Other stories in brief.
HSE ban on recruitment to continue
The ban on recruitment imposed by the Health Service Executive at the beginning of September is to continue for another month at least, writes Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent.
Members of the HSE management team met yesterday to review the ban and decided it should continue until the end of November, at which point it will be reviewed again.
It is now thought likely the ban, which has disrupted some services, will continue until the end of the year.
The ban was enforced in a bid to cut costs. The HSE had overspent its budget by €230 million at the end of August.
A HSE spokesman said last night that despite the ban on recruitment, a group was meeting weekly to look at any critical posts which should be exempted from it.
He said up to 300 posts had been exempted to date and these were almost exclusively of frontline staff such as doctors, nurses and ambulance personnel.
Inquest hears of low oxygen levels
A diver who died during a commercial operation to recover a yacht that had sunk in Dublin Bay had only a residual amount of oxygen in his tank when he made the fatal dive, an inquest heard yesterday.
Damien Byrne (24), Pottery Road, Dún Laoghaire, died on July 3rd, 2004, during an operation to recover a dragon class yacht which sank following a collision earlier that day, Dublin City Coroner's Court heard.
Mr Byrne, who was sub- contracted to North East Diving Services for the operation, had between 50 and 60 bars of oxygen in his tank when he made the final dive of the day.
Garda David Finn of the Garda Water Unit told the inquest that an oxygen level of 50 bars was an indication to divers that it was time to leave the water.
Coroner Dr Brian Farrell said it was impossible to know what happened, "but we know Damien Byrne went down for the last dive on a reserve tank. This has to be a key factor in what happened". The court heard that a Diving at Work Bill is before the Oireachtas and the jury recommended that the Bill be expedited.
Man appeals his extradition to US
An Irish man has lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court against a decision to extradite him to the United States where he is wanted for sexually assaulting a minor during the 1990s.
The High Court last month ordered the extradition to the US of Simon Murphy (53), Arthurstown, New Ross, Co Wexford. He is wanted in New York where in 1998 a guilty plea was made on his behalf to one count of sexual assault of a boy less than 11 years old in the mid-1990s.
Mr Murphy was granted bail in the High Court yesterday pending the outcome of the appeal.
He claims he felt coerced into admitting to a charge of sexual assault as part of a plea-bargaining process.
Settlement in Moneypoint
The 200 Polish workers at Moneypoint power station in Co Clare have settled their dispute with the ESB after being offered new jobs at the site. The workers had faced the loss of their jobs after their Polish subcontractor went into liquidation.
Yesterday, it was announced all of the workers involved would be offered jobs at the Moneypoint site.
Eamon Devoy, of the Technical Engineering and Electrical Union, said: "There are jobs available for all of our members who want them and we expect the uptake to be very high."
Fire in old Savage Smyth factory
Six units of the Dublin Fire Brigade were called to a blaze at a former lemonade factory in south Dublin yesterday. Residents in the area of the old Savage Smyth factory at Keeper Road, Crumlin were temporarily evacuated.