant possession through BDM Property at a guide price of €2.6 million.

Located at 25 Ranelagh Road in Ranelagh, Dublin 6, the subject property comprises a two-storey period redbrick building extending to just over 500sq m (5,382sq ft) along with two outdoor terraces of 17.57sq m (189sq ft) and 17.6sq m (189sq ft) respectively.

The property is laid out as a mixed-use commercial and residential investment. In 2008, it underwent substantial works which saw the facade refurbished alongside the addition of a rear ground-floor extension and two apartments at first-floor level.

The ground-floor accommodation extends to 356sq m (3,832sq ft), with 1,477sq ft of this taken up by retail space. The remaining space is divided up into purpose-built stores, a back office and staff facilities.

Originally a grocer’s shop run by Mary and Jim Redmond, Redmonds of Ranelagh now operates as a wine importer and off-licence run by their sons, Jimmy and Aidan.

The first floor of the building comprises two own-door two-bedroom apartments. Apartment one extends to 71.7sq m with a terrace of 17.57sq m, while Apartment two extends to 72.54sq m with a terrace of 17.6sq m.

Cathal Kelly of BDM Property says: “The sale of Redmonds of Ranelagh offers flexibility for both owner-occupiers and investors. The purchase of the retail element as an established going concern provides an incoming purchaser with the opportunity to acquire the existing trading business in this prime location together with the associated goodwill, fixtures and fittings.

“Alternatively, the entire property can be acquired with vacant possession, providing an owner-occupier or investor with the opportunity to operate the ground-floor premises under their own business model or consider alternative uses, subject to planning. All of this comes with the added benefit of two apartments in the heart of Ranelagh.”

It is clear, therefore, that the LNG import terminal in Cahiracon, Co Clare that Minister Darragh O’Brien and the Government are trying to build will be used to meet the massive increase in gas demand that would result from these new data centres, despite the severe climate, environmental and public health impacts of LNG. – Yours etc,

SAM MORAN,

Co Sligo.

I am writing to express my concern, fear and anger at the fact that we are welcoming US president Trump to Ireland. There is no doubt that he is the elected president of the US and as such there are certain diplomatic necessities that need to be observed.

Coming to Ireland is an obvious attempt to show the large number of American Irish, that have a vote in the half terms elections, that Ireland loves him. It is our duty to show the world and the Irish Americans that Ireland does not love or support him or his warped ideas in any way. It is high time to call him out publicly. It is time to stop pandering to his narcissistic vanity and stand up to his bullying ways.

Ireland needs to stand firm in unity with our European partners to oppose Trump’s threatening policies, his support for Israel in their genocide against Gaza, his idiotic war in Iran, and his ridiculous board of peace.

Now is not the time for the red carpet and the Irish welcome. Now is the time for the just criticism, the clear statement and the absolute and unambiguous voice against Donald Trump. He is not welcome here. He cannot be welcome here.

JOSEPHINE PLETTENBERG,

Gowran,

Co Kilkenny.

Sir, – In my experience of Trump’s last presidential visit to Doonbeg in 2019, protesters will find it a trifle difficult to protest anywhere near the Co Clare resort.

We had a petition of 104,000 signatures opposing the construction of his “coastal defence” – a rock armour wall designed to protect his rapidly eroding golf course – and as a registered charity, we were given written permission by the Garda to deliver the petition (and 200 letters from all over the world) on an USB stick, to save paper.

I was a long way from the village when I encountered the first roadblock and interrogation. When I finally made it to the village, the sergeant informed me that my permission had been withdrawn and I could go no further. The good sergeant assured me he would have the USB stick given to the US president. Good luck with those signs.

Reviewing our 2019 file, I found the following prescient letter from a resident of central Illinois, USA: “I know I live a long way from Ireland, but I live in a nation trying to deal with Donald Trump as president, denying there is any real problem with climate change here in the USA but wants a wall or two built along public and very priceless beaches in Ireland – to protect his golf course from climate change. We may not be able to stop the damage he does here in the USA; after all, we were daft enough to elect him to our highest office. But I am counting on the Irish to be wiser and stronger than their American cousins.”

We were – and the wall was never built.

TONY LOWES,

Friends of the Irish Environment,

Eyeries,

Co Cork.

Sir, – Former ambassador to the US Dan Mulhall correctly states that Taoiseach Micheál Martin and the current Ambassador to the US Geraldine Byrne Nason have done well in protecting vital Irish economic interests from the US president’s vindictiveness. (“A diplomat’s advice on how to approach Trump’s visit”, Opinion, September 5th.)

But it should also be added that Trump (and US vice president JD Vance) have no wish to alienate the 35 million Irish Americans who are a key swing vote in US elections. Additionally, US pharma and tech companies with Irish investments have been major donors to Trump. – Yours, etc,

TED SMYTH,

16 West 77 Street,

New York.

Many aspects of our economy, from essential health services to hospitality services to care for the elderly, to name just some, are maintained and sustained by non-Irish-born workers.

They are providing vital support to the physical, mental and recreational wellbeing of the nation as a whole. They are also taxpayers contributing to the exchequer and, in the main, trying to build a life for themselves and their families in this country, just like their Irish-born colleagues, neighbours and friends.

We have many challenges in Ireland, in common with practically all our European neighbours. We need and should demand that our senior politicians focus on solutions to these challenges that will deliver a better future for Ireland and her citizens, irrespective of birthplace.

These proposed changes smack of an attempt to pander to populist agitation in an effort to burnish the Minister’s strongman image. Tinkering unnecessarily with qualifying timelines for Irish citizenship will not help address the serious social issues we continue to face in Ireland today. – Yours, etc,

GERRY PRIZEMAN,

Clontarf,

Dublin 3.

Sir, – For years we have been driving hundreds of thousands of young Irish people abroad to seek jobs as nurses, teachers, police, builders, engineers and doctors. These Irish citizens can now secure overseas citizenship after four years in Australia; three years in Canada; or five years as a “green card” holder in the US (three if married to a US citizen).

It is also five years for New Zealand and UK citizenship for Irish applicants.

In these countries they can buy houses; start families; afford childcare; and save for decent holidays and pensions.

Citizenship applicants had to have three years’ residency in Ireland up to last year. Now the Government is making it much harder, with an eight-year requirement and an ability to say “lá brea” and “slán leat” with conviction. There is a strong whiff of racism and placating the anti-immigrant protesters about this move. – Yours, etc,

GERALD FLYNN,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6.

Sir, – The Minister for Justice is to be commended for bringing a badly needed overhaul of Irish citizenship requirements to Cabinet, given that we have one of the easiest to obtain citizenships in Europe at present.

New rules for Irish citizenship: How will they work?

A basic knowledge of language and civic law is essential to prevent future ghettos developing, to say nothing of social cohesion in trying times. – Yours, etc,

MICHAEL FLYNN,

Bayside,

Dublin 13.

Sir, – While Minister O’Callaghan contemplates tightening the rules around acquisition of citizenship, he should also seek to reform the rules around its loss.

Remarkably, the law as it stands empowers him to revoke the citizenship of naturalised citizens who continuously reside outside Ireland for seven years and do not annually register their intention to retain it.

On the face of it, that means citizenship can be lost merely by the exercise of a fundamental right that it confers, namely free movement within the EU.

This 1950s view of what citizenship is effectively creates two classes of citizen, and it’s arguable whether it would stand up to challenge in the European courts. – Yours, etc,

STEPHEN SHAW,

Bülach,

Switzerland.

Sir, – It is heartening to see that our Government is citing alignment with European norms regarding attainment of Irish citizenship.

This surely indicates that we can look forward to alignment with European norms in the delivery of GP and general medical services.

We are currently the only state in the EU where a large section of the population has to pay for GP visits and where it is felt necessary to have private health insurance to avail of prompt access to hospital services. Change for the better is obviously close at hand. – Yours etc,

IAN Ó DUBHGHAILL,

Tralee,

Co Kerry.

The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has been growing in popularity but no one anticipated the election result in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt where the far-right party won 44 per cent of the vote on a record turnout of 76 per cent.

The party’s manifesto promises several anti-immigration measures including mass deportations and separate schools for refugees; its education plan emphasises a new curriculum based on traditional German values, while it proudly proclaims itself pro-Russian.

German chancellor Friedrich Merz took office a year ago promising to “halve” AfD support. Instead he has watched that fate befall his own party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). So how compromised is he by this result?

The AfD vote signals a clear direction of travel in German politics but as Irish Times Berlin correspondent Derek Scally reports, it is also a country that understands its history and the task of defeating extremism.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Andrew McNair.

Ryng is campaigning against Department of Justice plans to demolish the Rathmore Road building. There are plans to construct an expanded prison facility opposite the current Cork Prison, on the site of the barracks which opened in 1806 and became a civilian prison in 1972.

But Ryng believes that the Cork Military Detention Barracks should be preserved and developed as an historical resource like Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin. “It’s a 1916 site because Thomas Kent was executed there,” he says.

Kent was one of just two Rising participants to be executed outside of Dublin - Roger Casement was executed in London. Kent’s remains were exhumed in June 2015 and reburied in his family plot in Castlelyons, Co Cork. He was given a state funeral at which Enda Kenny delivered the graveside oration. There were 13 other executions in the exercise yard of the barracks during the War of Independence. They are commemorated in a mass grave on the University College Cork campus.

What Ryng believes is not in the public domain is the link between the Cork Military Detention Barracks and the Catalpa escape from Fremantle Prison in Australia. At least three Fenian prisoners were held in the Australian prison in the 19th century. One of them was Thomas Darragh. He had been sentenced to execution in the Cork Military Detention Barracks in 1866 for his involvement in the Fenian Brotherhood. Ryng believes he was the first person to be sentenced to execution there. But his death sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life and in 1867, he was transported aboard the Hougoumont, the last convict ship sent from Britain and Ireland to Australia. He was imprisoned at Fremantle with other prisoners, convicted of Fenian activity.

Irish-American supporters raised money, purchased the whaling ship, Catalpa, and sent it to Western Australia on an audacious rescue mission.

In 1876, Darragh and five other prisoners escaped from Fremantle Prison, travelled by carriage to the coast and were brought to the waiting ship. Pursued by colonial forces, they reached the Catalpa. Eventually, they arrived in the US where they were met with a triumphant reception. Darragh’s journey to freedom started with his incarceration in the Cork barracks.

Camera Obscura: An exhibition of ‘secret’ photography at Kilmainham Gaol

Ryng visited Fremantle Prison in 2010 where he saw a presentation on the Catalpa escape. It is, he says, a massive selling point for tourists interested in history. Crucially, the escaped Fenians were sailing in a ship that had the American flag hoisted. The minute they reached the Catalpa, from a rowing boat, they were saved because it was an American ship.

Another historical link to the Cork Military Detention Barracks is Cork’s Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney’s martyrdom. Arrested at City Hall on August 12th, 1920, he began his hunger strike at the barracks. And when he died 74 days later in Brixton Prison, he was still wearing the Cork chain of office. MacSwiney had refused to divest himself of the chain, despite being ordered to by sergeant major Bailey at the Cork Barracks.

The Cork Military Detention Barracks was to become a site of mass execution when Maria Lindsay of Leemount House, having learned of the plan to ambush a British military convoy at Dripsey on January 28th, 1921, carried a warning to the British military at Ballincollig. Troops surrounded the IRA position before the ambush could begin, leaving several Volunteers wounded and captured. They were tried by military court inside the Cork Military Detention Barracks. Five men were condemned to death. In an attempt to save them, the IRA seized Lindsay and her driver. She was forced to write to general Peter Strickland at Victoria Barracks stating that she and the driver would be killed if the condemned men were executed. The British authorities refused to grant reprieves. Lindsay and her driver, James Clarke were subsequently killed by the IRA.

In July, Cork City Council passed a motion to oppose the development of the Cork Military Detention Barracks. It received cross party support. Ryng says preserving the site is not about party politics. It’s about valuing a historical resource.

“Generations of pupils in Dublin and surrounding areas engage with real life history at Kilmainham every year. And it ranks at number one every year with foreign visitors.”

Some of the film Maze, which dramatised the 1983 escape of IRA prisoners from the Maze prison in Northern Ireland, was shot at the Cork Military Detention Barracks. It had been decommissioned shortly before filming in 2016. And the Enda Walsh play, a psychodrama called The Same was staged at the barracks by Corcadorca, Cork’s former theatre company that specialised in site-specific productions. I remember that production as being something of a head wreck. The prison setting was appropriate for the main character in the play who, stripped of self, suggested a feeling of entrapment. Sometimes, former prisons can have a very interesting second life.

Perhaps we should ask a different question: Why would we eat fish when it is ostensibly more expensive than meat?

Walk into an Irish supermarket and compare fresh fish with beef. Hake or cod can cost as much as, or considerably more, than steak.

Fish is more healthy, sustainable and a less fatty protein source but the price tag tells a different story. All other attributes are hidden, the price is not.

As pointed out in the article, this seems particularly absurd in an island nation surrounded by rich fishing waters. Our fishermen face tight quotas, much of our catch is exported, and then, we import fish to put on our own supermarket shelves!

We are regularly told that eating more fish would be good for our health and the environment. Fine. But perhaps then we should first make fish more affordable and available.

So the question isn’t “Why don’t the Irish eat more fish?”

It’s “Why is eating fish in Ireland so expensive?” – Yours, etc,

Mick Catala,

Clonalvy,

Co Meath

Plucking prestigious-sounding quotations from respected scientists and applying them to arguments they never made is not scepticism. Instead, it is a favoured, long-established science-denial tactic. Creationists use this strategy when they quote-mine the evolutionary biology literature, and climate change deniers employ it when they forensically extract and disseminate misleading text snippets from email correspondence or IPCC reports.

Genuine scientific sceptics follow the evidence, wherever it brings them. Regarding vaccines, that evidence spans thousands of clinical trials, surveillance data from millions of administered doses, and objectively verifiable outcomes, such as the practical eradication and mitigation of killer diseases in humans and domestic animals. Taken together, the scientific and clinical data supporting the efficacy, safety, and benefits of vaccination are incontrovertible. Rejecting this is simply science denialism. Yours, etc,

DAVID MACHUGH,

Full Professor of Functional Genomics,

UCD College of Health and Agricultural Sciences,

University College Dublin,

Dublin.

Sir, – Tom Kelly encourages cynicism on the grounds that much published scientific literature may be untrue.

I would like to believe him, but must be cautious as many published letters may be untrue. – Yours, etc,

DR COLUM FARRELLY, FRCGP,

Derry.

With the new personal investment account (PIA), the Government wants us to do something we don’t seem comfortable with: take a little more risk with our money. Investing instead of saving will give Irish people a better chance of growing our wealth over time – that’s the play. It could make households here wealthier and more financially resilient, Minister for Finance Simon Harris hopes.

But getting people to open one of his new investment accounts is only half the battle. If we continue to our form to date, opting only for the lowest risk investment option, are we simply moving our money from one low-growth home to another?

How does it work?

The new PIA is billed as making it easier and more tax-efficient for more of us to invest. The scheme will allow you to invest up to a certain maximum amount each year into an investment account, with no minimum figure.

So instead of saving money into a low-interest savings account, as most of us are currently doing, we could instead put some of it into this.

New Government investment scheme: Here’s what we know – and don’t know

You can invest your money in lots of different ways from this one account. Options will include investing directly in shares in listed companies or investing in bonds available on the markets, which could mean lending some of your money to a company or a country at a specific interest rate.

You could opt to put your money into an investment fund; these are invested in a wide range of companies, meaning less exposure to the fate of individual companies.

You could also choose an exchange traded fund (ETF). These invest across a range of assets such as stocks, bonds or commodities like oil or gold, so investors benefit from diversification and lower risk.

Riskier derivative and crypto investments will not be available under the scheme.

The normal taxes charged in a complicated way on investments here – capital gains tax and income tax on dividends in certain scenarios and exit tax/deemed disposal in others – will not apply.

Instead, when the fund reaches a certain threshold, amounts above this will be subject to what we are told will be a “small annual charge”, based on the total size of the fund.

So you will not be taxed on the “profit” your fund makes in a year but on the size of the whole fund. This could mean that you have to pay a tax charge even in years when you are losing money.

Reporting and payment of this charge will be looked after by the fund provider – so you won’t have to go through the hassle of making a tax return. This tackles some of the administrative barriers to investing.

You can get immediate access to your money when you want, though, as with all investments, the amount you invested may have gone up or down in the period.

The investment account will be available to Irish tax-residents aged 18 and over who hold a PPSN, with one account permitted per person.

As some commentators are pointing out, to what extent the new account rewards long-term investing will depend on four parameters still to be set – the tax-free threshold, the flat rate of tax, the annual contribution limit and the charges imposed by the companies offering the investment options.

Risky business

The Government is hoping the new account will make it easier and less scary for us to give investing a go.

We’re enthusiastic about the new scheme, according to Banking and Payments Federation Ireland (BPFI) research published in June. Despite knowing little or no detail about the new accounts, almost eight in 10 of us said we wanted one.

Maybe the penny is dropping with us that more investing and less saving is probably a good thing? But when it comes to investing, not to mind taking some risk, Irish people are starting from a low base.

We lage behind our European neighbours in investing. We rank low on ownership of investment products, such as funds, stocks or bonds, at just 18 per cent compared to the EU average of 24 per cent, according to a financial literacy Eurobarometer survey published in July 2023.

This compares to 46 per cent of Swedes, whose investment scheme we are in large part copying. Just 44 per cent of us say we hold any investments, according to the BPFI research. And most of that is related to pensions.

Missing details on personal investment accounts leave consumers in the dark

Our aversion to investing is multipronged.

Two-thirds of people say they do not invest because they don’t have enough money or can’t afford to – fair enough. But 49 per cent say they are too afraid of losing money to invest. Some 48 per cent say they don’t invest because they don’t know how to.

This all points towards a very risk averse cohort of people.

No pain, no gain

Bringing this new account into existence and getting us to sign up for one is only half the battle. Educating us about investing and how to gauge risk to maximise the chance of returns is where the rubber will hit the road.

“There is a real danger that many, perhaps most, will automatically choose the lowest-risk investment options on offer and end up disappointed with the results,” says Jason Walsh, fund proposition lead at Royal London Ireland.

People can assume that choosing the lowest-risk investment is always wisest, he says. In reality, it can mean giving up much of the growth available when markets are rising.

First-time investors may simply choose the option that feels safest, without understanding what they may be giving up, he says.

Royal London’s five-year figures for one particular fund illustrate the difference between choosing low and high risk options, he argues.

Someone who invested €10,000 in its lowest-risk Multi-Asset Fund in August 2021 would have had a pot of €11,253 five years later. Investing the same amount in its highest risk option would have seen it grow to €15,586, he says. Both figures are gross, not factoring in taxes and charges.

The average yearly returns over five years were 2.4 per cent for the lowest-risk option, and 9.3 per cent for the highest risk option. Two other investment options in between the lowest and highest risk returned 4.1 per cent and 6.5 per cent.

The reason is straightforward, he says. The highest-risk fund has about 80 per cent of its money invested in company shares, compared to about 20 per cent of the lowest-risk fund.

“When markets rise, the fund holding more shares is generally in a much better position to benefit,” says Walsh.

The trade-off is that the highest risk option can fall furthest when markets decline. In 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, soaring inflation and falling bond markets, the lowest risk fund fell by 9.4 per cent, while the highest risk fund fell by 10.6 per cent, he says.

Personal investment accounts likely to engage 85 per cent of Irish adults – survey

When markets started to recover, the highest risk fund returned more than the lowest over the same period of time.

The question with the new Government investment account is, if first-time investors are simply shown a list of investment options running from “low risk” to “high risk”, will many just choose the option that feels safest without understanding the potential returns they might be giving up?

Irish people describe their approach to financial and investment decisions as “conservative” or “very conservative” and were willing to accept little or no risk, according to the BPFI research.

The largest group, 49 per cent, describe themselves as “very conservative”. They say they try to minimise risk entirely and avoid the possibility of any loss.

Most of us are uncomfortable with investment risk. The biggest psychological barrier is the potential for losing money – 76 per cent say they are uncomfortable with this. The lack of guaranteed returns is a big concern for two-thirds of us, according to the BPFI data from June.

Keeping our money in low risk places such as banks, however, doesn’t mean no risk, says Walsh. You can still lose money.

“If you were looking at cash, you would be doing well to get 1 per cent or 1.5 per cent on a lump sum – and that’s gross. You need to take Dirt into account too,” he says.

“You face the less obvious risk that your savings grow too slowly to meet their long-term needs, or keep pace with inflation.

“The most important thing about this new personal investment account is getting people comfortable with what investing entails.”

Time frame

When deciding the level of investment risk to take, your financial goal for your money, your time frame for achieving it and your capacity for loss are the parameters to consider, says Walsh.

“If you want to invest in single stocks, that’s a much bigger risk because ultimately you could make a lot more, but you could also lose everything as well.”

ETFs provide diversification, spreading the risk a bit more. Walsh describes investing your money into one of these as like betting on the Grand National, a race with 40 horses. “What you are doing with your investment is actually backing every single horse.”

You are spreading your bet. “The bigger the spread of investments you have, or the more diversification you will get, but the better the return over cash.”

Budget day is the big reveal for the full detail of the PIA regime and accounts should be available by the middle of next year. It’s likely there will be a rush of sign-ups, though the danger is we may plumb for a risk level that leaves us not much better off.

Remember the old SSIA accounts? Well, the new account will be nothing like that.

With the old Special Savings Investment Account, all that most of us had to do was set up a direct debit for the maximum contribution of €254 a month – there were no other decisions to be made. Risk wasn’t a consideration. For every €4 we saved, the government generously added another €1. Growth was guaranteed, risk-free, like magic beans.

“That’s not the case with this new account,” says David Funcheon, an investment adviser and financial planner with Ask Acorn.

“With the new personal investment account, you are only getting less tax on the growth of your investment up to a certain threshold – but you still need to make the growth.”

About 80 per cent of people default to a low-risk investing strategy in his experience. They are fearful of loss, but are not seeing the opportunity of compounding.

“I can see a lot of people who are probably in the space where they have worked hard, they are looking to put away between €400 and €800 a month, saying: I really don’t want to take a whole lot of risk with this, but I’m happy I don’t have to pay a whole lot of tax on the growth,” says Funcheon.

People will need to ask themselves what is their expectation, or goal, for their money, what is the time frame for achieving it and what is their capacity to absorb a loss, he says.

If the individual is some years out from their goal – for example, saving for a child’s college education, a little bit of risk in the early years can do them no harm, he says. “When you have longevity on your side, and you are not looking to access your funds in a relatively short period of time, take the risk then.”

A risk level of five or six can be appropriate. As the child is getting closer to Leaving Cert, a parent will want to have the capital security of these funds, he says.

“Allow your investment to accumulate over a designated period of time. You could then look at derisking that accumulated capital wealth [closer to when you need the money],” says Funcheon, “maybe even moving then moving it out of a unit-linked fund and into a deposit fund because it is going to get used in real time.”

People who have a long-term financial goal should be cautious about being too cautious from the get go.

The mouth-watering prospect of Round Two between the elite trio of Constitution River, Item and Almaqam is on after they featured among a select entry of nine horses for Leopardstown’s €1.25 million feature on the opening leg of this weekend’s Irish Champions Festival.

They memorably clashed in last month’s Juddmonte International where Andrew Balding’s Item edged Almaqam with Constitution River in third.

Aidan O’Brien blamed himself for Constitution River’s eclipse, pointing to his decision to run a pacemaker (Action) that wasn’t good enough and which meant the French Derby and Eclipse winner raced too freely.

The champion trainer described it as a “complete mess” and pledged not to make the same mistake as he chases a record-extending 14th Champion Stakes victory.

Constitution River’s stable companion, French Derby runner up Hawk Mountain, wound up making the running in the Juddmonte before fading to sixth. That colt is in the Champion Stakes too as is another elite performer in Lambourn.

Winner of last year’s Epsom and Curragh derbies, Lambourn has led or raced prominently in all five of his starts this year, including when bouncing back to something like his best form when fourth to Kalpana in the King George at Ascot in July.

Being able to call on such high-class talent for a potential pace scenario underlines the depth of resources available to O’Brien, who has consistently defended his use of pacemakers in top races.

Ground conditions at Leopardstown were officially “good to yielding” on Tuesday and have encouraged Ed Walker to target Leopardstown with Almaqam, winner in May of the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh.

“I was probably more likely to not take in the Irish Champion than to run in it straight after York, but he’s come out of that race very well and is in great form,” he reported.

Leopardstown boss hopeful of good ground and a big crowd at Champions Festival

“He’s realistically got two more targets now this year; the Irish and the English Champion so I think we’ll be having a shot. He definitely is really well suited with a little bit of ease in the ground.

“He’s just had two very frustrating, dry summers which have made life very difficult for us. When he’s got his conditions, he’s very, very good, and in the Prince of Wales’, he ran well below either the Curragh or York form, and on that quick ground he just struggles,” the English trainer added.

In contrast, the Item team wouldn’t like ground conditions to ease too much, and the Juddmonte ownership has also left Dermot Weld’s hugely progressive Purview in the big race. Purview has an alternative Saturday option in the Group Three Kilternan Stakes.

Saturday’s main Group One support, the Coolmore Matron Stakes, may also turn into a Balding-O’Brien clash with the top English filly Blue Bolt on course to take on Ballydoyle’s pair of Guineas winners, Precise and True Love. There’s also a potential French starter in Godspeed.

Last year’s Matron winner Fallen Angel is in the mix too and her trainer Karl Burke said: “Fallen Angel is a superstar filly. She likes a bit of cut in the ground so any rain that comes now, after such a dry summer, will be welcome.”

Bumper Group One weekend could see Aidan O’Brien regain top-flight momentum

A total of 15 entries are left in the newly promoted HKJC Golden Fleece Stakes which takes to seven the total number of Group One contests between Leopardstown and the Curragh this weekend.

The entry is dominated by Aidan and Joseph O’Brien who have 11 of the possibles between them. Charlie Appleby has the option of running Godolphin’s Quest For Stars, unbeaten in three starts including a Listed contest in Salisbury last time.

The growing influence of Joseph O’Brien on the top prizes is stamped all over some of the Curragh’s Group One highlights on Sunday.

He has five of the 11 hopefuls left in the Comer Group Irish St Leger although they face a task against a trio of Ballydoyle opponents topped by the season’s top stayer Scandinavia. He could be joined in the €500,000 feature by top-class stable mate Jan Brueghel.

That influence is also clear in the first of Sunday’s four Group One contests, the Moyglare Stud Stakes. Ten fillies remain in it with half of them from Ballydoyle and a trio from O’Brien jnr Robson De Aguiar has the remaining pair of entries.

Johnny Murtagh has 10 entries across the weekend and goes into ICF on the back of a hugely lucrative first winner in the US. Take Charge Star landed a Grade Two at Kentucky Downs on Monday night with a first prize of $450,000 (almost €390,000).

The independent Government advisory body has asked the department to “develop and deploy” within 12 months a “practical climate-risk toolkit tailored to individual land parcels”.

It says farmers must be helped adjust practices amid recurring prolonged and intense winter rainfall, summer heat stress and drought, wildfires and other extreme weather-related events that are keeping them out of their fields, short of livestock fodder and struggling to grow crops.

“We cannot keep treating every prolonged wet period or drought as an isolated crisis,” said council chairman Alex White.

“Climate change is challenging some of the established practices involved in agriculture and land management.

“Practical support will be essential, whether that means making land and farms more resilient, adapting existing practices or pursuing viable opportunities for diversification, including forestry, carbon farming and renewable energy.”

Lack of preparation is one of many criticisms made in the council’s annual review of agriculture and land use in the context of climate change.

It finds the sector – the single biggest greenhouse gas emitter in the country – reduced its emissions by just 0.2 per cent last year.

Over the past five years, it has managed only a 4.7 per cent cut – far short of the 25 per cent reduction it is obliged to achieve by 2030.

The review says the department has also failed to meet forestry planting targets for the fourth year in succession.

Less than one-third of the planting due last year was achieved and the rate fell again in the first six months of this year.

Production of low-carbon biomethane gas from agricultural waste is also way off track, with revised estimates expecting just 40 per cent of the 2030 target to be achieved.

Commitments to fatten cattle faster for slaughter so each animal emits less greenhouse gas over its lifetime have no implementation plan.

Other commitments – to introduce lower emission fertilisers and feed additives that reduce livestock belching – are also behind schedule.

A previous request by the council for national dietary advice to steer people towards more sustainable diets with less meat and more plants and cereals was not acted upon.

The council also says the departments of Agriculture and Climate need to talk more to farmers and rural communities and recommends setting up a structured dialogue process.

The report also raises concerns around the Republic’s heavy reliance on imported food.

It says 83 per cent of fruit and vegetables come from overseas, with supply chains vulnerable to extreme weather effects on harvests and transport. Yet the number of commercial growers in the State has dropped below 70 compared to more than 600 in the 1990s.

The council says the State’s food security is at risk and the department should review the support schemes in place to encourage more fruit and vegetable production.

It also calls for the swift publication of a promised Government policy on solar energy. A growing number of solar parks are progressing, but they require much more land than wind turbines.

The council says there should be greater consideration of agrivoltaics – the placing of solar arrays above or between crops or grazing land to enable simultaneous farming and energy production.

On Tuesday, Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon said the drought conditions caused by the prolonged dry spell this summer show the need for the Irish horticulture industry to consider adopting irrigation systems more widely.

He said all sectors in agriculture needed to build up resilience so farming could be future-proofed against extreme weather events, which he predicted would be less rare in the years ahead.

Heydon was speaking following an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Dublin Castle held as part of the State’s presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Ninth in URC and Challenge Cup runners-up to Montpellier.

Prospects

Last season finished anti-climactically, with Ulster slipping out of the top eight on the last weekend of the URC campaign before being overpowered 59-26 by Montpellier in the Challenge Cup final a week later.

Ultimately, competing on two fronts was too big a drain on an injury-hit squad. Head coach Richie Murphy probably regrets holding back Tom Stewart, Angus Bell, Cormac Izuchukwu, Nathan Doak and Jack Murphy until the second half of their final URC game at home to Glasgow a week ahead of starting them in that bruising Bilbao beating.

That said, Mark Sexton’s acquisition from Connacht helped to further sharpen Ulster’s inventive attack and it was a season of marked progress, as evidenced by their increased input into the Irish squad. There could again be a flip side to being consigned to the Challenge Cup. Yes, it’s less glamorous and prestigious, but it’s also less demanding and, at least until the final anyway, more winnable.

A core of good young players who have flourished under Murphy’s regime should continue to blossom, such as Stewart, Harry Sheridan, Izuchukwu and Jude Postlethwaite.

They also appear to have made some astute signings, with the arrival of Matty Devine, a game-changing scrumhalf, from Connacht and the Irish-qualified outhalf Jamie Benson from Harlequins giving Murphy some real options at halfback. Both impressed in last week’s 28-26 pre-season win in Edinburgh.

Ulster have placed a big focus on making the squad fitter, faster and stronger, and the home games against Edinburgh and Munster in rounds one and three look close to must-win. Those fixtures sandwich a trek to Glasgow and then they’ll be on the road, beginning with Zebre in the Challenge Cup, the Bulls and Stormers in South Africa, followed by a trip to Cardiff.

Transfers

In: Jamie Benson (outhalf, 23, from Harlequins), Matt Devine (scrumhalf, 24, Connacht), Eli Snyman (lock, 30, Benetton), Ben Donnell (back row, 26, Cardiff), Eduardo Bello (prop, 30, Newcastle), Keynan Knox (prop, 27, Nevers, Fra), Chay Mullins (winger, 24, Connacht), Martin Moloney (flanker, 26, Exeter), Daniel Hawkshaw (centre, 24, Clontarf). Henry Walker (hooker, 21), Bryn Ward (back row, 22) and Aitzol King (winger, 24) were all promoted from the academy.

Out: Angus Bell (prop, 25, to NSW Waratahs), Werner Kok (Winger, 33, Newcastle Red Bulls), James Humphreys (outhalf, Ealing Trailfinders), Mathew Dalton (lock, 27, Kobe Steelers, Japan). John Andrew (hooker), Ben Moxham (centre/wing), Rory McGuire (prop, 24), Bryan O’Connor (prop, 27), Marcus Rea (backrow, 28), Sean Reffell (flanker, 27), David Shanahan (scrumhalf, 33) and Lorcan McLoughlin (backrow, 24) were all released.

Off-field picture

Since the Affidea Stadium was redeveloped in 2014 to increase its capacity to over 18,000, support has remained solid. There’s no doubt that Ulster’s failure to qualify for the Champions Cup last season affected their crowds, albeit the emergence of the Ward brothers, other home-grown players, the brand of rugby and strong home form galvanised the fans.

Their overall average home attendance of 11,566 during the 2025–26 URC season was down from 13,196 the previous campaign. Their average attendance across five home games in the Challenge Cup was 9,696. This compares to the 13,000-plus over previous seasons in the Champions Cup, and 17,000-plus in the 2019-20 campaign.

Head coach: Richie Murphy

The former Leinster outhalf cut his teeth as a skills and kicking coach with both his native province and then Ireland for eight seasons. There followed a rewarding three seasons as head coach of the Irish U20s, guiding them to three unbeaten Six Nations campaigns, including back-to-back Grand Slams in 2022 and 2023, as well as reaching the Junior World Cup final in 2023.

Murphy steadied the Ulster ship toward the end of the 2023-24 season and has shown his ability to nurture young talent after re-uniting that U20 coaching ticket. The well-regarded Jimmy Duffy, forwards coach when Connacht won the 2016 Pro12, has moved to Munster. On the flip side, bringing in former All Blacks prop Clarke Dermody from the Highlanders looks a shrewd move and will ensure a fresh voice with fresh ideas.

Star signing: Matty Devine

The skilful, livewire scrumhalf was a star turn for that 2022 Grand Slam-winning Ireland U20s team, scoring in each of his four starts. Mystifyingly restricted to just 10 starts with his native Connacht over three seasons, the decision to move to Ulster demonstrates his ambition and this looks a pivotal season in his career. With his acceleration, sniping around the edges, support play and ability to play at a high tempo, the 24-year-old provides a rare point of difference.

Stat attack

Ulster were unlucky to miss out on the top eight last season, considering their tally of 52 points far outstripped the previous four sides that had finished eighth in the URC format. Scarlets, the year before, and the Sharks, three seasons ago, did so with 48 points. The Ospreys and Glasgow both made the playoffs with 50 points two and four seasons ago. Ulster’s attack was the fifth best in the URC across most metrics (tries scored, clean breaks and defenders beaten). Their place-kicking ratio of 77 per cent was the best in the URC, largely courtesy of Nathan Doak.

Set for a breakthrough

Aitzol Arenzana-King. One of triplets, the former Balbriggan, Clontarf and Leinster academy winger was also part of Murphy’s 2022 U20s Grand Slam-winning side. Re-routed to the Ulster academy last season, he missed eight months with an anterior cruciate ligament injury. But the 24-year-old scored on his sole appearance and has been upgraded to a senior development contract. Looked back to his powerful best in last Friday’s win in Edinburgh and with Werner Kok having moved on and Robert Baloucoune integral to Ireland, opportunity could knock for a player entering a big season in his career.

International impact

One reality of providing more players for Ireland is that more demands are placed on them. In a season before a World Cup, for example, it would be no surprise if Ulster see less of Stuart McCloskey and Robert Baloucoune.

Forecast

“I’m excited for Ulster,” says their former player Ian Madigan. It feels like a season to aim high, as in a top-eight/playoff finish in the URC and maybe even a first trophy since the David Humphreys-inspired 2006 Celtic League triumph. It could come in the Challenge Cup.

The previous Fine Gael leader was reported in your newspaper on May 20th, 2017, as also wanting to lead the party “for people who get up early in the morning”.

So for over 10 years the leaders of Fine Gael have been talking about people who get up early in the morning.

I doubt if any of the said people who got up early in the last nine years feel looked after. – Yours, etc,

ANTAINE O’DUIBHIR,

Ranelagh,

Dublin 6

Sir, – Despite what Tánaiste Simon Harris might believe, as I climb out of bed at 4:45am every Monday and Tuesday morning for my two-and-a-half hour commute each way to and from work, my first thought is never, “I wish the Government would cut taxes so I could have an extra few euro in my pocket each week.”

Instead, as I face into another week of almost 12 hours of commuting, and the associated €70 weekly public transportation costs, I merely want the Government to act to make housing affordable, especially in Dublin.

The Government’s solution, however, seems to be a 15 per cent increase in public transportation fares from next year for working adults like me, combined with zero meaningful action on the price of housing in Dublin.

Promises of supporting “people who get up early every morning and go to work” are meaningless to early-rising workers like me when that support equates to nothing more than a few extra euro in our pockets every week, soon to be lost on increased public transport fares and ongoing inflation in weekly groceries and regular refuse, electricity and heating bills.

The famous political saying may have once been “It’s the economy, stupid”, but in Ireland for the past decade, it’s housing, housing, housing. – Yours, etc.

TOMAS HENEGHAN,

113 Gracedieu Road,

Waterford

What is Apple doing?

As is now tradition, Apple is holding its regularly scheduled product launch, titled Surprise and Shine. We are expecting to see new iPhones, including the highly anticipated foldable phone.

This is the first big iPhone redesign since its launch in 2007. While the company has increased the screen size and changed some aesthetics, a bendable display will be a first for Apple.

It will also be new chief executive John Ternus’s first product launch in charge, after Tim Cook stepped away to take on the executive chairman role at the start of the month.

So the stakes are high?

Start as you mean to go on. It won’t be the first time Ternus has been involved in a big launch – he was head of Apple’s hardware engineering before he was named Cook’s successor – but it will be the first time he is leading things.

As a result, people will be watching closely to see how prominent a role he plays in Apple’s regular product events, and if he can bring back some of the hype that used to accompany these launches.

Are foldable phones a big thing?

They are getting there. According to FDM CCS Insight, 25 million foldable smartphones were shipped in 2025. That’s an 18 per cent year-on-year increase, and was down to strong volumes from Samsung, Huawei and Motorola. That was about 2 per cent of the overall smartphone market.

But Apple’s entry – if it comes as anticipated – is expected to bring new momentum to the sector.

“Despite the overall challenges in the smartphone market, we expect the foldable segment to grow strongly in 2026 and 2027. Although we expect many players will see some volume decline because of market pressures, Apple’s rumoured entry is expected to offset the weaknesses and strengthen the category in the long run,” says FDM CCS Insight analyst Ben Wood. “We believe Apple will bring fresh attention to the category and increase acceptance of the designs despite high prices and still evolving uses.”

Having said that, it is expected to remain a niche category, accounting for just 4 per cent of the total market by the end of the decade, FDM CCS Insight says.

It sounds expensive

It probably will be. Rumours are that the phone will cost upwards of $2,000 in the US, putting it in line with Samsung and Google’s foldables.

What else is Apple expected to do?

We could see a new Apple Watch, plus camera-enabled AirPods. And Apple will also announce the full availability of iOS27, which includes an AI-enabled Siri. But not for the EU just yet, at least. We will have to wait until Apple’s discussions with the European Commission over access for third-party voice assistants have concluded.

There has been talk that Apple may split the launch of the new phones across two events, with the iPhone 18 Pro models launching at this event and the base model of the iPhone 18 coming in a few months’ time. That would give the company time to get demand for the Pro models bedded in.

The ESRI approach takes today’s housing stock as given and finds that house prices are about 17 per cent higher than would be expected based on population size and borrowing capacity.

But it seems more intuitive to base overvaluation on the price impact of increasing the housing stock sufficiently to meet demand. The Housing Commission estimated that meeting demand would require 250,000 additional units or 10 per cent more housing.

Using the ESRI model’s parameters (including a large housing elasticity of minus 3.9) implies, on a back-of-the-envelope basis, that a 10 per cent housing increase would reduce prices by about a third. Adding this figure to the ESRI’s gives a total overvaluation of three times 17 per cent.

Apart from being a much larger number, this serves to bring out the acute intergenerational aspect of Irish housing. Affordable houses for would-be buyers, who are typically younger, means existing owners, typically older and often retired, would receive a much lower price for their homes.

This is a necessary development, an underdiscussed aspect of housing policy and, plausibly, the main reason we build hardly any houses. – Yours, etc,

CATHAL GUIOMARD,

Cappawhite,

Co Tipperary

None of it should be necessary. It should have ended in Myrtle Beach in South Carolina on November 24th, 2015, when then-presidential candidate Donald Trump mocked a man’s congenital disability to a cheering crowd. Serge Kovaleski’s remarkable courage in the face of his disability and his Pulitzer-winning journalism threatened their ignorance. Trump gave them permission to shout it out loud.

That was the moment for all moral people in the US to unify and slam the brakes on his fledgling political career. Instead, it marked a different inflection point: the end of empathy.

The right said empathy was “woke”. Gloria Steinem called it the most radical of human emotions. We can argue about overreach, but one thing is plain: when the ability to imagine another’s struggle is jeered and trampled, every single living creature looks like a hammer or a nail. When vengeance, gold and self-deification are the objectives of the world’s most powerful man, nothing and no one is safe or sacred.

Even the most bullheaded among us know that our politicians and diplomats must override their personal revulsion to guard Ireland’s economic interests. Sure, some on the welcoming committee have called Trump names like bully, misogynist, racist and vulgarian, but they were still more flattering than his future vice president was in 2016. Back then JD Vance called him “cultural heroin”, “idiot”, “noxious” and – in text messages to a former college roommate – said he was veering “back and forth between thinking that Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad ... Or America’s Hitler”.

Nor has Trump’s ambassador to Ireland felt diplomatically constrained by his host country’s moral values. Edward Walsh chose US independence weekend to visit Conor McGregor’s Dublin pub, prompting former taoiseach Leo Varadkar to ask what messages he was sending out to victims of rape and sexual assault.

Nothing about the drop-in was casual. It presumably would have entailed a site survey, route planning, Garda liaison, communications and press checks. McGregor had time to organise a red carpet. With similar deliberation last January, Walsh attended a Maga-style gathering including some populist right-wing activists and politicians whose views are anathema to the vast majority of his host population.

It’s not reassuring to think that countries such as France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Malaysia – forced to accommodate brash, hectoring, often inexperienced, Trump-appointed diplomats – have had to contend with worse.

Micheál Martin, in a third meeting with Trump in 18 months, can be relied upon to swerve the awkwardness. President Catherine Connolly will be appropriately frosty. But however pointed the dig or icy the tone, his mind will be elsewhere. This national exercise is entirely obscene: to assuage a US president’s toddler-like volatility en route to his playground. Just less than one quarter of his 590-plus days in office have been spent playing golf, according to trumpgolftrack.com.

Those who despair in the US, I know, see nihilism, a loss of faith and self-sabotage among those who should be taking the unified fight to Trump. Yet, as well as his dismal polling, there are hopeful signs.

Less than a year after the South Carolina rally, Milos Yiannopoulos, a far-right British-born Trump enthusiast, brought down the house at a Houston talk by telling a protester that this wasn’t the “silver-haired snowflake show”. “Madam, I’m grateful to you for coming, but to be quite honest with you, f**k your feelings,” he declared to hysterical cheers of “USA! USA! USA!”. There was never a clearer summation of the repulsively ignorant, abusive, entitled #FYF era. Except perhaps: “Your body, my choice, Forever”, posted by far-right podcaster and Trump fan, Nick Fuentes, on election night in 2024.

He has since become a critic of Trump, but even a year ago, Yiannopoulos – now married to an American – was still posting Trumpian messages such as: “We have got to deport millions and millions and millions of people. Without that, nothing else matters.”

Last week, he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice), manacled hands and feet, shoved and shuffled from one jail to another, humiliated, degraded and left so frightened he was “weeping like an old woman”, as he put it to Piers Morgan – then deported back to the UK.

And suddenly the #FYF troll is alive to what precisely is involved when “the machinery of American government lines up” to meet his own urgent targets. Now he regrets having been “a little bit blase, a little bit cavalier” towards other people in that position and pleads that his mundane working life be dissociated from his “silly” Twitter persona.

It’s fascinating, of course, to see such admissions from people who’ve gained profitable notoriety firing social media bullets at a blob they never perceived as human. Yiannopoulos and others deserve all the Schadenfreude coming at them. But who gains?

Controlling our borders does not equate with abandoning moral decency and empathy, even towards a hideous backtracking troll. The midterms are coming, and there is a shift in the air. That image of Trump, his limbs and face in mocking spasm, will serve as the weekend’s banner, as a reminder and a warning – if not to those in the US, then to ourselves.

We had a family holiday a number of weeks ago and, for the whole build-up to it, my wife said this was the last of our real family holidays. She was saying this because my two youngest kids are now both heading towards 18. And we have an older girl. The youngest will probably have a friends’ holiday next year and the older girl has big plans already in progress.

We have always done lovely family holidays since they were very young, both at home and abroad. I am gutted about this, crying over it on and off during this last holiday, but my wife says it’s start of new beginning for us.

At the moment I can’t accept this.

Is this usual for a dad?

Answer

Change is a fact of life, and if our kids are to be successful adults, they will need to develop independence and ultimately leave us, and this is a sign of success.

However, more and more, the age of real independence has moved well into people’s 20s, so as long as you are paying for family holidays, they might continue to come with you.

However, this does not help explain your sadness and grief.

When things are good or very good, we experience loss at their passing, and it seems that your family holidays fit into this category. In one way, how lucky are you? But, of course, the loss (or anticipated loss) of this comes with grief and this is a very human response. Grief has to be borne and endured, but in this case, it can be peppered with delight as you watch your children develop and grow into fully functioning adults.

There is a danger that your children will try to stop your suffering (they will intuit how you feel even if you hide your tears) by staying with you longer than their instinct tells them to. If this happens it might inhibit their development a little, so you might take this into consideration. Honesty in relationships is important, and your grief and your handling of it can act as a model for their own future losses.

It is entirely possible to love someone and to let them go, it is all based on your wish for them to grow and live their lives to the full. It will help them to know that your tears are an expression of the passing of a stage of life but that you have no need to fix anything. Acceptance is central to our response to grief, but this is usually a process and not a once-off event.

‘It breaks my heart that our son will not have a committed father in his life’

We should not try to hold on to moments of happiness, as they wither and die with this grasping. Rather we should let these moments pass with the expectation that there will be many more blissful moments in our futures. Your wife is trying to put this possibility in front of you, but perhaps you are not yet ready to open up to it. For you, acceptance might be assisted by conversations with your wife and other friends about moving through different stages of life and exploring how new, more adult relationships are formed with your offspring.

When we feel understood, we have a much better chance allowing self-compassion to work and this is very healing. You ask if it is usual for a dad to experience this level of loss and of course it is: as a father faces into the fact that his role is changing from being the font of all wisdom, protection and being needed to a role of more distant caring.

What might be a little unusual is that you are expressing your grief through very natural tears, where some men will block any expression of sadness with a facade of stoicism. You are modelling that it is human to feel sad, to express that sadness and to allow comfort in so that recovery and healing can happen.

If we do not properly process each loss, we can bury it so that it surfaces again later in the next grief, making it more complicated and difficult to cope with. So allow yourself to feel fully what is happening, explore and figure out what meaning this has for you and accept support and comfort from your inner circle.

There will be more sadness and changes in your future, and you will be able to apply all your learning from this experience so that you move from suffering to healing with more ease and grace.

The driving factor behind this plight is love, and you can rest in the knowledge that you have loved long and well and that this does not stop but transforms into a more mature backbone for your children to draw from.

• To send your question to Trish Murphy, fill in the form below or email tellmeaboutit@irishtimes.com

Most criminal defence solicitors are continuing to withdraw services over the changed system, which saw a single flat fee of €520 introduced on July 1st, regardless of the number of court appearances.

The withdrawal of services has resulted in the adjournment of thousands of criminal cases, with society president Rosemarie Loftus telling O’Callaghan the impasse is having a “profound impact on the administration of justice”.

In a letter sent on Tuesday, seen by The Irish Times, Loftus notes that the number of legal aid certificates granted has “collapsed”, falling by 93 per cent from 10,277 in July of last year to 702 last July.

Describing a fall of this scale as “deeply worrying”, Loftus wrote: “As you know, behind each of these numbers is a defendant without representation, a victim whose wait for justice keeps getting adjourned, a garda anxious to bring a case to conclusion – and many others who are directly impacted.”

Loftus suggests appointing an independent mediator to help find a solution, saying they could help “bridge the gap between your policy objectives and the practical realities experienced by practitioners on the ground”.

“Given the importance of restoring stability to the criminal justice system, I think that the time has come to consider such an approach,” she said.

In the letter, which was shared with criminal defence lawyers, Loftus also tells the Minister she was “surprised” by his suggestion last week that the criminal courts were “operating effectively”.

“In fact, I am hugely concerned at the impact the current dispute is having on victims of crime, those accused of crime, the general public and all court users.”

Speaking to reporters last Thursday, O’Callaghan reiterated his view that the previous system encouraged adjournments and facilitated “abuses” of legal aid certificates.

Legal aid fees dispute: Pressure mounts on Jim O’Callaghan as solicitors dig in

Loftus said there were two outstanding matters in dispute. One of which was the treatment of separate and distinct criminal cases “as a single matter” when they come before the court on the same day. The other was the absence of a “practical mechanism” to deal with “exceptional cases” that often concern children and those with mental health issues, which can involve “unusually high numbers of court appearances”.

She also urged O’Callaghan to “avoid a repeat of what has happened under the Civil Legal Aid scheme, where a similar model was introduced”.

The number of solicitors working under the District Court Family Law panel has fallen by more than 60 per cent over the past decade, she wrote, from 953 in 2016 to 379 by last June.

Noting that “many” people face long delays in securing legal support, Loftus said it was “critical that the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme does not go the same way”.

Asked whether the Minister would consider mediation, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice only confirmed the letter was received.

I thanked her and said she looked lovely too.

She fell back into conversation with the woman beside her while I set about the coffee-ordering process.

The thing was: she had said it in such a familiar way that it seemed as if we knew each other; and her appearance somehow bolstered that impression. She hadn’t rolled out of bed and thrown on a tracksuit. It was the morning, but she looked like she could be on her way to the theatre or to meet an international dignitary or to accept an award. She didn’t seem like the kind of person you’d forget easily.

Yet I couldn’t place her. Variations of this happen to me all the time. Because of my job, I tend to meet a lot of people. I’ve never forgotten a face (I think), but I am atrocious at names. More precisely, they don’t come back to me quickly. I’ll pass someone on the street who I might have been talking to the day before. They’ll greet me by name, but the best I can muster is a faux-enthusiastic Hi! I’ll recall the name eventually, but it might be minutes, or hours. Or days. I’ve never managed to devise a strategy to cover for this failing and I’ve probably offended countless people because of it. I’m sorry. Whoever you are.

Similarly, I’m easily thrown by context. If, for instance, I bump into one of the coffee shop workers outside the coffee shop – at an NCT inspection centre or a chip shop – I immediately know I know them, but I don’t know where from. We could be cousins or former lovers.

This is not a debilitating condition, more a quirk of my brain: and the human brain remains a wonderfully mysterious organ. We still don’t know why we think the way we think, why we remember some things but not others.

There are people I’ve interviewed several times, but on each occasion seem to have no memory of having met me before. (Which I choose not to be offended by). Sometimes, people say hello to me, but then look baffled as they quickly realise that they don’t know where they know me from. (People occasionally smile at me too. But that’s just the beard. When I first grew it, I was aiming for Sexy Fisherman. But it seems to have developed into Harmless Off-Duty Santa).

Seán Moncrieff: Time is slowly kicking the crap out of me

The difference with the woman in the coffee shop was that while it felt like I should know her – she acted like we’d met before – I didn’t recognise her. Her face wasn’t at all familiar. She didn’t look like she’d had Botox or a facelift. Perhaps she’d had Botox when we last met but hadn’t kept up the treatments. Or, more likely, this was a sign of dramatic cognitive decline. People completely erased from my memory. A sexy fisherman who can’t remember where he parked his boat.

But then the woman waved me over. Which I welcomed: when you can’t place a person, the first thing they say can often provide a clue. You still owe me €50, or do you remember that Turkish prison? Instead, she informed me that she had left her cigarettes at home.

This still left me baffled, so I made vague sympathetic noises. And then I noticed that the woman beside her – who I had assumed was her friend – was smirking with enjoyment. I had got it completely wrong.

We didn’t know each other at all. She was simply a bit of a character: a category of person whose unique brains add to the richness of life. The woman went on to inform me that she was 61. I told her she looked 25 and she howled with pleasure. I’ll remember her the next time. I hope.

Recently I bought a fridge from your above-mentioned store and arranged for its delivery. Come the appointed hour, two delivery men turned up. Somewhat hot and bothered, it has to be said. It was a muggy day.

I took one of them into the house and he had barely reached the end of the hall before announcing there was no way the new fridge was going down the stairs to the basement because it was “massive”. (It was presumably the same size when he loaded it on to his truck.)

I pointed out to him that his predecessors had no such difficulties and took him downstairs to show him the “American fridge” that had been brought down the same stairs by Power City delivery men five years ago. They had also taken away an equally large fridge. I suspect such things are quite routine in America.

Anyway, the sight of the old fridge seemed to make matters worse and he informed me there was “no way” the old fridge was getting up the stairs either.

He then consulted his colleague, who was very much of the same view.

Your agents then departed, leaving me with the clear impression that they had their minds made up about the impossibility of the task they had been assigned before they had even stepped in the door of my house.

I contacted customer services as they suggested. The only method being via your website. In fairness, I received a call back quickly, but things did not go well. I spoke to someone who identified himself as the customer service manager for all the Power City stores in Dublin. I now suspect he has his work cut out for him, which might explain his less-than-sympathetic response.

The delivery men’s verdict was final I was told. The fact that the fridge they refused to remove – leaving aside for a moment the one they refused to deliver – had been purchased from and delivered by Power City seemed irrelevant. The prospect of sending another delivery team with perhaps more ambition was not an option.

He did, however, point out that I should have thought to mention the American fridge and the stairs – despite this not having been an issue previously – when buying the new fridge. It felt a little like victim-blaming, but I digress.

Then I asked to speak to someone else. He said there was no one else. I asked if he had a boss. He said he had no boss, which strikes me as odd unless Power City has adopted an anarcho-syndicalist business model, which I would suggest is unusual for family-owned business that made a profit of €4 million last year.

My interlocutor informed me I could have a refund or the fridge could be delivered to the top of the stairs and if I wanted the old fridge collected it would also have to be brought upstairs. The absurdity of making this proposal to a man in his 60s appeared to be lost on him and we left it at that.

I decided my best option was to buy a fridge from one of your rivals and, on my way up to Currys, I thought I would call into the Sallynoggin shop to see if I could get a more sympathetic hearing. I asked the cashier if I could speak to the manager and was informed there was no manager, just herself and the sales staff. More anarcho-syndicalism?

The cashier did ring someone and, after a brief discussion, confirmed that we had reached the end of the road. I opted for the promised refund only to be told that it could not be processed until the undelivered fridge was back in “the store”.

I pointed out that this was a little unusual since I did not and never had possession of the fridge in question. I would have to return to the store “in a day or two” as the refund had to be processed back to my card.

This obviously complicated my plans to purchase a fridge from a rival whose delivery men did not suffer from bathophobia, otherwise known as an irrational fear of stairs.

The good news is I found one and apparently delivering the new fridge will not require hard hats, cranes and a safety officer. Good news for basement dwellers everywhere.

The Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) is, from today, seeking expressions of interest for a partner to design, build, finance and operate the proposed scheme, known as the Lansdowne Quarter, under a long-term ground lease, with the IRFU retaining the freehold interest in the site.

The proposed Lansdowne Quarter has an estimated gross development cost (GDC) of €150 million and is being envisaged as a 257-key hotel alongside a 77-unit residential apartment development, with extensive food and beverage and conferencing facilities. The site, which sits next to the Lansdowne Road railway level crossing and directly opposite the entrance to the Aviva Stadium, is being brought to the market without planning permission, providing the incoming development partner with the flexibility to shape the final design, configuration and overall positioning of the scheme.

The proposed hotel is expected to generate a significant proportion of its business from the Aviva Stadium, with the remainder flowing from other nearby venues such as the RDS and Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, and the major employers to be found in Ballsbridge and Dublin’s south docklands.

Since opening in 2010, the Aviva Stadium has had over 10 million visitors and hosted more than 330 events along with its staple of international rugby and football fixtures.

Apartments in the proposed residential scheme meanwhile will be expected to command prices similar to those achieved over recent years at the nearby Lansdowne Place, which developer Joe O’Reilly’s Chartered Land built on the site of the former five-star Berkeley Court Hotel. In September 2025, the scheme set the record for the most valuable transaction in the Irish apartment market when one of its penthouses, 27 The Nicholson, sold for €7.2 million (VAT included). The price paid equated to an average of about 1,895 per sq ft based on the apartment’s 353sq m (3,800sq ft) floor size.

The overall value of the Lansdowne Quarter hotel and residential scheme, and its attractiveness to potential investors will have been further enhanced by the fact that Chartered Land’s original plan to develop a hotel, apartments and shops on the site of the former Jurys Hotel was abandoned following the US government’s acquisition of the property in 2024 for its new embassy.

CBRE has been appointed by the IRFU to seek proposals from developers and operators for the Lansdowne Quarter development.

Paul Collins of CBRE’s UK & Ireland hotel brokerage division said: “This is a superb opportunity to deliver a flagship scheme in one of Dublin’s most sought-after locations. The combination of a stadium-adjacent site, exceptional connectivity and strong underlying demand fundamentals in both the hotel and residential sectors makes Lansdowne Quarter a compelling proposition for developers and operators alike. We expect strong interest from both Irish and international parties.”

Kevin Potts, CEO of the IRFU, added: “This process allows the IRFU to unlock the long-term potential of a strategically important site, while also retaining ownership of the land. Importantly, the development will be wholly funded by the successful development partner. The resulting lease income will provide a long term and significant new revenue stream for Irish rugby that will be invested into all levels of the game across Ireland.”

In 2017, she came across 107 Church Road in East Wall and realised it was perfectly located. “The National Sports Campus in Abbotstown where I trained could be easily accessed from East Wall, and I could also get to Dublin Airport quickly. What’s more, I could run along Clontarf strand and back into town from the house.”

Coyle, originally from Co Meath, and her now husband, fellow pentathlon athlete and Olympian Arthur Lanigan-O’Keeffe, from Kilkenny, with whom she bought it, were also attracted to the condition of the 192sq m (2,066sq ft) home. “It was perfect, which appealed to me as I’d no time to carry out renovations,” she says.

Built circa 1895, the terraced three-bedroom period house, which is deceptively small from the outside, had been renovated and extended by the previous owners in 2017. It has a C2 Ber.

The ceilings are high and the rooms are larger than average with floor-to-ceiling glass doors at the back and an internal courtyard. “It has a beautiful flow,” says Coyle. “You walk into the hall and through to the open-plan kitchen/dining/livingroom, which is big and airy and flooded with natural light.

“I used to find it very calming. I’d forget about whatever else was happening in my life and relax once I got home. It was like a little oasis.”

The couple opted for a minimalist aesthetic with pristine white walls, laminated mock-wood floors and furnishings in mostly neutral colours. They did some work on the east-facing back garden, which has a lawn and a patio, and added gates.

They also enjoyed the proximity of the house to cafes and restaurants. “There are a number of good restaurants on the North Strand and we really liked the East Road Cafe,” she says.

Coyle officially retired as an athlete in 2022. She now works in sustainability and sport and is a mother to three-month-old twins.

Having moved to the UK, she and Lanigan-O’Keeffe are placing 107 Church Road on the market with Owen Reilly, seeking €800,000. “We’ve had some very happy times while living there. It really is a beautiful house,” she adds.

I see some public sector advertisements with policies offering up to three days of remote work per week, which looks fantastic for potential cross-Border workers navigating a commute.

However, I know that working from home for two or three days a week could potentially trigger cross-Border compliance thresholds around Irish PRSI and UK national insurance. My understanding is this is to do with the percentage of work that “takes place” in the UK vs the Republic for tax resident purposes.

How does the Irish public sector typically handle this for Northern Ireland residents?

For example, are cross-Border staff usually able to avail of the full three days of remote work from home, or does compliance require capping any Northern Ireland based remote working at one day a week to keep everything within the standard Irish PRSI system?

Is there precedent for accommodations for Northern Ireland workers like me who hold Irish passports?

Aside from consular staff posted abroad, those residing in Northern Ireland are the only public workers who can avail of remote arrangements outside of the Republic.

However, the exception does not lift underlying compliance restrictions for those living across the Border, which typically result in the number of remote working days being capped at one per week, according to HR and tax experts.

‘HR are adamant my three in-office days are required. Do I need to comply?’

“[The exception] merely allows them to access hybrid arrangements under strict limits. The primary compliance bottleneck here is social security legislation,” says Damien McCarthy, founder and chief executive of consultancy firm HR Buddy.

A cross-Border worker is subject to the social insurance system of the country where their employer is based, McCarthy says, unless they perform a “substantial part” of their work where they live.

That “substantial part” is legally interpreted as 25 per cent or more of the worker’s overall working time, he says.

“The reality is that working from home in Northern Ireland for two or three days a week equates to 40 to 60 per cent of your working time, so this automatically triggers a shift in your social security jurisdiction from Irish PRSI to UK national insurance contributions,” he says.

To prevent breaching the 25 per cent threshold, the number of remote working days for cross-Border public sector employees is typically restricted to one day per week, McCarthy says.

Such employees are typically asked to sign an agreement that remote work will be carried out in the Republic or that their remote working in Northern Ireland will be restricted to one day, he says.

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Holding an Irish passport or Irish citizenship provides “no leverage or exemption in this scenario”, McCarthy adds.

Rachel Dillon, tax partner in EY Ireland’s people advisory services, says cross-Border working arrangements have “grown in popularity” in recent years.

Each employer will typically have their own internal policies governing cross-Border working, she says, though the taxation of such workers is a “complex area” that requires “significant care” from both employers and employees.

Should the reader work remotely from Northern Ireland one day per week, Dillon notes they would be contributing to the Irish PRSI rather than the UK national insurance system.

However, while social security matters might be “simplified” in this case, cross-Border workers could experience “cash flow issues from a tax perspective”, she says.

“Working four days per week in Ireland means you are more likely to be tax resident here. If so, your employer must now withhold Irish PAYE on all of your employment income even though the income relating to your UK workday is not taxable,” she says.

In that case, Dillon says such employees must file a tax return in the Republic to claim a refund, unless Revenue agrees to allow their employer to reduce the PAYE withholdings to the income that is ultimately taxable in Ireland.

“You will most likely find that the UK tax on this income is payable in advance of the Irish refund issuing and hence the cash-flow issue,” she says.

“Non-compliance can be time-consuming to rectify and can lead to overdue tax, interest and penalties being charged and we would always recommend that professional advice should be sought to ensure compliance by both the employer and employee,” Dillon says.

If you have work-related questions, from how to deal with burnout to running your own business, The Irish Times Work Q&A column is here to help. You can use the form below to submit your question. Please limit your submissions to 400 words or less and please include a phone number. Your name and contact details will be confidential and only be used for verification purposes. Any details about your employer will also be anonymised.

The bank told us her experience was not common among its customers, but her story did prompt some other readers to get in touch.

“Yesterday afternoon a Dublin number came through on my mobile phone, and as it was local I answered and was greeted by name by a Brian,” writes a reader.

“I don’t usually confirm my name to unknown callers, but ask ‘Who am I taking to?’ But in this instance I confirmed my name,” she says.

She tells us that “Brian” went on to tell her that he was phoning from the fraud department of Bank of Ireland. He said he had identified two suspicious transactions – in the amount of €500 to Revolut and a lesser, €5 amount.

“Checking if I had authorised these amounts, I responded that I had not. He then went on to say that he would put steps in place to cancel both credit and debit cards and asked if they were in my possession. He then requested my email address.

I then interrupted and said I would make contact with my branch today and ended the call abruptly. Seconds later, he phoned back and said that leaving it a day later would be too late – but I hung up on him.”

Our reader then phoned the security line of Banking 365, Bank of Ireland’s remote banking service, and the initial automated message asked whether the call was in connection with a credit or debit card.

“As both cards had been mentioned, I then chose what I thought was the debit card option. On being put through to an employee and being requested to call out my card number, I was informed that I was through to the credit card line.”

She outlined her concerns “but was merely told I did the right thing in hanging up. The employee then said she would put me through to the relevant section, but I was holding on so long that I had to exit the call,” she says.

‘To make matters worse, Bank of Ireland weren’t really interested in using the information to check the fraudsters or using it as an intelligence unit in the trail of fraud’

Charlie, reader

She then sent an email to Bank of Ireland with the number she had got the original call from and heard nothing more except for an automated response.

She phoned the original number that the fraudulent call came from and says it appeared to have come from Bank of Ireland, but says it “clearly was a false number. My concern is, what route is open to customers who have encountered similar scam calls to have these numbers investigated?”

She is also concerned that the criminals had both her name and phone number, and says she was not impressed with the bank’s response. “The lacklustre response and inability on behalf of BOI to think outside the box in dealing with this is very concerning, given their media messages concerning security.”

Another reader called Charlie got in touch to say he had a “similar experience with Bank of Ireland not being really interested in a suspected fraud attempt. I was the victim of an attempted diversion fraud,” he says, referring to what is also known as an invoice re-direction fraud.

Charlie had gotten building work done and wanted to be sure his online payment would transfer to the builder without hiccups, and so took the following steps.

“I just paid €1 and contacted the builder to check if he got the money. The fraudsters simply put a rule on my email to divert the invoice and then inserted their bank account and put it back in my inbox unopened. Luckily, I avoided making the payment of €25k by contacting the builder directly,” he says.

“To make matters worse, Bank of Ireland weren’t really interested in using the information to check the fraudsters or using it as an intelligence unit in the trail of fraud.”

Bank of Ireland has warned customers of spike in text scams. Here’s what to look out for

He says their response amounted to “confirming no fraud had taken place and my bank account hadn’t been compromised. Anyhow, I went to the gardaí as a concerned citizen and was met with less than an enthusiastic response, as the fraud only amounted to €1. I thought the intelligence nugget with bank account details might be useful.”

We sent these stories to Bank of Ireland to see what it had to say, and received this response.

“We handle more than 600,000 calls annually through our 24/7 fraud support services – we aim to provide the highest standard of support, and we sincerely apologise where we fall short of those standards,” a spokeswoman said.

“In addition to our customer-facing fraud teams, we have specialists dedicated to preventing, detecting, investigating and tracking fraud. These teams work closely with An Garda Síochána, other law enforcement agencies, telecommunications providers and industry partners.

“Customer reports are an important source of intelligence and are investigated regardless of any financial loss. We have established arrangements with telecommunications providers to report and block suspected fraudulent numbers – over the past year, we identified and reported over 500 fraudulent phone numbers.

“We also report all instances of fraud to gardaí for their investigation.”

Located next to Guinness Storehouse and St James’s Gate brewery, the development at 17-19 Newport Street comprises 13 two-bedroom and four three-bedroom apartments distributed over five storeys, along with five car-parking spaces, and a communal rooftop terrace. Developed in 2020, the property, which is highly energy efficient with NZEB (nearly zero energy building) and A2/A3 Ber ratings, is being offered to the market by agent Knight Frank at a guide price of €8.5 million.

The investment is producing a gross annual income of €504,828 with full occupancy and minimal churn. Should a sale proceed at the guide price, the incoming owner would be in line for a 5.25 per cent net initial yield.

The subject property is located within a short walk of the Luas red-line stop at James’s and in close proximity to the site of the new National Children’s Hospital. The IFSC, north and south docklands and St Stephen’s Green are all located within a 20-minute cycle.

Sean Molony of Knight Frank says: “The Newport apartments offer investors the opportunity to secure ownership of an asset with strong sustainability credentials, occupancy levels and sustainable rental income.”

With the architect and renovation specialist Paul Brazil at the helm, the owners embarked on a renovation that has resulted in and elegant and considered, yet ultimately comfortable, family home of 385sq m (4,144sq ft). It has a D Ber.

Well set back from the road behind original wrought-iron railings and gates, there is room to park several cars on the gravelled area in front of the house.

Its redbrick facade has been repointed, and the front door still has its original stained-glass panels. It opens into a stunning entrance hallway, with twin arches, an ornate ceiling rose and panelling. The original interconnecting reception rooms lie on the right. They have wide-plank floors, 12ft-high ceilings, and shutters on the sash windows. The drawingroom has an ornate marble fireplace with slate hearth and brass surround.

Beyond it lies a sittingroom with some superb built-in cabinetry that surrounds an identical marble fireplace, painted a serene dark blue. A pair of impressive chandeliers further reinforces the grace and elegance of these rooms.

On the far side of the hall is another reception room, laid out as a more informal livingroom. It has a particularly lovely plaster frieze at the top of the muted grey walls, a black marble fireplace, and at the end of the room nearest the door, a library unit complete with ladder.

Steps lead down to a kitchen and dining area housed in a new extension, and this is a space that immediately impresses. The eye is drawn to the dining area and a centrepiece in the form of a handcrafted oak table and bench with storage to its rear, which makes a seamless divide between the kitchen and the dining area.

It adds warmth and character to a light, bright space, featuring individual doors leading to the patio and garden. The Siematic kitchen is predictably superb, with a large granite-topped island lit by a vaulted rooflight. A door leads, via a short flight of steps, to a large utility room. There is also a guest WC at this level, with another short flight of stairs leading back to the hall.

The first-floor return houses a bathroom and a double bedroom with a box-bay window, fitted wardrobes and another window.

On the first floor are four generous bedrooms. The main bedroom is to the rear of the house and has an en suite bathroom, a separate dressingroom and a six-over-six sash window. An ornate fireplace houses ochre tiles adorned by figures – a whimsical touch that is repeated in another fireplace in a bedroom also at the back of the house. The tiles here are a teal green, perfectly offset by the white surround of the fireplace and cool grey tones of the room.

Two more bedrooms at the front of the house are beautifully decorated and between them lies a smart dressingroom, with a bank of fitted wardrobes, lit by a pair of narrow windows tapering to a fine arch. This could be repurposed into a small nursery bedroom if required. A bedroom to the front and a bedroom to the rear are both en suite.

The garden is mature and well-landscaped, private, quiet and south facing. The location of the house is superb, minutes from Rathmines village, and close to a multitude of schools.

Located near St Patrick’s Cathedral and the adjoining St Patrick’s Park and within a 20-minute walk of St Stephen’s Green, the subject property, which is bounded by 11 and 32 Hanover Lane, currently comprises a vacant brownfield site and comes for sale with full planning permission for the development of 24 apartments.

The property is being offered to the market by agent Knight Frank on behalf of the owner, a private investor, at a guide price of €1.5 million.

The planning permission allows for the construction of an apartment building ranging in height from three to four storeys over a partially in situ basement.

The approved scheme would comprise eight studio apartments, 14 one-bed apartments and two two-bed apartments, along with communal resident amenity and storage space. The proposed development is exempt from the obligation to provide Part V units to Dublin City Council.

Robert Wilson, who is handling the sale on behalf of Knight Frank, says: “This is an exceptional development offering investors and developers a ready-to-deliver residential project in one of Dublin’s most vibrant and connected districts. There is a dearth of well-located sites with planning permission in place being offered for sale at present. Given this site’s prime location and lot size, we expect to see strong interest in the sale.”

What they were not expecting: all the rules for living there.

Current and former tenants say that London’s Shard Place – where a one-bedroom flat costs £4,300 a month – has delivered on its promises of high-end finishes and “astonishing views”.

But they say they also assumed their money would buy greater convenience.

Instead, the building’s managers stopped food delivery drivers from entering the building and limited guests to staying no longer than 14 days in a 90-day period.

Tenants also found themselves in disputes over the prices for internet access and charges for gym induction.

“I feel like I am fighting about something new every week,” one tenant wrote in a text message last August, calling the state of affairs “so draining”.

In October, the same tenant wrote: “Why am I paying so much to feel like an imposition and not get services I get in comparable buildings?”

The 27-storey tower had been hotly awaited. Located near the Shard in London Bridge, it was completed five years behind schedule and ran more than £200 million over budget, according to accounts filed with Companies House.

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Like a small but growing minority of London housing, Shard Place is “build-to-rent”: none of its 176 flats are is available for sale.

Even in the tightly managed world of build-to-rent, its rules have made it an outlier.

Some buildings have loosened their rules in the wake of the Renters’ Rights Act, such as no longer charging fees to have pets, said Karen Standing, who oversees the build-to-rent segment at estate agency Hamptons.

Shard Place does not allow pets, except for guide dogs. Under the Renters’ Rights Act, the Labour government’s flagship effort to help renters, landlords cannot have a blanket ban on pets.

Shard Place was built by the same firm that constructed the Shard and the next-door News Building, and is managed by Qatari state-owned Real Estate Management (UK). This is the company’s first big foray into build-to-rent housing.

Build-to-rent landlords say the arrangement offers benefits, including increased security. The trade-off, however, is less control.

Why would I pay to use my residential gym? It just did not make sense to me. I got to talking to other tenants later on and it was a thing that we all bonded over

Shard Place resident

Tenants began moving in in June 2025. They could choose from light and dark colour palettes with preselected furniture.

Shard Place pledged to make living in central London an “effortless experience”.

Instead, almost immediately, tenants encountered snags. Rubbish could only be placed in the building’s chutes before 5pm, when tenants were often at work. The pool had to be booked and was often unavailable.

Food-delivery drivers were barred from entering the building or leaving items with the concierge. Guests had to be fetched from reception and were not permitted to use the pool.

In contrast, Greystar, a landlord that owns nearly 22,000 build-to-rent properties across the UK, allows collection points for food deliveries and guests to use amenities, said a person familiar with the matter.

For some Shard Place tenants, the most concerning restriction has been the limit on guests’ stays to 14 days in a three-month period without permission from management.

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The policy, which had not been outlined in the tenancy agreement, said “anyone staying beyond the permitted guest period may be considered as residing in the apartment and will require a Right to Rent check, in line with UK immigration law”, according to a copy reviewed by the FT.

Home Office guidance says house guests such as friends or family would not ordinarily be treated as occupiers for the purposes of such checks.

“The landlord can only [limit guest stays] if the lease allows it, and it would be quite unusual,” said James Naylor, a solicitor specialising in property disputes.

“I have very rarely seen leases that specified something like that in 25 years of practising law. I’m not aware of any statutory obligation or requirement that entitles them to do this.”

Some Shard Place tenants had relatives visiting from abroad who were helping to pay the rent. These family members would not be able to pass a Right to Rent check, which requires permission to live in the UK.

One tenant was advised to add their family members to their tenancy agreement, which they declined to do to avoid potential tax implications.

I thought I’d be safer, but I had far less agency than I would have in a normal situation

Shard Place resident

In another instance, a tenant wanted a key card so their partner could enter the flat without them. Knight Frank, one of the estate agents responsible for letting the building, suggested adding the person to the lease.

“But we had only been dating for four months,” the tenant told the FT. “It would have been crazy ... We could break up tomorrow, and then what would I do if they had a right to reside here?”

“Knight Frank wanted me to define the relationship faster than my partner did,” the tenant added. The tenant later moved out.

Knight Frank declined to comment.

Shard Place said: “Shard Place is one of London’s most desirable addresses, with the majority of our residents choosing to stay with us for the long term.

“We will always put the safety, security and comfort of our residents first, and we actively welcome feedback so that we can continue to offer and improve the premium service we provide to them.”

One resident, who liked the building’s proximity to London Bridge Underground station, moved in after leaving a build-to-rent place in Nottingham.

Although she loves the building itself, she has been put off by various policies, including having to pay a one-time £50 fee to use the gym, which she says she had not been told about before signing her lease. Marketing materials seen by the FT do not mention the fee.

“Why would I pay to use my residential gym? It just did not make sense to me. I got to talking to other tenants later on and it was a thing that we all bonded over,” she said.

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She was also flummoxed to be informed that she had exceeded her permitted use of the cinema. “I had never been told there was a certain amount of slots for the month,” she said.

Not being able to take guests to the pool is “absolutely ridiculous. I can’t be paying that amount and you guys tell me how to run my apartment”, she said.

She is planning to move out in October.

One issue that united residents earlier this year was internet access. After mistakenly charging some residents a lower fee, or in some cases nothing, the building told tenants in March it would charge £60 a month for internet use.

Residents balked at the short notice, the inability to choose their own internet provider, and the price. Average entry-level broadband prices in the UK are about £25 a month, according to Enders Analysis.

A tenant who sent multiple emails outlining residents’ concerns was evicted shortly after, according to a notice seen by the FT.

“We are very sorry to hear reports ... of how dissatisfied you are with our operational services, amenities, and third-party service providers...

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“We feel that Shard Place is not the right property for your needs and we regrettably will not be inviting you to remain in Shard Place beyond the 12 months of your fixed term tenancy,” the notice read.

“It is unfortunate that you have not enjoyed your time and Shard Place Apartments, and we hope that you find a property more suited to your needs.”

Many residents said the building’s staff were pleasant to deal with.

The management has responded to some concerns. Residents can now drop off their rubbish 24 hours a day. The gym hours have been extended. Additional key cards have been dispensed for some guests.

The process, however, has left some luxury residents feeling powerless.

Under build-to-rent, “I thought I’d be safer, but I had far less agency than I would have in a normal situation,” said one tenant.

“I thought being across the table from a corporation would make things more professional but they had outsized bargaining power. It amplified bargaining inequality rather than producing better service.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026

Passengers filled every cranny. There were even people standing in the toilets.

I had just left the annual conference of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK at Birmingham’s National Exhibition Centre, and was on my way to the conference of the British-Irish Association (BIA) at the University of Oxford, that great bastion of English élan.

A night and day spent among Farage’s flag-waving culture warriors, while knowing that national identity would be discussed at the BIA, ensured that the topic was already on my mind as I departed. It usually is in Brexit Britain.

I’d have thought about it some more only for the fact that, now, I had nowhere to stand, let alone sit. Finding a square inch of real estate to call my own was my only concern as I clambered over the limbs of innocents sitting on the floor to reach the front of the train.

Things were bad, but hope sprang eternal. I was banking on the endurance of typical English respect for hierarchy and class systems. I reckoned that, whatever the carnage elsewhere, the first class carriage would still have space. I was right.

The three carriages behind it resembled a zombie apocalypse, but first class was like an airy Garden of Eden as economy passengers obediently stayed outside.

Shamelessly, I plonked down at a table. I didn’t have a first class ticket. I didn’t care. If the good staff of CrossCountry wanted me to move, they would have to send in the army. This was my own private rebellion against the infuriating UK rail network that many train-loving Britons now see as a microcosm of their nation’s decline.

The obedient watched on sullenly from just across the first class border. It was like the pigs’ dinner scene of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, but on a jam-packed train.

Eventually, because of the congestion, the train manager declassified the service – anybody could now sit in first class for free. Crucially for me, he declassified it before any of his colleagues had demanded I pay for an upgrade.

It felt like a victory. Maybe this class system that the English love so much could be beaten after all.

I exited at Oxford and walked to the BIA event at Pembroke College, through streets filled with history and honey-coloured buildings. I ambled past quaint bookshops and little English teashops and the unmistakable Tom’s Tower at Christ Church.

Few places exude Oxford’s quintessence of the English nation, or an Irishman’s stereotype of it.

Next morning, the conference dived headlong into national identity. The BIA event, attended by senior politicians, academics and civil servants, is held under the Chatham House Rule: you can reveal what was said, but not who said it nor their affiliation.

Suella Braverman, the London-born Reform UK MP who is the daughter of immigrants of African-Indian origin, has said that she will ‘never be truly English’

Panels crackled with debate about what it meant to be English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Northern Irish, nationalist, unionist. One wise old head from the Republic asked what does it actually mean these days to be British, and crucially how that differed in England from being English. He never got a proper answer.

A Welshman got a laugh quoting Gwynfor Evans, the late founding father of the nationalist party Plaid Cymru: “Anybody can be Welsh, they just have to be willing to accept the consequences.”

An Irishman, musing over the British Museum’s unveiling of the Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Norman invasion, asked mischievously “just how French are the English?”

Everybody agreed that the effects of Brexit are still queering the pitch over identity.

There was debate over whether it is ever possible for an immigrant to “become” English. After all, there is no such thing in law as it pertains to a person: their passports say only that their nationality is “British”.

One sage with knowledge of the lives of immigrants surprised everybody by saying that he felt only the descendants of new arrivals could really call themselves English. Britishness, on the other hand, is more about a set of values that anyone can adopt.

Research suggests that the people, and their devolved governments, in Scotland and Wales are far more open to the idea that immigrants can take on the national identity of their new home. But overall, many immigrants prefer to call themselves British.

Suella Braverman, the London-born Reform UK MP who is the daughter of immigrants of African-Indian origin, has said that she will “never be truly English”. She has suggested it could take the descendants of newcomers five or six generations to credibly claim it.

Census data shows that in Scotland, 65 per cent of people in 2022 identified as “Scottish only”, not British. That means only a third of Scots accept the national identity on their passports. In 2021 in Wales, 55 per cent identified as “Welsh only”. Britishness is meant to include the smaller nations, but it seems only an English majority agree.

Meanwhile, it turns out that 35 per cent of Oxford residents were born abroad, compared to 19 per cent in Britain. Part of it is all those foreign students. It may be the epitome of Englishness as seen by an Irishman, but Oxford’s reality is more complex.

Identity was back on the agenda last weekend in Dover and Portsmouth as protesters chanted about stopping the boats.

But who is going to fix the overpacked trains?

Now some on social media are suggesting specific exercise routines they say can be especially helpful for draining the fluid and reducing swelling and bloating.

One trending workout, called “lymphatic walking”, involves taking a stroll while focusing on your posture and breathing, and letting your arms and hands swing free. Another is “rebounding”, or jumping in place or on a trampoline. Some influencers also promote specific dynamic stretching routines for lymphatic drainage.

This social media hype may reflect a growing interest in the lymphatic system in medicine, said Marc Miller, a physical therapist who specialises in lymphatic health at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. “Lymphatics is a really hot topic right now,” among researchers, he said, in part because of technological advances for mapping the lymphatic system. But some important nuances are often lost in the social media conversation, he said.

If your lymphatic system is healthy, no evidence suggests that specific workouts are more or less effective for maintaining it – although exercise does play a role.

Here, experts break down the basics.

What is the lymphatic system?

Your lymphatic system is an intricate network of vessels and nodes that helps maintain fluid balance throughout your body and support your immune system. The vessels transport a fluid called lymph.

If your body is fighting an infection, the lymphatic system picks up pieces of bacteria or viruses and transports them to your lymph nodes, which act as filters and help your immune system combat them, said Tiana Woolridge, a sports medicine physician at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York.

Unlike your cardiovascular system, which relies on the heart to keep blood flowing, your lymphatic system lacks a central pump. Instead, it depends on muscle contractions – from movement, breathing and even digestion – to squeeze and move lymph around your body.

Does your body need help with lymphatic drainage?

Most people’s lymphatic systems hum along smoothly, said Jason Wheeler, a vascular medicine specialist. But some people will develop a disorder called lymphedema, in which lymph fluid pools in a part or parts of the body.

You’re most likely to develop lymphedema after suffering some kind of damage to your lymphatic system because of injury, surgery or cancer treatment, but smoking, obesity and age can also predispose you to the condition. (A much smaller percentage are born with a genetic condition that prevents their lymphatic system from draining properly.)

Wheeler cautioned that just because you’re puffy or bloated, this doesn’t mean that you have lymphedema. Many people experience these symptoms throughout the day in response to diet, poor sleep, the weather and other environmental factors.

How does exercise affect lymphatic drainage?

Since muscle contractions power the lymphatic system, any kind of exercise or movement is beneficial. Experts typically give people the same basic exercise recommendations for lymphatic health as they do for overall health: 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic activity and at least two sessions per week of strength training.

The stronger your muscles are, the better they are able to pump lymph fluid, Wheeler said. And, in general, the more you contract your muscles through aerobic activities such as walking, jogging or cycling, the more you are supporting your lymphatic system and keeping it circulating.

Beyond those basics, “it’s really about just being consistent with movement throughout your day”, said Kelly Sturm, a physical therapist in Minneapolis who focuses on lymphatic health.

That said, if someone with a healthy lymphatic system wants to try a walking or jumping workout billed as “lymphatic” there are few downsides, she said.

Deep, diaphragmatic breathing, which is incorporated into some of the so-called lymphatic workouts promoted online, can also help with lymphatic circulation.

Ultimately, “movement is medicine, no matter what kind of health we’re talking about”, Woolridge said.

If the goal of supporting your lymphatic health gets you moving, she added, your whole body will benefit. – This article originally appeared in the New York Times

More than 30,000 visitors and 300 schools are expected to attend the WorldSkills event. With something on offer for students, parents, teachers and guidance counsellors, the event promises various stages and highlights – from the Heroes Stage and Try-A-Skill Area, to the Educator’s Zone and Career’s Zone. The event highlights skills-based careers through industry talks, hands-on experiences, demonstrations and engagement with employers and education providers.

WorldSkills Ireland, which has run since the 1960s, is part of a global enterprise promoting vocational, technological and service-oriented education and training, preparing “the talent of today for the careers of the future”.

The event is now in its fifth year, and next week’s is set to be the largest yet. Aimed at the next generation, it focuses on inspiring skilled young people to follow their talents, passions, and interests when pursuing skill-based careers.

This will be the second year that Teagasc Horticulture is showcasing its apprentices at the WorldSkills Ireland event. “Last year, second-year apprentices from the horticulture apprenticeship based at the Teagasc College in the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin demonstrated their skills by creating a garden build over the three days of the show,” says John Mulhern, principal of the Teagasc College of Amenity Horticulture at the National Botanic Gardens.

“It certainly got noticed and the team were nominated in the special awards category by the organisers. This year, we plan to do the same. Teagasc are exhibiting at the event to showcase what our land-based apprenticeships can offer young people looking for alternative pathways to education.”

Plan your visit

Register for free to attend WorldSkills Ireland 2026 via worldskillsireland.ie.

A coordinated visit to both the WorldSkills event (RDS Simmonscourt) and the Irish Times Higher Options event (RDS Main Hall) is more than possible with morning and afternoon bookings available; however, separate registrations are required for both events.

Once registered, make the most of your visit by downloading the checklist activity sheets from the website, which will guide you to events and exhibitors.

Familiarise yourself with the event floor plan as this will help you navigate the venue. With 31 live national competition finals, 60 exhibiting stands, virtual skills to try, and the MTU challenge, with amazing prizes to be won, you won’t want to miss anything.

What to expect

Over three days, WorldSkills Ireland will encourage discovery, experimentation and creativity through live competitions, interactive skills, and VR demonstrations. With opportunities to speak with experts, educators and recruiters, young people will be met with their future in one location offering insights into various trades and skills.

The live national competition finals will see more than 160 finalists compete across 31 competitions to be in with the chance of representing Ireland in the WorldSkills Olympics in Japan in 2028.

The Heroes Stage is an exciting feature with multiple panel discussions running each day covering a range of skills-based industries, from construction and hospitality to ICT and automotive. Visitors will get up close and personal with how apprentices worked their way up the career ladder in their industry, and current apprentices will discuss how their career journey has been developing since they left school. The timetable for the Heroes Stage is available on the WorldSkills website.

The #ThisIsFET Zone allows visitors to get hands on with the opportunities available. Here visitors will meet instructors and training providers and explore real technology and equipment. There is so much to do from discovering the technology behind advanced manufacturing, going behind the scenes in film and technology, and the magic behind movie prosthetics. Visitors can also step into the world of AR and VR, consider building a sustainable future, discover the skills involved in working as an arborist or horticulturist, or pick up the tools and have a go at thatching a model cottage roof.

“WorldSkills Ireland is a fantastic opportunity to showcase the breadth and quality of further education and training (FET) and apprenticeship pathways available across the country,” says Laura Pakenham, assistant communications manager at Solas, the Further Education and Training Authority.

“As more school leavers consider a range of options beyond direct entry to university, events like this allow them to experience different careers first hand, explore their interests and see the exciting opportunities that FET and apprenticeships can offer. Through our partnership with the education and training boards and ETBI, we are giving students the chance to try out real skills and make informed decisions about their future”

Exhibitors

With 60 exhibitors in the Careers Zone, visitors can learn and ask questions about intriguing and creative careers that bring technology, skills, creativity and critical thinking together. “WorldSkills Ireland is a celebration of what young apprentices are doing throughout the country in their chosen professions,” says Mulhern. “Horticulture is the perfect discipline to showcase at the event as it encompasses creativity, technical knowledge and dedication to the craft that is horticulture.

“It is hands on, and that is what attracts so many young people to the event. We are currently in our fourth year of intake for the horticulture apprenticeship in Teagasc at the National Botanic Gardens and the course is in very strong demand.”

Sabrina Hynes, careers and data manager at the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (Simi) says WorldSkills Ireland is an inspiring showcase of talent, dedication and technical excellence in skills and apprenticeships. “This event brings together students, educators, parents, employers and training providers to exhibit the many career pathways available across Ireland’s industries,” she says.

“The Irish motor industry continues to evolve through new technologies and increasingly advanced vehicles, where developing the next generation of skilled professionals is more important than ever. Simi is proud to support the Automobile and Heavy Vehicle Technology category and to help showcase the exciting career and apprenticeship opportunities available across our industry.”

Parentline has been exhibiting at WorldSkills Ireland for the past four years and considers it to be a wonderful showcase for promoting the services and supports it offers.

“Over 30,000 parents, guardians and students attend the event,” says Aileen Hickie, chief executive of Parentline, the confidential helpline that offers parents support and guidance.

“The stand offers Parentline the opportunity to engage with parents, carers and teachers, many of whom are feeling stressed and uncertain about the future, and explain parenting programmes that help deal with childhood anxiety, school avoidance, anger and aggression, and any and all issues affecting parents in relation to their children.”

I am from Vermont in the US, so if you’re a fan of Noah Kahan, Ben and Jerry’s – that’s me from there. I studied at the University of Vermont for my undergraduate degree, and that was during Covid. So I thought why not study microbiology to know as much as I could about the pandemic at the time. I basically watched what a poor response the US and the rest of the world had to a pandemic, and that led me to pursue a master’s in public health, and I did that at UCD.

How did you find out about the graduate programme and why did you decide to apply?

I saw an ad on LinkedIn or Indeed, one of the job platforms.

It combines the aspect of healthcare that I really enjoy, and the ability to explore different areas of the business as well, because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do after my master’s. I figured it was a great opportunity to get involved with something that I do have an interest in.

What was your experience of the graduate programme?

In the first area I was working with some of our corporate members and co-ordinating health services for them. In the second part of the rotations I was in group healthcare, which really focuses on population health. One of the key things I’m sure all grad programmes want you to do is get a well-rounded education of the company and how it operates.

So from there I moved into HR, which we call people services here. I didn’t think I would enjoy it but I really liked it, and that was completely unexpected because I had no plans to get into people services. So that was super fun.

Honestly, the best part of the grad programme has to be the people, it has to be the culture here. Everyone is just the sweetest. We’ve got so many different organisations and clubs, and I’ve been involved in sports and social, our women’s network and our mental health group. The people in every aspect of the company have been a pleasure to work with.

What are your career plans now?

I am a communications and change co-ordinator. That means I’m split 50-50 with the internal communications department and the change management of our company. That came up about two months ago, there was a role that opened up on the people services team, which I had worked with before and I really enjoyed it, so I figured I might as well apply.

I ended up getting the job, and it’s only been a couple of weeks that I’ve been here, but I’m really enjoying it. I’d love to see where this will take me in communications and change management, both are relevant to so many businesses.

What’s your advice to graduates applying to the programme?

Networking. I would say in-person is always better, it’s one of the best skills and lessons that I have learned and that I was never taught in school. People will always have your back if you can learn to build a relationship with them. Part of that is showing you’re willing to learn, it doesn’t really matter that you know something, it’s just that you can learn it. Whether or not you think you are qualified or capable, just apply anyway, you never know, honestly. Go into anything with confidence.

• For more information about VHI’s graduate programme, visit https://www1.vhi.ie/about/careers/graduate-programme

All of the features that attracted growing families to the area are still present more than seven decades later: proximity to schools, large gardens, generous reception rooms and large bedrooms.

Newer additions such as the Merrion Shopping Centre at the end of Nutley Lane make the prospect of living here even more attractive. The proximity of St Michael’s College, with an entrance at the end of the road, and Elm Park Golf Club won’t harm interest either.

Number 41 Nutley Avenue is being brought to market by DNG Donnybrook, seeking €1.895 million. It’s a fine home, extending to 167sq m (1,797sq ft), with four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Some renovations have been done, but the property would benefit from a cosmetic refresh and an energy update, as it has a G Ber.

All of the Nutley Avenue houses are well set back from the road, and the garden in front of 41 is in immaculate condition.

The house is double fronted and the front door is under a small porch, and opens into a bright hallway, with white panelling running halfway up the wall and continuing up the stairs.

On the left of the hallway is the main reception room, a lovely, dual-aspect room with coving, spot lighting, an original tiled fireplace and art-deco-style French doors that open to the garden. A garage lies directly on the left of this long room, so it would be relatively easy to convert and expand what it is already a good-sized reception room further.

On the right-hand side of the entrance hall is a study, which could alternatively be used as a playroom or a den. There’s a guest WC under the stairs, and the kitchen is in its original position, at what would have been originally the back of the house, but it now gives a fine living and dining area thanks to an extension.

This room gives a great idea of what is possible with this house. It might make sense to flip the layout here, putting the kitchen in what is the dining area, having it open on to the garden and converting what is now the kitchen into a spacious walk-in pantry or a large utility room. The living area is attractive with warm, dark timber floors and the potential to break through the walls with French doors.

Upstairs there are four bedrooms and a bathroom, which has been tastefully renovated. There is scope to extend this floor simply by building up above the existing garage or going all in with a fresh extension, subject to planning permission.

There’s certainly space for a new extension, given the length of the garden, which is in superb condition and has been well tended over the years. It could also comfortably accommodate a garden room.

Overall, it’s a fine family home in a superb location, with St Michael’s at the end of the road, RTÉ’s Montrose campus at the top of the adjacent Nutley Lane, St Vincent’s University Hospital across the road and the Dart a quick stroll away.

The property, on the fringes of the city’s Georgian core, overlooks the Grand Canal and comprises an office block laid out over five floors from lower-ground level to third floor with a net internal area of 1,329sq m (14,305sq ft). The office accommodation is largely open-plan and sits alongside a three-bedroom apartment at third-floor level.

Developed in 1979, the building has a mock-Georgian facade, allowing it to blend into the surrounding area, and has 11 secure car-parking spaces located to the rear.

Numbers 11 and 12 are partially leased to three tenants, namely Fidelity Information Services (FIS), Co-operative Housing Ireland and Sentrio. The total passing rent is €409,820 a year with further scope, according to the selling agent, to increase the overall rental income by securing tenants for the vacant floors and the apartment.

Roger Keogh of Avison Young believes the property would be suitable for refurbishment and continued use as office, or alternatively, for conversion to residential use (subject to planning permission).

The subject property is zoned Z1 – Sustainable Residential Neighbourhoods under the terms of the Dublin City Development Plan 2022-2028. A feasibility study prepared in advance of the sale suggests there is potential convert the property to 21 apartments with car parking. A copy of the feasibility study is available from the selling agent on request.

Roger Keogh of Avison Young says: “Opportunities of this nature are rarely available to the market, and we anticipate strong interest from both investors and developers.”

Westlife’s decision to hold court borrows from the new playbook for top-tier artists, who are reversing the mechanics of a traditional tour and asking fans to come to them instead.

In the past, the artist’s tour bus rolling from city to city for months on end was seen as a sometimes glamorous, sometimes gruelling but essential part of a musician’s lifestyle. Now it’s fans who bear the expense of travelling to see their favourite artist, potentially booking flights and accommodation, as well as factoring in other expenses.

Harry Styles’ schedule is one of the best examples of how this trend has evolved in recent years. During his 2022 Love on Tour run, Styles’ North America leg consisted of 42 shows in five cities. In 2026 he’s performing in just one North American venue for his Together Together tour, taking over New York’s Madison Square Garden for 30 consecutive nights.

For Irish fans who wanted to see Styles perform this year, travelling to London for one of his dozen shows at Wembley Stadium was their nearest option. Similarly, Irish fans wanting to see Shakira in 2026 will have to fly to Madrid for her European Residency, a 12-night stadium run in the Spanish capital.

The growing popularity of this new approach could have particular implications for Ireland, whose smaller population makes it harder to compete with big European capitals for big residencies, and the cultural and economic windfall they bring.

Hosting residencies in megacities such as London and New York makes sense for artists, as the infrastructure is already there to support an influx of fans, and the location itself doubles as a draw for fans looking to make a holiday of the trip.

But the choice of where to perform can also be personal and very artist-specific.

“Rather than aiming for the biggest cities, some artists are turning their focus to where their biggest fans are,” says Olivia Jones, a music analyst at Midia Research, citing the example of Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico residency last year, which built on the cultural theme of his latest album and aimed to uplift his community and the fans there.

The idea of a residency was first established in the 1940s in Las Vegas and revitalised by Céline Dion in the Nevada city in the early 2000s. Why are they experiencing such a boost now?

Music-industry veterans say it comes down to cost, comfort and production opportunities at a time when audience expectations are at an all-time high. There is an obvious saving in camping out in one location for 20 shows rather than visiting 10 cities to do the same; it simplifies logistics and maximises revenue. For artists and crew, it vastly reduces time spent in transit and offers a better work-life balance than a traditional tour ever could.

“It’s about the convenience for people of being able to go to half a dozen cities in the world rather than a hundred of them,” says Bren Berry, a musician and long-time music promoter with Aiken Promotions. “The costs of touring are so expensive, particularly now with fuel prices; it’s a lot to move stuff around the world at the moment. There’s obviously a huge saving to be made in setting up camp in one place.”

Berry cautions that Westlife’s 3Arena run isn’t necessarily a residency but more a band with mass appeal in Ireland selling out as many arena dates as they can. The vast majority of Westlife’s world tour outside Ireland consists of one- or two-night stops.

For artists with enough star power to draw fans to wherever they are, there are serious benefits to them of not moving city and country every night. They can get into a routine, get a good sleep and ultimately put on a better show.

“It’s a much kinder way of touring,” says Sarah Yeoman, who has worked in the music industry for 30 years, most recently as backstage manager on Kylie Minogue’s worldwide Tension Tour. “For everyone involved, from wardrobe to catering, it’s logical. It gives people more time, which is so precious to us.”

From a production perspective, a set-up that can remain in place over multiple nights gives the crew more time to assemble and disassemble, and offers the opportunity to employ more high-tech staging. With conventional touring, it doesn’t matter how innovative current technology is if it can’t be set up and taken down again in a few hours.

Steven Douglas, a lighting designer who has toured extensively with The Killers, says a residency format allows for more creative options, as the show can be built for the venue.

“In a residency show, for the most part it will get built and then stay in place for a longer period of time, so building things that have to be disassembled quickly isn’t as big of a concern.”

For a Las Vegas show that lasts years rather than nights, production can be highly specific, says Douglas, who worked on Aerosmith’s Deuces Are Wild Vegas residency, which ran from 2019 to 2022 and hosted 55 shows at the Park MGM. For that show the set designers used a walkway that emerged from the roof, allowing the band members to get very close to fans in the venue’s highest seating.

There is also the potential for artists to create better branding and a buzz around their show in person and online if they stay in one city for longer.

Christian Tierney, a tour photographer favoured by A-listers such as Hozier and Niall Horan, says staying put gives the tour a chance to create bigger, more impactful content that is relevant to their chosen city than if they are moving constantly.

“What comes to mind straight away is the content that was made around the Oasis tour last year, where they were doing a few nights in each place. It wasn’t necessarily a residency, but it was a few gigs in big cities rather than a big long tour of a million different cities.

“They could go out during the day and do pieces based around the city they were in,” Tierney says. “If you’re somewhere for two weeks you can make a bigger piece of content there than having to try and make 90 pieces of small content.”

For promoters the shift is bigger than simply introducing a cheaper way to put on concerts. If fans are willing to travel, the concert itself becomes part of a wider tourism economy. In late September Live Nation, the world’s largest promoter, is hosting a tourism summit in New York to “explore how live events are changing the way people travel”. It is billing fan travel as the “next chapter of global tourism”.

For Ireland the shift towards residencies presents a potential challenge and means Irish fans could miss out on seeing their favourite artists locally.

Some big artists have already been leaving Ireland off their touring schedules for years, despite the demand. Beyoncé has not played here since 2016, leaving Ireland out of her Cowboy Carter stadium tour. Olivia Rodrigo, who brought her Guts world tour to the 3Arena for two nights in 2024 and played a headline gig at Marlay Park in 2025, has no dates set for Ireland in 2027, but she will play 11 nights at the O2 in London for her Unravelled Tour.

Live Nation’s plans for a new 20,000 seat-facility at Brick Yards, in Dublin’s docklands, could strengthen the capital’s position, giving artists another large-scale option as the industry streamlines towards fewer cities and longer stays.

But there is still a limit to how far the residency model can go, and for whom. “I don’t think a band going on tour is going to become a thing of the past any time soon,” says Steven Douglas. “People still want their favourite band to come to their town and play.”

Westlife are at 3Arena in Dublin from Thursday, September 10th, until Saturday, September 26th, and at the O2 in Belfast between Tuesday, October 27th, and Friday, November 6th

Fear not. Sweeney is mentioned. But, based on a play by David Hague, the film is chiefly concerned with a quiet, intensely professional Scot named James Stagg.

Anyone who has sat through the renowned 1970s documentary series The World at War will remember his sturdy contributions to the D-Day episode. As chief meteorological officer for Operation Overlord, Stagg, played brilliantly here by Andrew Scott, really did make a significant contribution to the success of the operation during the second World War.

As Pressure tells it, he found himself at odds with Irving P Krick (Chris Messina), the chief American meteorologist, when evidence seemed to suggest a storm was due on the planned date of the Allied forces’ mass landing on the north coast of France at Normandy.

A delay of a day or two would be significant. Any greater wait could be disastrous, as the required tidal and lunar circumstances would not again coincide for another two weeks. How much longer could the details of the plan be kept secret?

Anthony Maras, the Australian director of the eventful Hotel Mumbai, coats the film in nostalgic browns as Volker Bertelmann’s busy score heightens the building tension. There is throughout a sense of the headquarters operating on one huge collectively held breath. The tension is palpable even though we all (one has to hope) know the landing was ultimately a success.

Scott is unimprovable as Stagg. There is a sense of a near-religious devotion to the scientific method at odds with Krick’s less rigorous reliance on precedent. Towards the close a conciliatory gesture confirms that, beneath the stony carapace, a generous heart beats.

Kerry Condon enjoys herself as Kay Summersby, Gen Dwight D Eisenhower’s Corkonian private secretary. Damian Lewis, though maybe not quite eccentric enough, fills big rooms with mad bluster as the British general Bernard Montgomery.

Brendan Fraser is, alas, a little too fragile as the bullet-headed Eisenhower, but he still gets across the charisma of a big man with unimaginable responsibilities.

None of the film-making breaks new ground, but this is a tense, professionally made dad flick that will play handsomely on bank holiday afternoons forever. There are worse things.

In cinemas from Wednesday, September 9th

It’s impossible not to think of Weekend at Bernie’s II – an over-reaching 1980s comedy sequel that required voodoo resurrection and congo lines as plot points – while watching the hurried opening section of Fall 2: Deadpoint. Wait: so the sidekick in the last film had an estranged sister? And they argued right before her death?

Enter Jax Hunter (Harriet Slater), weedy younger sister to Fall’s thrillseeker Shiloh, who is persuaded by a mysterious friend (Arsema Thomas) to take on Mount Hua’s plank walk in a stomach-churning traverse along sheer cliffs, across narrow wooden boards suspended roughly 2,000m above the valleys below.

Except, somehow, the entire plank walk has been relocated to the US ally Thailand. And then there’s rain. And then there’s a rockslide. And then there’s a revelation.

IP reigns, regardless of how preposterous any spin-off might be. But this story, as cooked up by Scott Mann (who directed the original Fall) and Jonathan Frank, is thin gruel. Set your watch by the beats: there’s no signal; oh, wait, there’s one bar. A loosey-goosey attempt to replicate the soapy plot twists of the first instalment results only in a firm shrug of the viewer’s shoulders.

Peter and Michael Spierig, directors of Predestination and Jigsaw, make the most of the urge to not look down. (But – oh, no – you just did.) Harriet Slater and Arsema Thomas work hard to enliven pastily written characters with insane motivations. Why are they going up this crazy, unsurvivable mountain? No idea.

The dire penalties for drug trafficking in Thailand are flagged early, so we’re primed for some scattershot, similarly themed development.

Higher does not necessarily mean better. The view from the top, aided by Mann’s AI-enhanced SFX company, remains appropriately sickening. It’s enough to paper over the movie’s crazy canyons and vast gaps in logic. But it’s nothing like the real thing.

In cinemas from Wednesday, September 11th

Here are a couple of the speakers attendees won’t want to miss.

Kathryn Mason is the managing director of Mason PR. She studied a business diploma specialising in music management.

“I knew from day one I wanted to work in the music industry. And it’s quite niche, so it’s very hard to get into,” Mason explains.

Nonetheless, she managed not only to forge a career in her preferred industry, but now owns her own PR firm that remains firmly connected to the music business, albeit in a different way.

Mason began her career working for record labels, before taking a break for a couple of years, moving abroad and becoming a ski instructor. “Because that’s what you do,” she says jokingly.

When she returned to Ireland, Mason was certain she wanted to continue working in the music industry, but to also broaden her line of work.

Her role means she is dealing not only with those who work in the music business, but also with people across the many forms of media. This gives her insights into, and experiences of managing, two sectors that often overlap.

One of Mason’s clients is the IMRO Radio Awards and she set up the All-Ireland Podcast Awards. “When people think media is dead, it’s not dead. It’s anything but dead. It’s just a different way of working it. That’s the difference.”

• Kathryn Mason will take part in a discussion on Careers in Arts and the Media at Higher Options.

Sandi Ndebele is a chartered principal process engineer at Eli Lillyand Company. He didn’t necessarily realise at the time of studying that this was the branch of engineering he wanted to pursue, but he enjoyed his modules in chemical engineering and, after a few internships in the industry, he figured this was the path for him.

“Being a process engineer translates really well with all the stuff they try to teach us at college,” says Ndebele. “And the further up you go through the degree, the more it makes sense.”

Few paths, of course, are completely straight, and Ndebele has tried his hand at other things. Including being a trivia quizmaster.

During a career break, he travelled to Australia and while out there, found a new way to make some money. “For six months, in a different bar in Melbourne, I would host a quiz, go home, repeat,” he explains. It was an experience he could have, knowing that he could return to his company once his travels were complete.

And no skill is ever a wasted skill – Ndebele puts those quizmaster talents to good use for charity purposes, on occasion.

He is a recent convert from rave-music enthusiast to metalhead, in case you were wondering what kind of music a process engineer might enjoy. “It helps me concentrate,” he says.

One of Ndebele’s goals in life is to figure out what his cat’s meows mean. “I think we’re starting to understand each other. He knows what he wants. And I can tell he knows what he wants. I just have to go through different options.

“There’s a lot of engineering to be done, but we’ll get there,” he adds.

• To learn more about being a process engineer (and to discover if Sandi Ndebele is any closer to becoming a cat whisperer), come along to the talk on Careers in Engineering at Higher Options.

I am 20 years old and from Dublin originally. I am living in Bunratty at the moment, just outside of Shannon, really close to where I work. I actually didn’t go to third-level education. I completed my Leaving Cert and did pretty okay. I got exactly what I needed to get into ATC [air traffic control] college, which I’m in now, which is two subjects with a H5 or above, and overall I needed to pass five subjects.

So it’s not a huge ask, but I did that, and then I went on to work in the fitness industry for around 18 months and then, as of last September, I got into Airnav’s Student Controller Programme.

How did you find out about the course?

I found out by social media.

Why did you apply for this programme?

It was a childhood hobby. I had such a big influence from aviation, because of where I live. I live pretty close to the airport, so I could always see planes to and from, so I always wanted to know more about aviation. And then when I started seeing it crop up on Instagram and social media platforms and on the radio, I said, I’m going to look into this. As time went on, I wanted to really pursue it.

How has your experience of the programme been so far?

Really, really good. It’s been intense, but extremely enjoyable. I started last September, and you do a couple of different stages in your training. At the moment, I’m in my units endorsement, so that’s basically the final stage of training. But you start off with the basics, which is a lot of theory and an introduction into the simulator environment, and then you do another part called the rating training, which is more theory, but it’s a little more emphasis on the simulator side of things.

Then you progress into the unit endorsement, which is the location you’re going to work in – for me, that’s going to be Shannon. You basically do everything that you [do] in real life; the only thing is, you don’t talk to real pilots. You still talk to a simulator pilot on the other side of the room, but you’re working off the same airspace, the same rules and regulations and the same equipment as you would in real life.

What are your career plans after the programme?

I’m going to be guaranteed to work in Shannon once I get my training completed here. It’s based on the demand of the company and the demand of the location between Dublin, Cork or Shannon. They would say, designate students to locations, and I’ve been designated Shannon because of the demand here in Shannon. So after my 18 months are finished, I’ll be based as a high level controller in Shannon En-Route Centre.

Any tips for people applying for this programme?

My advice would be just to go for it – what is there to lose? If it’s something that you’re interested in, why not pursue it? And if it doesn’t go well, then that’s your answer; you know then for the future. But my number one tip would be just go for it. Don’t look back.

• For more information about Airnav’s Student Controller Programme, visit airnav.ie/careers/student-controller-programme

Thirty years and one lengthy hiatus later, the duo have returned with Half-Told Tales, their finest album since the 1990s. Seeing them square up to middle age like boxers readying for a final bout, it reconnects with the wistful ferocity of their early curmudgeonly classics.

Arab Strap have always been grouses with a trick up their sourpuss sleeves – which is that, when the mood takes them, they can write heartbreakingly beautiful songs about being in love, emotionally tormented and off your face. If it’s possible to be all three at once, then so much the better.

That was the secret fuel that sustained the brilliant Trippy, from 1998, a song about taking bad mushrooms that burned itself out in a shoegaze Götterdämmerung, and, even more so, The First Big Weekend, the best track ever written about being a skint twentysomething with nothing to do but get twatted with your pals.

Half-Told Tales opens with a kick in the form of I Get Noise, where Moffat wends his way through a typically bleak spoken-word monologue about his need to distance himself from a toxic influence (“you overshare and overbear”). Middleton chimes in with the sort of it’s-cheesy-but-I-like-it sax solo not witnessed from an indie band since peak Boomtown Rats.

The feral, frantic energy is a declaration that you’re never too old to get hot and bothered about the condition of the world

The challenge of topping that explosive intro is easily bested with You You You, where Moffat delivers a heartfelt valentine over a pogoing metal-disco beat: it’s like crashing a poetry recital while Metallica soundtrack Saturday Night Fever in the flat upstairs.

None of this is what you’d expect of two grouchy songwriters who were spiritually haggard before their time and who, in their early 50s, are wading into the trenches of midlife. But this is nonetheless an extraordinarily vigorous record that sees Arab Strap upgrade their familiar war chest of jagged, brooding guitars with hair-metal riffs and lashings of saxophone.

But the old melancholy has not gone away: it surfaces on the tender Be a Man, an address by Moffat to his son as he prepares to head into the world under his own steam, to face not just the random cruelty of the universe but also the poison of the manosphere.

“No one else will miss you like I will / no one worries quite like I can,” he croons. As he does so, he captures the poignant pain of watching your children grow up and leave – a universal feeling seldom expressed in music.

Arab Strap paint a fascinating portrait of middle age with this album – one that acknowledges the inevitable rubbishness of getting older but also explores the joy of still having traces of your old joie de vivre left.

That’s the message of the LP’s strongest moment, Fighting for You, a takedown of the far right (whoever they fight for, it isn’t “us”), which sounds like The Prodigy trapped in the quiet carriage of an Irish Rail service and struggling to keep their destructive tendencies to themselves.

The meaning of the song is political, but the feral, frantic energy is a declaration that you’re never too old to get hot and bothered about the condition of the world.

It’s full of zest and zing, but, as with a great night out once you reach a certain age, there’s a price to be paid. And that’s the subject of the record’s comedown track, Beats per Minute, where Moffat reels off the lifespans of all creatures great and small: the robin that dies after two years, the jellyfish that lives forever. He concludes by accepting that all things must pass, even miserable indie bands from the 1990s.

That sense of encroaching darkness ensures that an often exuberant album finishes with a bittersweet ache. He isn’t raging against the dying of the light so much as using what time remains to steady himself and then make one final leap into the mosh pit, all too aware it might be his last.

This year’s winners demonstrate that meaningful participation begins by designing programmes around the needs of audiences. By bringing performances to new audiences, introducing children and young people to the arts, embedding creativity within the workplace or extending cultural opportunities into communities across the country, these partnerships demonstrate that meaningful access strengthens not only the arts sector but society as a whole. They show that participation begins by meeting people where they are and creating opportunities for everyone to engage with creativity.

The small arts partnership award recognised basis.point and The Gate Theatre for bringing a nationwide livestream of POOR, Katriona O’Sullivan’s acclaimed stage adaptation, directly into secondary school classrooms across Ireland. More than 22,000 students in 337 schools across 29 counties experienced the production, many encountering professional theatre for the first time.

By overcoming geographic, financial and social barriers, the partnership created a scalable model for widening access to theatre while supporting conversations around resilience, empathy and personal potential. It demonstrates how digital technology can extend the reach of live performance without compromising the shared experience at its heart.

The Irish Times long-term partnership award was presented to ESB and the National Concert Hall for Quavers to Quadratics, an innovative Steam (science, technology, engineering, arts and maths) programme that uses music to inspire curiosity and learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Since 2020 the programme has reached more than 10,000 students nationwide, with a particular focus on Deis schools and underserved communities, while workshops delivered through Irish have expanded participation in Gaeltacht regions.

By combining music and science in a shared learning experience, Quavers to Quadratics encourages creativity, confidence and critical thinking while opening new pathways into Steam subjects. The partnership demonstrates how collaboration between business, education and the arts can create opportunities that extend well beyond the classroom.

The creative access award recognised Specsavers Limerick and University Concert Hall for Panto for All, a programme developed to make live theatre more accessible to vulnerable and marginalised children and families across the midwest of Ireland. Between January 2025 and January 2026, more than 920 children and family members attended performances through the initiative, many experiencing live theatre for the first time.

Relaxed performances, Irish Sign Language interpretation, captioning, sensory supports and complimentary tickets created a more welcoming theatre experience for neurodiverse audiences, deaf communities and families facing barriers to participation. By embedding accessibility into every aspect of the production, the partnership demonstrates how inclusive design can enrich the experience for audiences of all ages.

The creativity in the workplace award recognised Connected Hubs and the Contemporary Irish Art Society for their project, Art in the Hubs, which brings contemporary Irish art into workplaces across Ireland while creating new opportunities for artists beyond traditional gallery settings. Since 2022 the programme has placed 70 artworks by 70 artists across 40 Connected Hubs, introducing new audiences to contemporary art while helping remote working hubs become more engaging cultural spaces.

The Irish Times €5,000 arts award was presented to Music Network for bringing migrant and local families together through music, creativity and cultural exchange in Clare and Kildare. Weekly workshops explored lullabies in English, Irish and 16 additional languages using a trauma-sensitive approach. Their programmes address isolation, language barriers and limited access to cultural opportunities while strengthening confidence, wellbeing and community connection, demonstrating the capacity of shared creative experiences to build stronger, more inclusive communities.

Across these partnerships, access takes many forms: digital innovation, interdisciplinary learning, inclusive performance, workplace engagement and community participation. Together, they demonstrate that widening participation depends not simply on opening doors, but on creating experiences that respond to the needs of different audiences and enable more people to engage meaningfully with the arts.

At Business to Arts, we work to build meaningful connections between the corporate and cultural sectors, creating opportunities for businesses to support the arts in ways that deliver lasting value. The partnerships recognised in this year’s awards show how collaboration can expand access, deepen participation and ensure that more people can experience the benefits of creativity in their everyday lives.

To learn more about developing a creative partnership or becoming a member of Business to Arts, please visit businesstoarts.ie

Described by the Booker judges that year as “startling in its range of voices and registers”, it spins a bloody tornado of violence and intrigue around the attempted assassination of Bob Marley in 1976. Spanning decades and continents, and recruiting the voices of more than 70 characters, it cemented James’s reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and ambition.

Big literary prizes sometimes have the unintended consequence of keeping writers from their work, but James has been productive: he published Black Leopard, Red Wolf in 2019, and its follow-up, Moon Witch, Spider King in 2022; his TV crime series, Get Millie Black, aired last year. Now he’s back with his sixth novel, The Disappearers, longlisted for the 2026 Booker Prize.

We’re in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1988, where eight gay men arrive at a dilapidated mansion house, answering a casting call for a local production of Fortune and Men’s Eyes, by John Herbert. Some of them have come because they have nowhere else to go; others are more intentional about wanting to “stage a battyboy revolution” by staging “a gay play”.

Either way, they’ve taken an enormous risk just by showing up, because to be gay in Jamaica is to live with an ever-present threat of violence. Over the course of the next month, as they rehearse, friendships blossom and their confidence grows, but their happiness is not to last. A mob descends, armed with crowbars and cricket bats; by the time the attack is over, one of the men is dead, another is blinded, and the rest are deeply traumatised. The bulk of the novel deals with the fallout from this horrific event, tracing threads of consequence across the following 20 or so years.

Marlon James: It’s bullsh*t to say there is ‘high’ and ‘low’ literature

If you’re new to James’s work, be ready for a challenging read, but one that will be well worth your time. His style is expansive and freewheeling, a mash-up of forms, perspectives and genres. The novel’s opening section, titled The Play, is told via a series of diary entries by one of the eight men, 18-year-old Eddy Porteous.

Recently out of high school, he proudly keeps a tally of the number of men he has slept with, tries to get his hands on gay porn magazines and worries that he’s getting too old for his X-Men comics. Eddy misses rehearsals on the night of the attack, and he only realises that something terrible has happened when he sees the yellow crime-scene tape and police cars outside the mansion house.

In the next section, The Blackjacks, the perspective changes abruptly. Now, we’re with the attackers, all 12 of them, identified by abbreviated names like Corporal T, Jah Q, and Dat Nigga J. We get snippets of live-action reporting / stream of consciousness: “High time now we cap some batty bitchez.” “Rounding them up like cows, yo.” And, perhaps most poignantly, “Kill it in them, kill it in me.” The episode is played out from intention to bloody climax in violent, graphic detail, the narrative bouncing between the attackers like players moving a ball towards a hoop.

The continuous shifts in form and perspective are both dizzying and exhilarating – later sections arrive as partial interview transcripts and letters – but the original eight men in the play remain at the heart of the story. Two of the men go missing, and others try to track them down: along the way, one begins plotting revenge on the attackers, “turning himself into battyboy Robin Hood”.

James calls the novel his most autobiographical to date, and his great accomplishment here is his generous and honest portrayal of men, both queer and straight: their anger, fear, isolation, confusion and longing; their moments of tenderness, camaraderie and melodrama; the journey to self-acceptance; the delight in discovering new forms of sexual pleasure.

Yes, it feels like the world is against you, James seems to say, but you have more power than you realise, and life – beautiful life – is full to overflowing with possibility.

Claire Adam’s latest novel, Love Forms, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025

Republic of Ireland international Troy Parrott was in goalscoring form again for Real Betis, netting on his Champions League debut as the Spanish club claimed a 3-2 win away to Lille.

Ayasa Ueda put the hosts ahead early with his 12th-minute strike, but Marc Bartra scored his first equaliser of the evening on 33 minutes.

Alexsandro restored Lille’s lead minutes later, but Bartra would again find the net on 49 minutes to pull Manuel Pellegrini’s side back level.

On 53 minutes, Parrott, making his second start in his fourth appearance for his new club, capitalised on some poor defending by Nathan Ngoy to put Betis ahead.

🚨🇪🇺 | GOAL: TROY PARROTT SEALS THE COMEBACK FOR REAL BETIS!

WHAT A GOLAZO! WHAT AGAME! FANTASTIC!

Lille 2-3 Real Betis. https://t.co/fQQj4k08L1

— TheGoalsZone (@TheGoalsZone) September 8, 2026

A red card for Ethan Mbappé soon added to the home side’s woes and Parrott threatened again late on, hitting the woodwork with a long, curling effort in the last play of the game as Betis held on for the win.

It comes after the Dubliner scored his first goal for his new side last time out, netting what proved to be the winner in their La Liga meeting with Real Madrid on Friday.

“I’m very happy for Parrott,” Pellegrini said of the 24-year-old’s effort against Madrid. “He made a mistake against Levante,” he added, referencing their 5-2 defeat on Parrott’s first start for Betis on August 29th, “but [on Friday] he had the instinct to score that goal.

“It’s going to give him a lot of confidence. It was a goal of great effort and power.”

Next up for Betis in the Champions League is a home tie on October 14th against Portuguese side Porto, who suffered a 2-0 defeat to Manchester City on Tuesday night.

US Central Command (Centcom) said the warship evaded both attempted attacks, and no American personnel were injured.

US forces struck the tankers in the Gulf of Oman and near Iran’s Kharg Island, Centcom said in a statement, adding that American forces “directed the crews to abandon ship before the vessels were struck”.

Centcom said the targeted tankers were “part of a multibillion-dollar shadow network that funds the IRGC and its regional proxies”, though the military did not provide further details.

Remarking on the latest strikes, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, said the US would not let Iran’s attacks to go unanswered.

Iran threatens US with new ‘economic warfare’ and missiles as Houthis attack Saudi Arabia

“Iran continues to try to hit US naval ships. And for every time they do that or try to do that, they’re going to lose tankers. And I think you’ll see that again today,” Rubio said, responding to reporters’ questions about the attack while on a trip to Colombia.

The strikes followed an earlier dispute over a US underwater drone in the strait of Hormuz, which the IRGC claimed its naval forces had seized as part of a “complex intelligence and operational action at dawn”, according to Iranian state TV. In a statement provided to Iranian state media, the IRGC said images of the vessel would be released shortly.

However, the US military said the unmanned submarine had “malfunctioned” more than a day earlier.

In a statement, US Navy Capt Tim Hawkins, a United States Central Command spokesperson, said the submersible was “defective” and an older model “that neither collected sensitive data nor carried any classified sonar or radar equipment”. Operations in waters in the area continue, he said.

Iran has maintained a blockade of the strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about one fifth of the global oil and gas shipments, since the outbreak of the war more than six months ago, while the US has imposed its own blockade of Iranian ports.

After a month of relative calm in August, Iran and the US have resumed exchanges of fire, sending ‌global oil prices back up to levels last seen in July.

US president Donald Trump has struggled to end the unpopular war, which has claimed the lives of 18 US service members.

Iranian authorities have previously put the overall death toll from US and Israeli strikes in the thousands, figures that outside observers, including US-based monitoring groups, have broadly corroborated. – Guardian

The filing - a ‌rare window into the league’s financial state - estimates assets between $100 million and $500 million, with liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion.

Most notably, ​the filing listed several star golfers as creditors still owed millions in unsecured claims. Spaniard Jon Rahm has the largest claim among players at $7.5 million, followed by Bryson DeChambeau ($5.7 million), Dustin Johnson ($5.5 million), Cameron Smith of Australia ($4.8 ​million), Tyrrell Hatton of England ($3.4 million) and Brooks Koepka ($1.7 million). Koepka left the league at the start of 2026.

LIV Golf ⁠was bankrolled by the Saudi Public Investment Fund from its inception in 2022 until this ‌year, ‌when ​the sovereign wealth fund decided to step away. LIV’s decision to file for bankruptcy is not a sign that it is dissolving, ⁠but rather a step toward restructuring and ​continuing the PGA Tour competitor under a new ​business plan.

CEO Scott O’Neil published a letter to fans addressing the filing.

“Now it is time ‌to enter the next phase of ​LIV Golf,” O’Neil wrote. “Today, we took an important step forward to get there. LIV Golf ⁠has entered a court-supervised restructuring process ⁠that provides us ​with the time and framework to address previous financial obligations and complete a transaction that will make the League’s next phase a reality. Put simply, this process is designed to build a stronger and more sustainable future for LIV Golf.”

O’Neil went on to say LIV intends to continue staging events in some of its more popular international destinations - Australia, South Africa, Mexico, Hong Kong and England among them. The league ‌also will seek to ⁠continue playing in the United States.

“The next phase of LIV Golf will be built around a sustainable business model and deeper alignment between players and the ‌League, with team golf at its core,” O’Neil wrote. “Players will have the opportunity to share directly in the value they ​help create, while teams will be positioned to grow into enduring ​global sports businesses. And fans will remain at the center of everything we do.”

LIV has an agreement in place with BC Partners Advisors for restructuring support.

A further eight in 10 firms reported this lack of skilled workers is “increasing regulatory and operational risks” across the industry, the institute found in a survey of 125 senior compliance experts in the State’s financial services sector.

Institute chief executive Michael Kavanagh described it as “concerning” that “the overwhelming majority” of compliance experts believe this qualification shortfall is increasing risk.

“Financial crime is increasingly digital in nature, faster to execute and more complex to detect”, he said, adding that artificial intelligence (AI) “has made the task of tackling financial crime even more challenging.”

The Central Bank of Ireland released on Friday its annual payment fraud statistics, revealing that almost €180 million was reported in fraudulent transactions in 2025, a 27.2 per cent increase in the amount of money stolen compared to the previous year, with a notable rise in the average value of fraudulent transactions conducted through e-money institutions.

The bank’s deputy governor for consumer and investor protection, Colm Kincaid, said: “All actors in the system from financial firms to technology companies need to continue to improve their systems and controls to reduce the likelihood of these frauds occurring.”

But 56 per cent of respondents to the institute’s survey said they do not believe the Irish financial services sector is developing enough compliance and financial crime talent to meet future demand.

Only 8 per cent “fully” believe the sector has enough properly qualified compliance professionals to deal with the issues at hand, while 41 per cent believe so “to some extent”.

Meanwhile, a further 41 per cent believe moderate shortages exist and 10 per cent say these are significant.

“The results of our survey suggest that skills gaps in the Irish financial services sector mean that many organisations may be already finding it hard to find people with the right skills to combat financial crime,” Kavanagh said.

He continued: “The overwhelming volume and pace of regulatory changes often puts significant pressure on compliance teams in the sector. The sheer breadth of regulations demands a significant allocation of time, expertise, and operational focus, often stretching teams to their limits.

“Firms of course need to take steps themselves to ensure their staff are adequately trained and have the know-how to combat the regulatory and operational risks faced by the Irish financial services sector.

“But there also needs to be a concerted effort by the Government and industry to invest more in talent so that the Irish financial services sector can truly prosper and navigate all the challenges that come its way.”

The pilot of the Aer Lingus plane reported the sighting to Dublin Air Traffic Control at around 5.20pm on Tuesday.

The report came at a time widespread flight disruptions in the UK and Ireland due to air traffic control issues in London. Around 50 flights operating in and out of Dublin were cancelled, as were around 600 others in the UK.

According to a record of air traffic control transmissions, the Aer Lingus pilot reported the drone was operating at 6,000ft and was about 3km to the aircraft’s left side at it flew into Dublin from Cornwall.

The pilot reported the drone was about “10 miles” from LAPMO, a navigation point near Howth in north Co Dublin. That would put it somewhere off the Co Wicklow coast.

Asked by air traffic control if he spotted any identifying marks on the drone, the pilot replied that it was large and black.

The air traffic controller said he would pass the information on to Dublin Airport.

An Irish Coast Guard helicopter was dispatched to the general area of the reported drone sighting a short time later. It spent a number of hours flying over the Dublin Bay area.

AirNav Ireland, which provides air traffic management services in Irish airspace, said an aircraft “arriving into Dublin this evening reported a possible drone sighting”.

“In line with our normal safety procedures, a safety report was filed and the sighting was reported to An Garda Síochána. As this matter is now with the relevant authorities, we have no further comment at this time,” it added.

Air traffic controllers asked various aircraft in the general area if they caught sight of the object. None reported that they did, according to recordings reviewed by The Irish Times.

“We’ve no radar return down there and nothing that we’re aware of in the area,” an air traffic controller told one aircraft. “So, just keep your eyes out there, would you mind?”

The purported sighting occurred shortly after the conclusion of meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Dublin Castle. It is not known if it caused any disruption to air traffic over Dublin.

Gardaí said they were aware of an alleged sighting of an unconfirmed object over the Irish Sea, off the east coast.

“An Garda Síochána continue to investigate the reports in conjunction with the relevant authorities.”

Aer Lingus and the Irish Aviation Authority were contacted for comment.

She charged the GAA’s management committee with being “less than impressive” and “lacking in vision”, adding that the decision to resign has left her “devastated”.

McAleese had remained steadfast in her belief the integration of the GAA, LGFA and Camogie Association could be complete by the 2027 deadline, but scepticism around that time frame from some of the parties involved had caused friction.

‘Let’s just slow down’: plan to integrate Gaelic codes raises concerns

“I’m absolutely devastated,” McAleese said on RTÉ Radio 1’s Inside Sport programme on Tuesday evening, just hours after her resignation.

“The (GAA management committee) was quite frankly less than impressive, and very disappointing to me as a long-term GAA supporter to meet a body that was so lacking in vision for the future of the GAA.

“I hate to say this but I suspect that there are people who are not entirely happy about the idea of including women in decision-making at the top level of Gaelic sports.”

She added that, in her opinion, there was a lack of leadership at the top level of the GAA.

“Yesterday, I was shocked to hear the current president of the GAA say [in correspondence] that in fact he didn’t really support the idea, having supported it up to now.”

“I didn’t see leadership at the GAA management committee ... I had to remind them that integration was passed by Congress of the GAA and that they came to me to be the independent chair of their idea.

“The leadership is not evident and the commitment to integration has evaporated.

“I’m broken-hearted for the parents of young girls.”

In statements released on Tuesday night following the news, the Camogie Association and LGFA both thanked McAleese for her contribution.

Camogie Association president Brian Molloy said McAleese was “a huge asset to the integration process and her exit is a huge loss”, adding the Camogie Association “remains committed to the integration project and hopes that the three associations can realign on the path to delivering that vision”.

The LGFA said McAleese’s decision to step down “comes somewhat unexpectedly, given what we understood to be constructive discussions at the latest meeting of the Steering Group on Monday evening regarding the integration process”, but thanked her for her “dedication and leadership” in the role, adding they too remain fully committed to the integration process.

The GAA stated: “The GAA acknowledges that, after four years, Dr. Mary McAleese has stepped away from her role as Chairperson of the group.

“We wish to express our appreciation and thank Dr McAleese for her leadership, commitment and contribution to the work of the group. Dr McAleese has played an invaluable part in advancing the future of Gaelic games and delivering the integration project to this significant juncture. She departs her role with the sincere gratitude and good wishes of the entire Gaelic games family.

“The next phase of the project will be to distil the substantial and constructive feedback received from a wide range of stakeholders into a refined set of key principles and structures, and to derive a detailed and sequential workplan, all of which will be advanced in 2027.

“The GAA remains firmly committed to building a single Association that honours the identity, heritage and contribution of each of our sports while creating a stronger and more inclusive future for the entire Gaelic games family.”

Dozens of flights in and out of Dublin Airport were affected, with airport operator DAA saying airlines had cancelled 43 outbound and 30 inbound flights on Tuesday.

Nats, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said its recovery from the technical issue, which forced the cancellation of more than 400 flights, had “taken longer than we had hoped” but is “resolved”.

“We are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” it said in a statement at 7.30pm. “We are truly sorry for the ongoing flight disruption. We know this is hugely frustrating and apologise unreservedly. Passengers should continue to check with their airline.”

Passenger Update - 17.00

Due to air traffic control issues in the UK, some flights in and out of Dublin Airport are subject to delays this evening.

As of 5pm, airlines have cancelled 23 outbound and 21 inbound flights. Further disruption is possible as the evening goes on.… pic.twitter.com/G6OCMOWRXg

— Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) September 8, 2026

Tens of thousands of passengers faced disruption as a result of the outage, which had led to about 425 flights to and from UK airports being cancelled as of 5pm. Airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Stansted were impacted.

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.

British Airways said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.

ℹ️ Technical issue

We have identified that the issue was in our flight processing system. Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible. We recognise the ongoing disruption to travel, for which we sincerely apologise. (1/3) https://t.co/T9tF7j31e1

— NATS (@NATS) September 8, 2026

Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” following the issue which was causing delays to flights across Europe.

Ryanair cuts winter capacity as unhedged jet fuel costs bite

In a post on X, UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she was “seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job” following the disruption. She said she gave her “huge thanks” for those working to “get people moving”.

Nats chief executive officer Martin Rolfe, who was asked on Sky News whether he accepted responsibility for the incident which caused chaos for so many passengers, said: “I always accept full responsibility.”

He said: “I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that. What I absolutely take responsibility for is keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can on a day like today.

“You will understand my focus is entirely about how we actually resolve this issue, get things back to normal, help our airlines, our airport customers and the travelling public.”

Neal McMahon, Ryanair chief operating officer, called on Rolfe to resign, saying: “How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure Nats CEO Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?

“Over three years after Nats’ catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, it’s clear that nothing has changed, with UK passengers once again suffering avoidable ATC (air traffic control) delays of up to eight hours today due a critical Nats ATC system failing.”

Travel journalist Simon Calder said the knock-on effects on Wednesday are “going to be horrible”.

He told Sky News: “There are going to be dozens of cancellations in the morning of flights coming into Heathrow because, basically, the flights didn’t go out tonight.”

Heathrow suspended arrivals from 8pm for the rest of the day on Tuesday “to ensure the safety of our passengers and colleagues”. Additional reporting: PA

Guy Campanile, who worked at CBS News for 34 years, said in a private Facebook post obtained by the Guardian on Tuesday that he had held off on commenting about his dismissal right away, having decided it was “wise to remain quiet when emotions are raw”.

But “after some time and deep reflection, I am now comfortable and prepared to talk about it”, he wrote in the post.

Campanile said he, Tanya Simon, Draggan Mihailovich, Matthew Polevoy, Scott Pelley, Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega “refused to be accomplices in the destruction of the most prestigious news programme on American television”.

The firings took place after the new management of CBS News booted them as part of its overhaul of the venerated show.

Anderson Cooper to leave 60 Minutes amid turmoil at CBS News

Of himself and his former colleagues who departed, Campanile wrote: “We would not compromise our principles or reputations by jamming unverifiable notions or White House talking points into our reporting. We objected when told to conduct interviews arranged by the administration.

“We insisted on asking the most challenging questions to business and political leaders without fear or favour. We did what reporters worth their salt do – we questioned authority… including our own bosses. That’s how the best newsrooms work.”

Anderson Cooper to leave 60 Minutes amid turmoil at CBS News

He continued: “To be clear: we were told to leave because we insisted on doing our jobs. What has happened recently at 60 Minutes – where I believe editorial independence has become a casualty of corporate priorities and ideological intrusion – was tragic. But it was part of an inevitable progression in the cascade of afflictions that have devalued our most trusted sources of news.”

Campanile said “information has become commoditised in the attention economy” and that “facts are increasingly treated as items in a buffet, chosen depending on specific appetite and ideological tastes”.

He wrote: “Journalism, especially on television, is now largely an exercise in presentation rather than examination: lead with weather because policy can be complicated. Hype everything to a point where it’s hard to tell what is really important. Protect yourself and keep the public distracted by focusing on the ‘what’ rather than the ‘why’. Showcase anchors with shallow experience but blessed with exceptional haircuts. Broadcast sweeping deductions from sealed studios rather than speaking directly to the people making history or pummeled by events.

“Making matters worse is the cadre of self-described influencers and online opinionists who market themselves as ‘journalists’. Some have been given control of our most precious reporting institutions – including CBS News. Many of these newsroom managers have never been exposed to the depths of poverty, the ravages of war or the heartbreak of disaster. Yet these dilettantes and their enablers make critical programming decisions based on what might trend online over the next few hours.”

‘We were lucky’: Stephen Colbert marks end of The Late Show with emotional finale

CBS News also fired longtime journalist Scott Pelley, telling him he was being let go for “cause” due to his behaviour in a meeting with the show’s executive producer and network’s managing editor.

In this meeting, Pelley criticised Bari Weiss, the former opinion writer who is now CBS News editor-in-chief. Her appointment has spurred backlash from numerous network staffers who have voiced concerns about her impartiality.

“She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley remarked of Weiss. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.”

CBS was contacted for comment. – Guardian

Over her past five arduous months, Sabalenka has reliably unravelled under pressure. However, at the final grand slam tournament of the year, with her US Open title and No 1 ranking on the line, this was her very last chance to salvage her season. Somehow, the top-seeded Sabalenka finally had a response as she recovered to win an astonishing match and reach the semi-finals with a 7-6 (1), 3-6, 7-6 (7) win over Noskova, the sixth seed.

Before the tournament, it was clear that the intense depth at the top of the women’s game, where each of the top 11 players currently hold a big title, meant there are so many worthy title candidates. The quarter-finals line-up reflects this embarrassment of riches. Each of the top six seeds reached the last eight, with five of them being grand slam champions along with the perennial top-five player Jessica Pegula and the Olympic gold medallist Zheng Qinwen.

A meeting between the defending US Open champion and the new Wimbledon champion was top of the list of the highly anticipated tussles and it developed into one of the best matches of the year. This was a spectacular exhibition of unfiltered first-strike tennis. The quality of serving from both sides of the net was supreme, with Noskova firing down 18 aces and Sabalenka finishing with 46 per cent unreturned serves, including a statement second-serve ace to close out a tight tie-break set. Both players fearlessly forced themselves inside the baseline, Sabalenka’s searing power contrasted with Noskova’s sweet timing and precise changes of direction.

After trailing 2-4, 0-15, Sabalenka followed up a commanding service game with a flawless return game, pulling herself level with a break to love. Even under intense pressure, Sabalenka continued to think clearly as she kept testing the hitchy Noskova forehand, which despite being strong for much of the match, buckled in the decisive moments deep in the final set and marked the difference between them. “What a battle,” said Sabalenka. “What an incredible player she is. I’m speechless right now because I was pushing myself to the limit in this match, especially in the third set. I honestly thought that that’s it, the match is over. Probably that’s what helped me to feel loose and go after my shots. Super happy to get this win.”

Sabalenka’s victory leaves the pressure on Elena Rybakina’s shoulders as she tries to usurp Sabalenka in the rankings. Should Rybakina defeat Zheng Qinwen in their quarter-final match on Wednesday, the Kazakhstani will become world No 1 for the first time. If she loses, Sabalenka, Coco Gauff or Jessica Pegula would finish the tournament ranked No 1 if they win the title. While the ranking is out of her hands, Sabalenka’s resilience means she is still in the running for a third consecutive US Open title. She will face the winner of the all-American night battle between the third seed Pegula and Emma Navarro, the 26th seed.

Although Noskova did not depart Arthur Ashe Stadium with a victory, after struggling with motivation after her life-changing Wimbledon triumph, reaching the quarter-finals of her next grand slam tournament and performing at such a high level against the world No 1 is a statement of intent. As she adjusts to her new status at the top of the game, the 21-year-old will only continue to improve and to make life hell for the established elite. – Guardian

In her first competitive outing since sustaining a hamstring tear in the 200m final at the National Championships in Santry in July, Mawdsley finished strongly in 50.58 seconds to run down Britain’s Charlotte Henrich, who finished second in 50.70. American Paris Peoples finished third, clocking 51.09.

It was also a timely return for Mawdsley as she will next race in the 400m at this weekend’s newly minted World Athletics Ultimate Championship. The meet in Budapest carries a record prize pot of $10 million.

Starting in lane four, the Tipperary athlete displayed no lingering effects from the injury which forced her to withdraw from last month’s European Championships in Birmingham.

The last stop on the World Athletics Continental Tour Silver meeting circuit, the race in Rovereto afforded Mawdsley a test run ahead of Budapest, where the inaugural Ultimate Championship will be staged over three evening sessions from Friday to Sunday.

Each event winner at the meet will pocket $150,000, the largest winner’s prize in track and field history. The runner-up will earn $75,000, with third gets $40,000. Each athlete will receive some prize money, down to the last-place finisher in each event, who will receive $2,000.

Mawdsley is ranked 13th of the 16 women invited to take part in the women’s 400m, with Mark English and Rhasidat Adeleke also set to race in Budapest. English is ranked seventh of the 16 athletes invited for the men’s 800m, while Adeleke is ranked 16th in the women’s 200m.

Sarah Healy and Sophie O’Sullivan were also in action in Rovereto, both racing in the women’s 1,500m. Healy finished fourth in 4:02.72, while O’Sullivan clocked 4:06.80 to finish 11th in a closely-fought tactical race.

In the men’s 100m, Bori Akinola finished sixth in the 100m, clocking 10.40 seconds, while Darragh McElhinney and Brian Fay finished 16th and 19th respectively in the men’s 3,000m, while Eric Favors threw 19.67m to finish eighth in the shot put.

It is impossible to comprehend 9/11 without recalling the founder of modern jihadism, Sayyid Qutb. The two greatest intellectual influences on Osama bin Laden – the Palestinian preacher Abdallah Azzam and the militant Saudi cleric Safar al-Hawali – were steeped in Qutb’s writings.

Qutb is both the Karl Marx and the Patrick Pearse of violent Islamism, at once its theorist and its exemplary martyr. His punchy book Ma‘alim (Milestones) – written in an Egyptian prison in 1964, before he was hanged in 1966 – is The Communist Manifesto of the movement. Its call for a male vanguard dedicated to the use of violence to establish a universal Islamic State was the blueprint for al-Qaeda.

Qutb was a literary critic, Koranic scholar and official in the Department of Education in Cairo. In 1948, when he began to criticise the Egyptian monarchy, it sent him on a study trip to the United States to get him out of the way. He spent nearly two years in New York, Washington, Colorado and California.

He was disturbed and disgusted by the sexuality of young American women: “The American girl is well acquainted with her body’s seductive capacity,” he wrote. “She knows seductiveness lies in the round breasts, the full buttocks, and in the shapely thighs, sleek legs and she shows all this and does not hide it.” “Hungry passions and treacherous eyes flicker about her body”. The hungry eyes were obviously his own.

In 1949, Qutb experienced a kind of epiphany. Greeley, Colorado, was a conservative, religious town where alcohol was banned, far from the fleshpots of New York or California. Nevertheless, Qutb witnessed a horror show – a dance in the church hall run by the local pastor: “The arena was swaying with feet and legs. Arms went round the waists and the lips and bosoms met ... All the atmosphere was that of love ... Then [the pastor] came to ‘the gramophone’ to choose a disc for the dancing which suits that atmosphere and to encourage those who were sitting from both sexes to participate in dancing. And he chose a very famous American song called But, Baby it is Cold Outside!” .

25 years later: ‘A couple of days before every 9/11 you get that sick feeling in your stomach’

Qutb’s revulsion was deepened by his racist loathing of jazz: “this music that the savage bushmen created to satisfy their primitive desires.” That a religious pastor was encouraging lascivious dancing to these savage beats was, for him, the ultimate proof that America and thus all of western modernity was leading humanity to its doom. Only a global jihad, led by the pure vanguard, could save the world.

There is nothing uniquely Islamic about the fanatical desire to control women’s bodies. Little versions of Qutb could have been found in 1950s Ireland too, foaming at the mouth about dirty dancing and Jews and “Negro” music and young women flaunting themselves. Seán South (of Garryowen), also a 1950s political and religious martyr, would have got on very well with Qutb if only they could have agreed on which One True Faith everyone must follow on pain of death.

The main difference is that Qutb’s vision was truly global. The jihadist movements that answered his call may have demanded a return to the 7^th century but they were also pioneers of globalisation. They fought modernity with hypermodernity, forming transnational networks and mastering new technologies – from cassettes to the internet – to spread their message. It was not accidental that the 9/11 terrorists used the most global of machines – long-distance aircraft – to create appallingly photogenic spectacles.

What they found repugnant about modernity, then, was not its technical innovations. It was – and is – the “round breasts, the full buttocks, and ... the shapely thighs” of women. Or rather, those features being on display outside of their own complete control. Women’s bodies must be their private property, for their own use and delectation.

Why? Because, in distorted forms of masculinity, sexuality can only be understood as power. Qutb wrote of his dread of “sexual enjoyment in which the soul suffocates ... while instincts and senses become intoxicated.” If young women have that intoxicating potency, they can use it to drive men mad with desire and then humiliate them by withholding what is most desired. The only true safeguard against sexual humiliation is enforced submission and the erasure of the female body from the public realm.

The terrible irony of the anniversary of the 9/11 crimes is that it will be marked under a US president who fought the most openly misogynistic presidential campaign in the country’s history. Standing beside him will be an avowed Christian jihadist, Pete Hegseth. Both appeal to men who share the most fundamental impulse of the jihadis: the desire to create a society in which women are under male control.

It is perfectly logical that much of the anglophone manosphere has migrated towards reactionary Islamism. Tommy Robinson now says that “Islam has become an attraction for so many, because people are looking for something strong in principle that can stand its ground.” Andrew Tate announced his conversion to Islam in 2022, adding that he was already collecting bricks to stone his partner if she ever cheated on him. Conversely, Islamist preachers in the Middle East tell their followers that Tate is being persecuted for his Muslim faith.

It is not, of course, Islam itself with which Tate and the manosphere really identify – it’s the sanction given by its most twisted forms to misogyny as the primary organising principle of society.

But we won’t hear much of this in the official commemorations of the 9/11 atrocities. Some things are too close for comfort. Trump’s lines, delivered in the Pentagon just before he flies over to Ireland, will be all about “hatred of America”. Shared hatred of women will be, as always, unspeakable.

Donald Trump breaks the law so fast that the law is left in his orange dust

The base – where Bolger trained almost 3,000 winners, including the 2007 Epsom Derby hero New Approach – was put on the market earlier this year with a guide price of €4 million.

With up to 150 stables available, the move opens up a range of possibilities for Mullins (36), a nephew of champion jumps trainer Willie Mullins and who famously landed the Aintree Grand National with Noble Yeats in 2022.

It sealed his reputation as one of the most talented, and shrewdest, of the new generation of trainers. In alliance with owner Paul Byrne, his latest big race success came with Solider In Milan in the Irish Grand National at Fairyhouse.

Mullins confirmed to the Racing Post on Tuesday night that he plans to dramatically extend his interests in flat racing once he moves into the historic stables.

“Once I saw it go up for sale, I didn’t really say it openly to anybody but inside I was thinking about it and wondering who would get it. I think I jokingly said it to Paul (Byrne), and Paul is a bigger dreamer than I am, thankfully, so hopefully it will all work out.

“I’ve spoken to a lot of people who have been and know about Cooclullen, and they have always said it is one of the best gallops in the world, so it is hugely exciting for me to be gaining access to it,” he told the Racing Post.

“We will definitely be looking out for yearlings now with the view of hitting the ground early with two-year-olds. We’re going to be more flat oriented from now on,” Mullins added, anticipating he will move his operation to Coolcullen in the new year.

He will continue to focus on jumps from his current base over the winter.

“I wish Emmet all the best and I’ve always wanted to see a young trainer get the place,” said Bolger (84), who plans to continue his training career next season.

At the Dublin Children’s Court on Tuesday, the 17-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of endangerment of life and motor theft arising from an unconnected joyriding incident on the night of May 18th.

Defence counsel Noah Rossiter said the deaths of the five youths – who had been involved in a fatal collision after driving on the wrong side of the M9 in Kildare – prompted a turnaround in the boy’s behaviour. He cannot be named because he is a juvenile.

Three women and a seven-year-old boy were seriously injured in that collision in the early hours of August 16th.

Rossiter told Judge Paul Kelly that as a result of the August 16th incident, the teenager realised he would end up “behind bars or in a grave” if he did not change his ways.

The boy had led gardaí on a 33-minute car chase that started in Tallaght and included two periods on the M50 motorway. He entered the M50 both times via slip roads in the wrong direction and travelling against the flow of traffic.

Garda Jason Curran said the teenager failed to stop for blockade attempts and the use of stinger devices. He was tracked by the Garda Airport Support Unit’s helicopter on the motorway and came to a stop after sustaining burst tyres.

The teenager had another youth as a passenger, in a stolen Toyota Aqua.

The court heard there was heavy traffic on the motorway, the weather was poor, the road was wet and it was dark at the time.

The second youth avoided prosecution due to inclusion in the Garda Youth Diversion Programme.

The State argued that the case should be sent forward to the Circuit Court, which has wider sentencing powers.

However, after submissions from Rossiter, who argued that the Children’s Court had appropriate sentencing powers of up to 24 months, Kelly accepted jurisdiction.

Rossiter told the court that the boy, who has no prior criminal record, had experienced a tumultuous period in recent times and had a compromised mental state.

Accepting jurisdiction in the case, Kelly described the driving as incredibly dangerous, stating there was “no excuse” for his actions. However, in accepting jurisdiction, he noted from the footage that the teenager had driven on the hard shoulder and flashed lights to warn oncoming motorists.

The boy, who remains on bail, still has to enter pleas to 10 connected dangerous driving charges for incidents immediately before, during and after he first turned onto the M50.

The case resumes in October.

The State’s health services watchdog inspected the child and family agency’s national out-of-hours service earlier this year, finding that some children were still housed in hotel rooms because Tusla had “very limited access to emergency residential care placements”.

When children are housed in hotel rooms – referred to as Immediate Places of Safety (IPOS) by Tusla – they are supervised by agency social care staff.

“The potential negative impact on the wellbeing of children and additional safeguarding risks for children when placed in unregulated IPOS arrangements was a significant concern,” Hiqa said in a report published on Tuesday.

Staff working in the service “expressed significant concern” about the arrangement, the report added.

Tusla’s out-of-hours service provides an emergency child protection and welfare service when the agency’s local services are closed at night and over weekends.

Hiqa inspected the service between March 24th and April 2nd. Of the nine national standards assessed, the service was found to be not compliant with six standards and substantially compliant with three standards.

The watchdog said the service did not “have a clear purpose and function” and lacked defined governance and management structures.

Hiqa’s report noted that in the 12 months prior to the inspection, a number of audits into service provision were carried out by Tusla. Between July and September 2025, an internal review of eight cases related to IPOS accommodation took place.

“A significant risk was identified in that in all eight cases reviewed [service] staff were unable to cross-check agency staff assigned for care of young people within the IPOS, against Tusla’s central compliance list of approved staff, as they did not have access to this service out of hours,” Hiqa said.

At the time of the inspections in March and April, Hiqa said staff in the out-of-hours service “had not received the necessary access to the compliance register for these basic safeguarding checks on staff”.

Hiqa also said a “risk escalation procedure” had “yet to be approved” for the service, despite this issue being raised at a previous inspection two years ago.

“In addition, risks relating to poor governance systems, identified during the August 2024 inspection, had not been fully addressed,” the report said.

Hiqa said the level of out-of-hours care received by children varied depending on where they lived, stating that an equitable service was not provided to young people living outside Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow.

“The majority of children living outside these areas had limited in-person contact with a social worker when referred [to the service]. These children also faced delays in receiving a service.”

The report said a review undertaken in 2023 “recommended a significant restructuring of the service” to ensure a consistent service was available to all children nationally, but “this had not been progressed”.

The report also highlighted some of the progress made by the service, saying staff “were committed to keeping children safe” and “inspectors saw examples of good quality out-of-hours safeguarding work with children”.

“In the 12 months prior to this inspection, the service had taken positive action relating to the screening of referrals, communication with children, establishment of a system for auditing casework on referrals and the recognition and escalation of risk,” Hiqa said.

“Following the inspection, management submitted a satisfactory compliance plan to Hiqa, which outlined plans to address the issues identified during the inspection.”

Tusla acknowledged the publication of the report, which it said highlighted “a number of positive findings” but also areas where “improvement is required”.

“Tusla accepts these findings and acknowledges that the service has not consistently met the standard expected in all areas,” the agency said in a statement.

“In 2025 we experienced the largest ever demand for our services, receiving over 106,000 referrals to our child protection service, up 10 per cent compared to 2024 (96,666), and almost 800 referrals to our Separated Children Seeking International Protections (SCSIP) Service.”

Following the inspection, Tusla submitted a comprehensive compliance plan to Hiqa and has already implemented a number of measures to strengthen governance, oversight and service delivery, the statement added.

Tusla said it recognised the broader challenges highlighted by Hiqa regarding the limited availability of emergency residential and foster care placements. The agency said addressing placement capacity remained a “priority”.

Commenting on the report, Gerry Hone, interim director of services and integration at Tusla, said he welcomed Hiqa’s inspection and the role it played in supporting accountability.

“Our focus remains on ensuring that every child who requires an emergency out-of-hours intervention receives a safe, timely and effective response, regardless of where they live,” he added.

Opposition to the huge, windowless facilities that provide the computing power required by artificial intelligence has now become one of the rare issues uniting voters across the partisan divide.

The frustrations feeding the backlash are varied but clear. Households blame the giant server farms for soaring electricity bills. Communities resent the water use, the noise, the land taken and the generous tax breaks handed to some of the wealthiest corporations on earth in return for remarkably few permanent jobs. Beneath it all runs a deeper unease about a technology many people regard with suspicion or fear, and a sense that ordinary citizens are being asked to carry the costs of a boom whose rewards are unlikely to benefit them.

In Europe the same pressures are mounting, but the response so far has been quieter and more technocratic. State and regulatory bodies have tried to manage the rollout through grid rules and planning conditions. That approach is now becoming fraught, and nowhere more so than in Ireland. The Republic leads the world in the share of its metered electricity consumed by data centres, almost a quarter last year and forecast to reach a third by the end of the decade.

The Department of Enterprise’s recently commissioned report, which sought to inflate the benefits and play down the costs, only drew attention to the flimsiness of the case and to its real driver, namely Ireland’s deep dependence on American tech companies and its consequent eagerness to do their bidding.

Every factor stoking American anger is present here, save one: an imminent election. A report this week from the energy regulator, offering new data centres cut-price gas in return for accepting interruptions to their supply during severe weather, showed how far the State will still bend to accommodate them. But Sinn Féin’s call for a moratorium is significant. Only months ago such demands in the US were confined to the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democrats. Now they are heard right across the spectrum.

The combustible elements here are unmistakable, with high consumer energy prices, a grid already short of what security of supply demands, missed renewable targets, and a headlong rush to expand consumption for a technology people distrust. If the Government parties wish to avoid a painful reckoning at the polls, a radical rethink of both policy and message is required.

Finn McGrath, from Dunaree, Laragh, Castleblayney, was airlifted to hospital after the crash, but died at Children’s Health Ireland at Temple Street, Dublin, on August 3rd, 2024.

Garda Kevin Jones, a trained mechanic who examines vehicles involved in collisions, appeared at Dublin District Coroner’s Court to describe the condition of the quad bike, a Kawasaki Mule.

He said neither of the boys on the quad were wearing seat belts at the time and that the front brakes were not functioning.

A new handbrake had been installed in the previous six months, which could operate the back brakes, but Jones said stopping the vehicle in that manner was also dangerous. After test driving the vehicle, he said he noted the overall braking performance was poor and that there was a “serious defect” with the steering.

While the maximum speed of the quad bike would have been 16-24km/h, Jones said it was seriously unstable.

When asked by coroner Clare Keane what the biggest issue with the quad bike was, Jones said it was the steering defect.

In conclusion, he said the wheels appeared safe, but the vehicle was “dangerously defective” and unstable, particularly when turning corners.

Garda Phillip Smith, of Carrickmacross Garda station, told the inquest he saw Finn McGrath lying on the ground after being trapped and pushed into a gate when the quad overturned.

He said CPR was being performed on the boy when he arrived at the scene and that he was airlifted to hospital at 6.52pm.

A medical report noted how Finn McGrath sustained fatal crush injuries in the incident. He suffered from cardiac arrest and was initially stabilised, with an MRI scan scheduled. However, the inquest heard he died due to a lack of oxygen to the brain.

The coroner noted that four children had been helped by the donation of the boy’s heart, kidneys and liver. She recorded a verdict of misadventure.

But on Tuesday, Najidi Storm forever brought ignominy and shame to his blue-blooded family when he became the shortest-priced loser in the history of British racing, beaten into second in the glamorously titled Cleansing Service Group Novice Stakes at Goodwood at odds of 1-33.

The aptly named Wreck It Ronnie won the contest at what now look like generous odds of 10-1 in a field of just three. The winner had been beaten a combined 22 and a half lengths in his only two previous outings, but made virtually all the running in the hands of Kieren Fox and no matter how hard jockey Lewis Edmunds tried he could not reel him in on the Harry Charlton-trained favourite.

😮

1/33F Najidi Storm is beaten by 10/1 chance Wreck It Ronnie in a remarkable opener at Goodwood pic.twitter.com/LX1RmqQWNn

— Racing TV (@RacingTV) September 8, 2026

The other runner in the 10-furlong event, Dream Of Albion, was a well tailed off 76 lengths back in arrears. The previous record was jointly held by Doom (2023) and Royal Forest (1948), who were both beaten at a starting price of 1-25.

Of course the bookmakers were still moaning, claiming they failed to make money after the shock outcome. Brian O’Keeffe of Boyle Sports, said: “We’ve witnessed the shortest-priced loser in British racing history, but that doesn’t mean it was a good result for the layers.

“Najidi Storm might have been an ‘acca’ buster for a number of punters, but when one is put in that short, they’re often keen to look elsewhere. This time, their eye was drawn to the winner, Wreck It Ronnie, who was unfortunately the biggest liability in the race in our book.”

Paddy Power spokesman Paul Binfield said: “Wreck It Ronnie sure lived up to his name with favourite-backers and the winner was actually a loser in the book with punters taking a chance against the very short-priced ‘jolly’.” – Guardian

This trend of decline, particularly in reading, is seen across almost 100 countries.

Researchers described the findings as a “sobering” new data set.

Students are less able to read carefully and with sustained attention than ever before, according to the latest report of the Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings. The programme is run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The report notes the impacts of “increased digitalisation” and “longer screen time” on participants.

The survey, which is carried out every three years, saw about 750,000 15-year-old students across 91 countries undertake standardised tests to assess their ability in the areas of science, reading, maths and digital learning.

Just over 6,000 students in Ireland, across 172 schools, were assessed between March and April of last year. In the Irish student assessments, average reading scores fell from 521 in 2015 to 500 last year, while maths scores fell from 504 to 480 in the same period. In science, scores remained relatively stable, falling from 503 to 500 over the decade.

This decline in reading and maths scores was also seen globally, with average reading scores across all OECD countries dropping by 28 points. For maths, the average drop was 22 points.

The OECD said it was “particularly concerning” that the sharpest decline was recorded in reading. It based its concerns on an assertion that “reading skills underpin learning across the curriculum and are essential for finding, evaluating, interpreting and reflecting on information in an increasingly digital world”.

The OECD said these developments are “part of a longer-term trend”.

“The weakening of performance predates the Covid-19 pandemic in many countries, pointing to deeper and more persistent challenges within education systems,” it said.

“In reading, increased digitalisation, longer screen time and falling rates of reading for enjoyment have coincided with weaker literacy outcomes. Countries with the largest declines in reading also tended to record the largest drops in mathematics and science.”

Despite this, students in Ireland still scored higher than the OECD average in mathematics, reading and science. Ireland placed seventh across the OECD countries on reading skills, 14th for maths and 15th for science.

In a European context, Irish students are first for reading, third for science and fourth for maths out of 27 EU countries.

The data also shows boys in Ireland outperformed girls on average in science, mathematics, and computational problem solving, while girls outperformed boys in reading.

Both boys and girls attending single-sex schools had higher scores in all subjects compared to those in mixed schools.

Students in Deis schools performed worse, on average, than their peers in non-Deis schools.

The Deis scheme is a Government funding stream aimed at reducing educational disadvantage by providing extra support to schools in poorer socio-economic areas.

Similarly, students attending ETB or community/comprehensive schools performed worse than those in voluntary secondary schools.

Across all subjects, Ireland had lower proportions of low performers compared to the OECD and EU averages. However, the proportion of top performers in maths was lower than the OECD average, while reading was higher than the OECD average.

Commenting on the findings, Minister for Education Hildegarde Naughton said the results show Ireland “continues to perform strongly on the international stage” and that “reading performance remains a significant success story.

“However, we cannot ignore the fact that reading achievement has declined internationally. We must continue to promote literacy, foster a love of reading and support strong reading habits both in our schools and in our homes,” the Minister said.

A hitman was needed to carry out a murder somewhere in the European Union, wrote the user on August 10th.

A gun and knife would be provided, as well as a motorbike, said Sponge Jobb. The pay was 650,000 Swedish Krona (€58,578).

Danish police had been monitoring this Signal group as part of efforts to combat the rising trend of what Europol calls “violence as a service” (VAAS).

Organised criminals are increasingly using social media and encrypted apps to outsource violent activity, including assault, murder and arson, to third parties, frequently teenagers, in exchange for relatively small sums of money.

The tactic is particularly favoured by the organised crime gangs that have emerged in Scandinavian countries in recent years.

A Danish undercover police officer responded to Sponge Jobb’s message. Posing as a hitman-for hire, he accepted the job.

Sponge Jobb, whose profile picture was the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, claimed to be part of a group that operated all over Europe. The user began working out the logistics with the undercover agent.

The hit would take place in Cyprus and involve not one target but two. He was to kill a pair of British twins who would be holidaying on the island that month.

If they were successfully assassinated, there may be a third job on the island for the hitman, he was later told.

The motivation for murdering the twins remains unclear, but Irish security sources said they were confident the hits were ultimately commissioned by veteran criminals with close links to the Kinahan cartel, the Irish organised crime group considered to be one of Europe’s largest cocaine importers.

The Kinahan group remains a formidable force but, due to the efforts of law enforcement, its reach has been curtailed in recent years. Many of its European contacts are either in jail or on the run.

To compensate, the gang has entered a relationship with other lower-tier criminal groups, including the Foxtrot network based in Sweden and members of the McCarthy-Dundon gang in Ireland.

The Kinahan group occasionally uses these criminals as foot soldiers to carry out dangerous work on the Continent, according to gardaí and a Scandinavian criminal justice source, thereby insulating its own members from potential arrest.

The logistics worked out, a flight was booked for the would-be hitman. The Danish police alerted their counterparts in Cyprus, who placed the undercover agent under discreet surveillance as soon as he touched town on the Mediterranean island on August 24th.

The Irish Times, in co-operation with European outlets including the Cyprus Investigative Reporting Network (CIRN), the Norwegian newspaper VG and Swedish public broadcaster SVT, has reconstructed the events leading up to the planned murder and the attempts by the criminal networks to complete the task, even after the arrest of the alleged conspirators.

By the time the Danish undercover officer touched down, his alleged handlers were already on the island. Two Norwegian men, with links to organised crime, arrived from Oslo on August 11th and 15th.

On August 17th, a 33-year-old man from Co Limerick arrived in Cyprus, having flown from the UK. Unlike his alleged co-conspirators, his criminal record is relatively minor, amounting to a handful of road traffic convictions in Ireland. This includes an arrest for drink driving during which he became aggressive with gardaí.

However, members of the man’s family are linked to the McCarthy-Dundon gang, which is involved in drug trafficking and extortion in Limerick city.

Prosecutors in Cyprus allege the Irish suspect was responsible for liaising with the hitman and passing money to him during his stay.

On August 25th, the Danish agent was directed over Signal to a self-service laundromat in the city to collect some money. Photographs and videos were sent to help him locate the drop. One captured a man, wearing short black trousers and black slippers, placing a white envelope on the wheel of a parked car.

Another photo showed a hand, with a distinctive tattoo, pointing to where the money was placed.

The undercover officer arrived shortly after and messaged the criminals to say that he could not find the money. Investigators allege the Irish man then arrived and began searching the area before leaving.

Local police, acting on instructions from the surveillance team, stopped the Irish man a short distance away. They noticed he was wearing black trousers and slippers and had the same tattoo on his hand as the one in the photograph, prosecutors say.

The officers let the man go but he was placed under close surveillance. In the meantime, the Danish agent received a photograph of the twins he was supposed to assassinate.

Police then observed the Irish man meeting with the two Norwegian suspects before the three men spent some time at a premises on the Marina in Aya Napa, a tourist resort and party town on the islands east coast.

During this period, the Danish agent received instructions about collecting the gun to be used in the murders.

The next day, August 28th, police arrested all three suspects. Searches of their apartments uncovered six mobile phones, two expandable batons and more than €2,600 in cash.

The Norwegian men refused to answer questions from police. A lawyer for the younger Norwegian told VG, the Norwegian publishers, that he denies involvement and is confident he will be acquitted.

The Irish suspect was more forthcoming in police interviews. He denied any wrongdoing and said he was in Cyprus on holiday with two women when he met one of the Norwegian men. He said he dropped the money at the laundromat as a favour to this man, who claimed he owed it to a friend.

Police say that a search of the Irish suspect’s mobile phone revealed a video showing a pistol and magazine inside a briefcase as well as footage of a person processing material resembling cannabis, according to information obtained by CIRN.

On the younger Norwegian’s phone, police found a video of a man being tortured by a masked assailant. Another man can be seen in the footage, strapped to a chair with duct tape on his mouth.

The younger Norwegian man has several serious convictions in Norway relating to firearms, assault, drugs and fraud. The older Norwegian suspect has convictions relating to weapons, and drugs.

Cypriot police continue to liaise with gardaí on the Irish suspect’s background.

“Cypriot Authorities have been in contact with An Garda Síochána regarding an Irish citizen in Cyprus through the Europol communications channel,” a Garda spokesman told The Irish Times.

The Irish man and the two Norwegians remain in custody but have not been charged. Police say they are being investigated on suspicion of organised crime offences, including conspiracy to murder and participation in a criminal group.

With their arrest, the murder plot came to an abrupt halt, police say. But those behind the conspiracy were not ready to give up on their plan.

Last Friday, Cypriot police received a warning from authorities in Sweden that a suspected hitman had arrived on the island from Stockholm the previous day. Swedish police said they believed the criminal had been sent to complete the hit on the British twins.

Police placed him under surveillance along with another man, who had recently arrived from Sweden and who had previously been arrested on suspicion of commissioning a murder in Stockholm.

That evening, police arrested the two new arrivals along with three other Swedish suspects. Follow-up searches uncovered a pistol, medical masks and disposable gloves.

In interviews, all five Swedes denied wrongdoing and said they were in Cyprus for a holiday.

The Cyprus plot “is a fairly typical violence-as-a-service set-up”, Swedish police superintendent Teodor Smedius told SVT. “They have taken on this assignment, but this time they are not the typical child soldiers – they are a bit older.

“We see that when assignments are carried out abroad, slightly older individuals tend to be recruited. It makes travelling easier and attracts less attention.”

He would not comment on the role of members of the Kinahan cartel in the plot but said it is “absolutely clear that our domestic criminal networks co-operate with other organised criminal networks across Europe”.

This view is borne out by an incident in Limerick last June, when Swedish man Axel Erick Wolfgang Liebsch Morales was killed in a car crash shortly after arriving in Ireland. A loaded gun was found at his feet. Gardaí believe he had been hired by a Limerick-based gang to murder a member of a rival faction in the county.

Meanwhile, the location of the two British twins remains a mystery. Police have established they were in Cyprus but left recently. The men’s family members have told police they have not been seen in two months.

At a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday, Kushner said that on their much-awaited first visit to the Ukrainian capital, they had put forward “new ideas” on how to end the four-year-old conflict, without elaborating. Kyiv and Moscow, where the pair met Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, both claimed the talks were “substantive”.

In truth, the weekend’s significance lay in the fact of resumed US engagement. There is no sign of movement and red lines on both sides remain firmly in place. Further talks were discussed, but Russia remains reluctant. Putin is still adamantly opposed to a ceasefire as a prelude to talks and continues to insist on Ukrainian disarmament and western disengagement. His opposition to foreign peacekeeping troops remains.

Moscow’s territorial demands for control over the whole of the Donbas region, including swathes under Ukraine’s control, are a non-starter for Kyiv . It would reportedly accept a freeze on current Russian battle lines as a temporary recognition of reality, without conceding sovereignty.

The impasse remains, with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy telling journalists that it looks likely the war will continue through the winter, while observers predict major offensives from both sides in the spring.

Importantly, however, the US and Ukrainian teams were joined for the final hour of talks in Kyiv by the national security advisers of Germany, France and Britain, an acknowledgment that European powers have an important role to play.

Under repeated hybrid attack as Moscow tests Nato’s defences, European countries are key suppliers of arms and economic aid to Ukraine, enforcers of sanctions against Russia, provide shelter to millions of Ukrainians, and have promised post-ceasefire peacekeeping troops. No deal will be possible without them at the table.

The 34-year-old, who cannot be named due to reporting restrictions, appeared at Belfast Crown Court on Tuesday.

Prosecuting barrister Samuel Magee told the court of the “important context of events” leading to the fatal incident on July 27th, 2021.

He said the woman contacted the PSNI to report a domestic incident on July 24th, 2021. She alleged her partner had pushed her and said she felt unsafe. The man was later arrested and removed from the family home.

Three days later, the woman wrote a series of diary entries. She said her partner had left to be with another woman, did not care for her or the children, and that she had chosen to take their lives so no one would mock them any more. The entries also included expressions of love for her partner and a reference to waiting in heaven for him.

On the evening of the incident, Magee said the woman called her partner – who was in England – to say she loved him and that she had killed their son. She also said their daughter was “lying slowly bleeding” and she planned to take her own life.

The man contacted English police, who alerted the PSNI. The woman had called the PSNI and said she had killed her children.

When police arrived at 8.15pm, they found the woman, who was bleeding, cradling her wounded daughter, who was screaming. The baby, who appeared lifeless, was lying on a bed in the room, and when officers attempted CPR, the woman stated: “I wouldn’t worry about him. He’s dead. I stabbed him.”

The court heard both children were rushed to the Royal Victoria Hospital for Sick Children. Magee said the boy had sustained two wounds to his chest, one of which penetrated his heart, and was pronounced dead at 9pm. Counsel said the girl sustained “grave injuries” and was “fortunate to survive”.

Following her arrest, the woman was taken to hospital to be treated for injuries. She was brought into custody two days later after being discharged and stated: “I killed my children... I’m really sorry for what I have done.”

The court heard a consultant forensic psychiatrist examined the accused and concluded she was suffering from an abnormality arising from a depressive episode. The expert said giving birth and postnatal effects were additional and significant stressors.

The woman pleaded guilty to her daughter’s attempted murder and admitted causing the death of a child aged under 12 months by a wilful act, stabbing, but at a time when the balance of her mind was disturbed by reason of the fact she had not fully recovered from the effect of giving birth to the child.

The court heard the woman’s daughter is in foster care and intensive work has been carried out to explain why she had not seen her baby brother and mother.

Magee said aggravating factors in the case included the breach of trust and the vulnerability of the children. He said it was accepted that their mother was “suffering from depression” and was in a “coercively controlling relationship” at the time.

Defence barrister Charles MacCreanor said his client “has never stopped punishing herself for what she did” and this is likely to remain the case for the rest of her life.

He said there was no evidence she had been “anything other than a loving, caring mother” until July 27th, 2021, and that she felt “remorse, shame and confusion” over what she did.

Counsel said the woman has spent more than five years in prison since the incident and has not received any visits aside from her solicitor and a representative of Woman’s Aid.

MacCreanor said the woman was a victim of physical, financial and sexual abuse at the hands of her partner, who has since died. He added that she “was scared” of the man, who had a lengthy criminal record and a history of domestic incidents.

The judge said he would pass sentence next Tuesday.

If you are affected by any issue in this article, please contact Pieta House on 1800-247247 or Samaritans can be contacted 24/7 on freephone 116 123 and email at jo@samaritans.ie

Speaking outside the Dáil at a protest intended to raise awareness of the case, Mimi Tatlow-Golden said “the Government keeps saying that they can’t interfere, I don’t expect them to interfere, but observation is not interference”.

Tatlow-Devally was arrested along with four other Palestinian activists, after they broke into the Elbit Systems Deutschland facility in Ulm.

The five have been charged with trespassing, property damage, membership of a criminal organisation and using symbols of an unconstitutional organisation, Tatlow-Golden said.

The trial, taking place in Stuttgart, began in April. Tatlow-Golden said initially it was expected to last around three and a half months but has been extended to eight and a half months.

Tatlow-Devally’s family, along with supporters, are asking for an observer to be sent as they say there is no transcript or official record of the trial.

“The judge determines what gets recorded,” she said, adding that they want an observer there “so that when it comes to appeals, as it certainly will, we’ve got something to rely on”.

“We would really like our government to show up for us,” she said.

She said the way Tatlow-Devally and their four co-accused are being treated is “completely disproportionately to what they did”.

“No matter who you are, you deserve a fair trial and what we’re watching in Stuttgart is not a fair trial. I can say that with confidence.”

She said Tatlow-Devally, who uses they/them pronouns and is a Berlin resident, is being kept in a cell on their own for 23 hours a day.

She said when the five activists are brought into court they are kept behind bulletproof glass, “gripped by security” and handcuffed.

“In Germany, if you’re a neo-Nazi and you’ve murdered 11 people, you sit at a table with your lawyer. If you’re a member of a terrorist group, chances are you’ll be sitting at a table with a lawyer. If you support Palestine and carried out some property damage, it seems that you’re considered more of a threat to others than any of those people.”

“That says to me that this is political. It’s not about proportionality, about what they did. It’s about Germany wanting to send out a statement.”

She said they are only allowed two 30-minute visits each month and cannot speak about the case.

Tatlow-Devally is “strong” she said, however, and “managing to keep their mood up”.

In a statement, the Department of Affairs said on Tuesday it was “aware of this case and has provided extensive consular assistance through its Consulate General in Munich and staff at headquarters, including through multiple prison visits by consular officials”.

“The Department continues to follow developments closely,” it said.

Eoin Doyle, who was travelling in the car, was pronounced dead last Thursday after the crash on a railway level-crossing at Kiltybo near Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo.

The boy’s father, Declan, was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Mourners at Eoin’s funeral on Tuesday at St Patrick’s Church, Cloonfad, heard how he was deeply loved by his family, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, and most especially by his twin sister, Saoirse.

His mother, Elaine Doyle, spoke movingly and lovingly of her “kindhearted, friendly, sports-loving” son.

“Rest in peace, our fallen, handsome boy, until we meet again,” she said.

“The loss of our beautiful boy has no positives at all, albeit that it highlights the importance of kindness to others in our daily lives.

“Eoin was kindhearted to family, friends and the family pets. He hated to see anyone upset or in trouble.

“It is very difficult to know how we go on from here. Our home has changed forever.”

Elaine Doyle said her son, who played underage football with local soccer club Cloonfad United, dreamt of one day of playing for Manchester United.

The Archbishop of Tuam, Francis Duffy, was among the concelebrants at the funeral, which was packed with mourners.

Eoin’s father, Declan, the driver of the car involved in crash, sat in a front pew.

On Eoin’s coffin there was a photograph of the Doyle family with the Sam Maguire trophy in Ballyhaunis following Mayo’s win in the All-Ireland SFC final in July.

His mother told mourners how, as a baby, Eoin had spent most of his time on someone’s shoulder and never slept in a cot.

“He always loved having someone to lie in with him to fall asleep every night and that continued until some time last year,” she said.

“I thought it would never end, but I would give anything now to another night to lie in with Eoin.”

She said her son had many loves in his life and sport was one of these. His dream was to play with Manchester United.

“And we never know, really whether that could have happened or not,” she said.

“He had his first training session the other night with the under-13 football team in Ballyhaunis.

“He was a bit reluctant and nervous to go.

“I didn’t want [him] to go and, really, he was pretty anxious about going, but when he was on his way home, Declan told me afterwards he was really excited about how well it had actually gone.”

Fr Stephen Farragher, the main celebrant, spoke of his deepest sympathy with Eoin’s parents Declan and Elaine, Eoin’s twin Saoirse, stepbrother Conor and both sets of grandparents, Pat and Marguerite Doyle and Ger and Mary Corcoran.

“This is a tragedy that touched the heart of a nation,” Fr Farragher said.

“We celebrate Eoin’s life, the joy he brought to those around him, the friendships he made ... the love that surrounded him every day.

“Today is a day of tears, but it is also a day of thanksgiving for the precious gift of Eoin’s life.”

Following the Mass, burial took place in Ballyhaunis Cemetery. – Additional reporting by Press Association

New figures from the Health Insurance Authority (HIA) point to a decrease of 1,663 people insured in the three months to the end of June, compared with the previous quarter.

While it represents a percentage decline of just 0.1 per cent, any sign of the market going into reverse is troubling, particularly when it is accompanied by a seemingly relentless series of price hikes from all the main providers.

“Health insurance continues to be important to almost half of the population,” HIA chief executive Brian Lee says.

“While the number of people with health insurance fell slightly during the quarter, it remains higher than a year ago,” he says, suggesting that the latest figures could indicate the market is entering a period of slower growth.

Dermot Goode of healthinsuranceireland.ie is more concerned, and suggests that if the latest figures do represent a slowdown it will be “a real concern” to individuals and to the broader market, as well as the health sector.

“The real concern now for the market is that we could be at a tipping point,” he says, pointing out that the fresh figures don’t include the “big increases coming everybody’s way from October”.

All told, half of the 2.5 million people currently with health insurance are set to renew their cover between December and the end of February, and virtually all of them will be facing price hikes of between 7 per cent and 15 per cent, with some outliers likely to be hit with price increases of close to 20 per cent early next year.

Dip in numbers of consumers with health insurance, watchdog data reveals

One of the reasons why price increases of nearly 20 per cent have not made headlines is the manner in which the providers have started managing their announcements.

Rather than rolling out one increase a year, they have been drip-feeding the bad news to consumers over 12 months, with some of the price increases announced averaging 3 per cent or less.

Taken in isolation, consumers might consider them manageable.

But then their renewal date arrives, and all the announced increases kick in at once for individual policyholders.

Companies also focus their announcements on averages, but averages only tell part of the story.

Goode says the increases coming down the tracks could be “anything from 7 per cent up to maybe 15 per cent, and I have even seen some plans going up by as much as 18 or 19 per cent”.

“We’re already seeing older members reducing their benefits to keep their cover affordable, and I think there’s a real risk now that we might see younger people either postpone their joining decisions or those that have done everything they can to bring their premiums down forced to start exiting the market.”

Irish Life urges redesign of health levy amid ‘unfair’ burden on less affluent

We have been here before.

In the wake of the economic crash in 2008, the number of people who could afford private cover between 2011 and 2015 fell.

The danger is not just for individuals. A decline in the number of people paying for health insurance hits the sector hard and could see prices climb even higher, forcing more people to relinquish their cover and putting more pressure on the public health sector.

“There is that risk at the moment. It’s only a risk and hopefully won’t be a reality, but there is a risk that the market has reached that tipping point and therefore it could start to contract, and that’s not in anybody’s interest,” says Goode.

The jet overran the runway while landing on Sunday.

It slammed into the van which was on airport property, careened through a fence, and then smashed into a vehicle on a city street.

Five other people were injured.

The pilot and co-pilot have been released from hospital, Miami-Dade county sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz said on Tuesday.

Two people remained in a critical condition and a third was in stable condition.

Cordero-Stutz said the deceased ranged in age from 47 to 75.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating the crash. One focus will be on the lack of a particular system to slow and stop speeding jets. Miami is not one of the 120 airports in the US with lightweight, crushable material at the end of runways that the Federal Aviation Administration says has saved about 500 lives.

Experts said even without a runway excursion system, Miami’s airport appears to be compliant with federal rules because it has a 1,000ft (305m) safety buffer at the end of its runways.

NTSB chairwoman Jennifer Homendy said on Monday her agency’s goal was to prevent tragedies, but runway excursions continued to happen even after the board had suggested installing the systems in the past.

“Our recommendations must be implemented or we’re going to be here again,” she said at a news conference.

Investigators recovered the flight data recorder and the information is being reviewed. Interviews with the pilot, co-pilot, air traffic controllers and others are being scheduled, Homendy said.

Amazon said in a statement that it is co-operating with the investigation and the company’s deepest sympathies go to the people killed and injured, and their families.

The five people killed were all in a van owned by Professional Ocean Service Corp, a company that cleans aircraft.

The company said it would not comment on the crash out of respect for the families who had lost loved ones.

“Our employees are far more than the people who work beside us each day, they are family, and they are deeply loved. Our hearts and prayers are with every employee and every family whose lives have been forever changed,” the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Amazon jet was landing after a two-hour flight from Puerto Rico as storms gathered around the Miami airport.

The NTSB said the plane barrelled roughly 1,300ft (396m) past the end of the runway.

The flight had been operated by 21 Air, a cargo carrier based in North Carolina.

Two of the four runways at the Miami airport remained closed on Tuesday, and Homendy said they will not be reopened until NTSB investigators gather all the information they need from the crash scene.

More than 225 flights were cancelled on Sunday and Monday, and hundreds more were delayed, officials said. – AP

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis attacked energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, in a major expansion of the ongoing conflict, sending Brent crude ​to near $99 (€85.24) a barrel earlier in the day.

The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed down 0.05 per cent at 649.60.

Dublin

The Iseq All-Share index rose 1.1 per cent to 14,536.90, with nutrition-related companies standing out as strong spots. Kerry Group was in demand, rising 2.4 per cent to €88.70. Glanbia gained 2 per cent to €22.

Irish Continental Group (ICG) inched 0.5 per cent higher to €7.42 as investors eyed an all-important extraordinary general meeting (EGM) on Thursday on a management buyout bid. Still, the stock continues to trade below the €8-a-share offer on the table from management.

Healthcare services group Uniphar lost 1.2 per cent to close at €4.13 as a solid set of interim results, in line with what was flagged in a trading statement in July, provided little to excite investors.

Davy analysts, who have upgraded their full-year earnings forecasts for the company five times since the start of last year, said they were leaving their forecasts unchanged for now.

London

London’s benchmark FTSE 100 ended the session 0.1 per cent lower, with gains in commodity-linked shares helping offset broader market weakness, as a week packed ‌with economic data worldwide got under way.

Energy stocks in London rose, with BP and ⁠Shell up 0.68 per cent and 0.52 per cent, respectively.

Miners Antofagasta and Glencore gained 4.7 per cent and 4.2 per cent ‌as ‌copper ​prices hit a record high.

Pharma stocks were the biggest drags, with medical products maker ⁠Smith+Nephew down 3.6 per cent and ​index heavyweight AstraZeneca sliding 1.4 per cent as the Novartis setback weighed on sentiment.

Dunelm tumbled 14.3 per cent after the homeware retailer issued a profit warning ‌for 2027, citing hot summer weather.

Europe

Novartis plunged 10.9 per cent after it said ⁠late-stage testing of a drug for myotonic dystrophy failed to meet its primary endpoint. The disappointment follows ‌another ‌closely watched ​setback announced on Monday, when its experimental cholesterol drug pelacarsen failed in a late-stage trial.

However, Swiss generic drugs company Sandoz added 4.5 per cent saying it aims to more than double net sales from ​2025 to 2035.

Poste Italiane sweetened its takeover offer for Telecom Italia as the ​state-controlled company seeks to secure control of Italy’s former phone monopoly. Shares of Poste edged 0.5 per cent higher, while Telecom Italia jumped 2.9 per cent.

Investors widely expect the European Central Bank to ‌raise interest rates by 25 basis ⁠points on Thursday, while attention is also turning to US inflation data due later this week. The inflation report follows a stronger-than-expected US jobs reading that reinforced bets on another Federal Reserve ‌rate hike this month.

Among ​other movers, Kion Group rose 6.8 per cent after Citigroup upgraded the German forklift maker to a buy, citing a potential turning point in the industrial-truck ​cycle.

New York

The major US stock indexes were lower in early afternoon trading as fresh hostilities in the Middle East pushed oil prices higher, while markets await inflation data due later this week.

The declines follow a rollercoaster stretch that saw investors ​rushing to readjust rate-hike expectations after commentary from Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller and a stronger-than-expected jobs report.

Nvidia and Microsoft were lower, as was Apple, a day before an event ​at which the iPhone market is expected to unveil its latest products under new chief executive John Ternus.

Chipmakers rose, helped by optimism around artificial intelligence (AI). Qualcomm was further helped as it struck a deal with Amazon ​to develop custom AI chips. – Additional reporting, Reuters

In an unusual scene, Hull, who is crucial to Europe’s quest to reclaim the Solheim Cup from the United States this week, drove off alone at Bernardus Golf and caught up with her team-mates after arriving on the 1st tee minutes behind them. In a clip that gained traction, Hull appeared to jokingly blame “drinks” from the night before. The English golfer did, however, seem to point towards her caddie at the time.

When asked about Hull’s delayed arrival, the European vice-captain Mel Reid slightly strangely focused firstly on the online speculation. “It is a completely false story,” said Reid. “Charley Hull was the first one to bed last night at eight o’clock, and the first one on the bus this morning. She doesn’t even drink. So that is a completely false story that has been misquoted.

“She was late to the tee because I was responsible for her, so I will take a little bit of responsibility for that. She just thought her tee time was a little bit later, and trying to drag Charley Hull off the range is a feat in any tournament, especially a Solheim Cup.”

When it was pointed out to Reid that many observers were unaware of the “false story” anyway, she added: “I kind of want to shut this down before people start talking about it. She was late because one, I couldn’t drag her off the range and two, she thought her tee time was five minutes later.”

There is rarely a dull moment around Hull. Her participation in the recent Women’s Open was overshadowed by a prank she played out on her caddie. Alongside Lottie Woad, she is one of two members of the world’s top 10 in the European side.

Hull’s individualism is one of her most endearing qualities. Anna Nordqvist, the European captain, denied that was in any way a problem but did concede Hull was given permission to arrive in the Netherlands later than her team-mates.

“It has been really nice to see how much Charley has started to embrace the whole Solheim Cup atmosphere,” said Nordqvist. “It is nice to see how excited she is. I flew in on Saturday, some of the girls flew in on Sunday. For Charley, we decided she was going to be better off preparing at home in England so she flew in last night.

“I was on the 1st tee this morning, I told the other three girls to go. It takes a good five or 10 minutes to get out there so I told them Charley would just catch up because we knew she was on her way.” – Guardian

“Jesus, my intentions were good with the staff,” the businessman told the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) on Tuesday.

Darren Feehan said he suffered “horrific” financial losses after taking over a public house in Celbridge when its former operator was about to shut down the business in April 2025.

The worker, Mary O’Brien, said she “never received any holiday pay” and was “let go with three days’ notice” in August 2025, after 11 months work at the pub.

She told the WRC she was seeking 199.2 hours’ accrued holiday pay, as that was the limit of the WRC’s jurisdiction in the case.

However, she said she ought to have received 620 hours’ holiday pay over the course of her employment under two different employers at the pub, first the Mucky Duck Ltd, and then with Feehan’s company, following a transfer of undertakings.

Feehan’s firm, Darren Feehan Bars Ltd, held the pub licence under the trading name “Feehan’s of Celbridge”, according to official records.

He told the WRC his firm took over in April last year, but then shut down the establishment four months later at the end of August.

“I’ve accrued losses of €192,000 in the space of four months, which is kind of horrific. Jesus, I wish Mary well, nothing personal to Mary, I hope she gets what she’s owed,” Feehan said.

“The company’s about to be struck off. There’s no assets,” he said. “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there that’s left. Everything was bled out of the company,” the businessman continued.

“I took the whole lot,” he said of the takeover. “All I can say is, the way it was presented to me wasn’t the way it turned out to be, and there was a lot more at play.

“I can’t say too much with the media present. You don’t lose €192,000 in four months in a public house without something being horrendously wrong,” he said.

He said he had “suffered a lot personally” due to what happened in the business. “I’ve suffered enough with it personally. I’ve nothing,” he added.

He said his pub company was “just about to be struck off” as it had not traded for over a year.

“The company owes me €192,000 personally. There’s more chance of an eagle flying in the window,” he said. “The banking’s wound up, the Revenue’s wound up, there’s only me in it waiting for the strike-off,” he said.

He went on to say he had been through “absolute hell”, and expressed concern about the WRC’s decision on O’Brien’s statutory complaint being registered as a judgment against the company.

“If that’s the case, Jesus Christ, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Feehan said.

Adjudication officer Andrew Heavey said the company might owe O’Brien money in relation to her statutory complaints, “but I imagine the entity has other creditors”.

“Yes, which obviously can’t be fulfilled,” Feehan said.

“Basically, Ms O’Brien will just become one of those creditors,” Heavey said.

O’Brien said she was “sorry” for Feehan. Heavey then closed the hearing.

Bryan Masson, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer, about 15km west of Nice, said the pair appeared to have been “well equipped and well informed” about the museum, which houses works by the French impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir in his former home.

The theft early on Tuesday is the latest in a string of recent museum heists in France and across Europe, including the brazen break-in at the Louvre in Paris last October, when thieves stole crown jewellery worth €88 million including tiaras, a brooch, necklaces and earrings.

Masson told the local broadcaster Ici Azur that the two thieves sliced through the museum garden fence with an electric knife or metal saw, entered the building through the ground floor, and then cut the clips securing the artwork frames.

Police arrived about five minutes after the museum’s alarm system went off at 5.48am, Masson said, which “forced the burglars to flee in haste and helped limit the scale of the theft”.

Two of the four works taken were abandoned in the museum gardens during the getaway, the mayor, a member of the far-right National Rally (RN), said. His office estimated the value of the stolen works at €9 million.

The two stolen paintings were Young Woman ‌at the Well and Portrait of Madame Colonna Romano. Both were on loan from the Musée d’Orsay, in Paris. “They’re Renoirs ... you cannot sell them like that,” Masson said.

The paintings the thieves abandoned were both portraits: Portrait of Madame Pichon, and Coco Reading, a portrayal of Renoir’s young son Claude.

The Renoir Museum was established in 1960 in the mansion where the painter ‌died aged 78 in 1919. It houses about a dozen of his paintings and about 40 sculptures, as well as photos, furniture and objects including his easel and wheelchair.

Masson called for greater security for museums around France. “This incident should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums, which now face a new form of organised crime targeting works of art,” the mayor said.

An art theft expert, James Ratcliffe of the Art Loss Register, said thieves were increasingly targeting valuable artefacts. “Sadly, without further funding to improve museum security, we are likely to see an increase in the number of museum thefts,” he said.

“Each time thefts occur, it draws yet more attention to the perception of these museums as relatively easy targets. That can only encourage some criminals to consider them as straightforward places to steal from,” he told the Associated Press.

Europol, the pan-European police organisation, said last month robberies at European museums were becoming increasingly violent, with some thieves brandishing guns, assaulting staff and using sledgehammers, axes and even explosives.

The Europol report suggested specialist property crime or art theft gangs, who usually avoid violence, were being replaced by “individuals who often have histories of involvement in other types of crime”, who were recruited through social media.

The four suspected Louvre robbers have been arrested, but the jewels they allegedly grabbed in the seven-minute heist have not been found. Two of the suspects have reportedly told police the mastermind behind the heist was disappointed by the haul and thought “they could have taken more”.

Italian police recently recovered paintings by Renoir, Cézanne and Matisse worth more than €10 million stolen from a museum in March. However, last month four of the most important works by the Renaissance master Antonello da Messina were stolen from a museum in the Sicilian port city of Messina. – Guardian

Miliband accused “settler terrorists” of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” and the government of Binyamin Netanyahu of attempting to undermine the possibility of a two-state solution by authorising a new settlement project.

The decision is the clearest shift in British foreign policy since Andy Burnham became prime minister.

It was co-ordinated with Canada and France, whose foreign ministers issued a joint statement with the UK promising “national measures” to ban trade in settlement goods, and supporting other nations that have done so, too.

“Today marks the beginning of a new approach,” Miliband told the House of Commons, adding that the British government agreed that there has been ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank. “All too often the Israeli government has turned a blind eye to this and worse,” he said.

Milliband said he made the announcement as a “proud British Jew” who was “unwavering” in his support for the state of Israel. He added, however, that the UK had concluded that the occupation was unlawful in line with a ruling of the International Court of Justice.

The development sparked a furious response from Israel which announced a series of countermeasures include closing the British consulate in Jerusalem; ending British activity to train Palestinian security forces; and barring entry to British lawmakers and citizens who reject Israel’s existence, including MPs Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and Hannah Spencer.

Calling the accusations made by Miliband “outrageous and false”, foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar described the UK’s sanctions on settlements as “blatant interference” in Israel’s upcoming election.

He accused Britain of ignoring “Palestinian terrorism” and said the sanctions would also directly harm Palestinians, including tens of thousands who work in Israeli settlements.

Sa’ar said the British government’s measures against Israel over the past two years – including sanctions on ministers and barring Israel from participating in a defence exhibition – had contributed to rising anti-Semitism in the UK.

Why Andy Burnham is taking on Israel over the West Bank

Israel had been bracing itself for the British foreign policy reset but was taken by surprise when the foreign ministers of Ireland, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden joined Britain on Tuesday, issuing a joint statement on the two-state solution.

“The government of Israel must immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence and investigate allegations against Israeli forces,” the foreign ministers’ statement said.

The countries said they intended to “impose restrictions on trade with settlements considered illegal under international law.”

Sa’ar warned that Israel will respond if other countries follow the British example and introduce sanctions.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid called the British decision a “serious mistake”, saying it would strengthen extremist voices in Israel in advance of next month’s election and “give encouragement to Hamas and the terrorist organisations”.

But he also criticised the Netanyahu government for being caught by surprise.

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“For a week, the government has been preparing us for sanctions from Britain, and then it turns out there are another 10 important countries that have joined it and no one knew. Didn’t they wake him up?” he said, in a reference to Netanyahu’s claim that security officials did not wake him up on the morning of the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack on southern Israel.

Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir urged Netanyahu to recognise Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands and sanction Britain over its “occupation” while far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the expulsion of Britain’s ambassador to Israel.

The human rights watchdog Peace Now welcomed the British move, saying the settlements endanger Israel’s future.

“It is good that Britain and other countries make the necessary distinction between sovereign Israel and the settlement and outpost enterprise beyond the green line and are acting against annexation and settler terrorism.”

O’Brien is to assist lead coach John Cotter and assistant Mark Connors when Ireland play the USA, the Netherlands and Norway in Malaga, although he is expected to return to senior coaching before the Under-17 World Cup in November.

Ireland have been drawn with Brazil, Costa Rica and Tanzania in Group I of the 48-team tournament that kicks off in Doha on November 21st.

“Joey brings unbelievable experience,” said FAI technical director Shane Robinson, who is currently doing his Uefa pro licence alongside O’Brien.

“I’ve listened to him talk about his journey from Lourdes Celtic all the way to playing for his country, and about the people he has worked with, who help shape you as a player and person. Like how Sam Allardyce was ahead of his time [at Bolton Wanderers]. We want people like Joey in our system to influence the players.”

Unlike some of the FAI’s previous connections with former internationals learning their trade in coaching, O’Brien is on a paid contract.

“Nobody can volunteer any more,” said Robinson. “They all have casual contracts.”

O’Brien will coach teenage talents like St Patrick’s Athletic midfielder Ryan Sheridan and Josh O’Dwyer, who recently joined Austrian club FC Liefering from Shamrock Rovers.

Rory Finneran and Jaden Umeh, who both featured at last year’s Under-17 World Cup, were capped this summer by Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson.

“Underneath Rory and Jaden there are really good players coming up,” said Cotter. “Ryan Sheridan just played 120 minutes in the (FAI) cup against Bohs.

“Rory and Jaden are ready now, others will develop later. It would be dismissive of me to say last year was a stronger group as there are a lot of really good players with potential.

“Cillian Murphy has had an excellent year in the First Division [for Cork City], Richard Ferizaj is another playing first-team minutes [at Bray Wanderers], and Victor Ozhianvuna has been excellent for Shamrock Rovers but unfortunately he is injured at the minute.”

Arsenal-bound Ozhianvuna is a doubt for a second World Cup at under-17 level as he has not featured for Rovers since May.

Robinson and Cotter were speaking to the media in Abbotstown on Tuesday alongside Ireland under-19 women’s coach Chelsea Noonan and under-19 men’s coach Noel Hunt, who returned to Ireland after losing his job as Reading manager last year.

Robinson is striving to enhance access to professional coaching for Ireland’s high-potential footballers, with 195 boys and 138 girls taking part in camps across eight weeks this summer.

The FAI’s new coaching structure is more fluid than its previous iteration as coaches are assessed by Robinson and FAI director of football John Martin before being given a new group or remaining with their current crop up the age grades.

“Previously it was set roles,” Robinson added. “There was no pathway for a coach to be promoted [but there is now].”

Landlords, company directors and PAYE employees also made the Revenue’s latest list of tax defaulters.

The largest settlement fell on Allen Recruitment Consulting Limited, a recruitment agency in liquidation with an address on Pembroke Street Upper in Dublin 2 that primarily worked with multinational firms, particularly in the tech industry.

It made a settlement of €4.15 million to Revenue as a result of its “under-declaration” of tax and VAT, the document shows. Within this total sum was just under €2.5 million in unpaid tax, €1.1 million of interest and €620,000 in penalties. The entirety of this remains unpaid, Revenue said.

Provisional liquidators were appointed by the High Court in November after the business fell into difficulty. An expansion into seven countries across Europe proved unsuccessful and the money loaned to do so was unrecoverable, the court heard.

Recent filings from the company include a liquidator’s statement from August 17th that shows Allen Recruitment Consulting paid Revenue €50,628 between December 2025 and March 2026 for VAT refunds.

The second-largest settlement – at €1.73 million – was owed by Central Fusion Limited, a Belfast-based company that supplies catering and concession stands for events across Ireland and Britain.

It has an address on the Queen’s Road. The company owed some €820,000 in tax, €400,000 in interest and just over €500,000 in penalties to Revenue. A “compulsory liquidation” petition for the company has been lodged by the British tax authorities in a Belfast court, which is due to be heard next Thursday.

A printing services provider called 3:rock, which specialises in brand signage, owed Revenue €1.27 million for its under-declaration of tax and VAT. Established in 1993, it now has an address in the Clondalkin Industrial Estate.

Michelle Lawlor, a landlord with an address on Glasnevin Avenue in Dublin 11, owed Revenue €1.29 million and €107,000 of this settlement has been paid. The settlement was a result of a Revenue investigation case, the State tax body said, for an under-declaration of income tax.

The remaining 16 parties on the defaulters list owed more than €3 million between them, with settlements in their name ranging from €85,000 to €560,000.

Among them was Brian Harrison, a medical doctor with an address on Claremont Road in Dublin 18, who owed Revenue just over €100,000 for the under-declaration of income tax.

He established HiTech Health, which manufactures cell and gene therapies, more than a decade ago. Company filings for the financial year that ended on December 31st, 2024, show the remuneration shared between the companies two directors, Brian and Paula Harrison, was slightly under €180,000. The company reported €835,000 in profit that year.

David Ho, with an address in Saint Aidan’s Drive in Goatstown, Dublin 14, a retired travel agent who operated the Sino Irish Travel Club, which had an office on Morehampton Road in Donnybrook, Dublin 4, owed Revenue just under €500,000 for under-declaration of income tax. None of this has been repaid, Revenue said.

Landlord and taxi-driver Stephen Preston of Moyclare Park in Baldoyle, Dublin 13, owed €120,00 for non-declaration of VAT and under-declaration of income tax, while farmer Michael Corrigan of Kinnity in Birr, Co Offaly owed €161,000 for non-declaration of capital acquisition tax.

In a statement, Revenue said: “These published settlements reflect only a portion of all Revenue Compliance Interventions. In the three month period to 30 June 2026, a total of 18,648 Revenue Compliance Interventions were settled resulting in a total yield of €129,754,243.”