In The News

In the entire country there are just 26 places for vulnerable children in need of the highest level of specialist care and supervision that Tusla is charged with providing.

And only 15 of these beds are currently available.

What this means is that when the child and family agency petitions the courts to have a vulnerable and in-danger child taken into its special care, it then has to admit to the judge that it has no beds available.

Judges are increasingly expressing their frustration and exasperation at this situation – and at the patchwork of...

The world is in oil shock. Since the US and Israel launched its war on Iran one month ago, the impact on the rest of the world has been felt in ever-rising energy prices.

Iran controls – and has mostly closed – the Strait of Hormuz through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply usually passes.

There is no guarantee in this uncertain war when oil supplies will start flowing again as normal.

History shows that oil shocks are followed by recessions says economist, writer and Irish Times columnist David McWilliams.

But...

Please note, this episode contains discussion of suicide and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

Last Thursday, a Spanish woman called Noelia Castillo, died by euthanasia at the age of 25. The case made headlines in Spain and beyond, because the young woman had spent the previous two years fighting a legal battle against her father, over her right to end her life.

The case went all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, but last week, the court eventually rejected her father's request for the euthanasia to be put on hold.<...

Dublin City Council is keeping up the pressure on the Government to legislate for a tourist tax administered by local authorities.

The level of the tax, also called a bed levy, city tax or accommodation tax, has not been pinned down but €5 per room, per night has been mooted. There could be a sliding scale depending on the standard of accommodation.

With 21 out of 27 EU member states having such a tax, why is Ireland stubbornly resistant to what would be a boost to local authority coffers?

Dublin editor Olivia Kelly ex...

The scale of the fake medicines in Ireland has been made worryingly clear with the latest figures from the State’s drugs watchdog.

The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) seized more than 750,000 units of illegal and fake medicines over the course of 2025.

As has been in the case in previous years, anabolic steroids top the list of fake imported drugs, with erectile dysfunction medication next.

But what has alarmed the watchdog is the 180 per cent rise in individual consignments year on year – people going online and ordering these bogus products – with a...

Clifton Collins (55) had a thriving business growing cannabis in rented houses around the country.

The Crumlin man and expert beekeeper was known for his award-winning honey but his real earner was the fortune he made from years of dealing drugs.

He operated under the radar so when gardaí came across him parked in the Wicklow Mountains one night, they had no idea their search would eventually result in of the most lucrative seizures in the history of the Criminal Assets Bureau.

Collins had amassed 6,000 bitcoin around 2010. The problem for the G...

Stephen McCullagh (36) thought he had created a cast iron alibi for himself when he planned the murder of his pregnant girlfriend Natalie McNally (32) in December 2022.

An avid gamer he was, he claimed, at home playing a video game live at the time she was killed. But as the PSNI was able to prove, he had in fact pre-recorded hours of himself playing the game. Police found that when he hit “play”, he set off to his girlfriend's house in Armagh where he savagely murdered her.

The case against McCullagh was built on circumstantial evid...

A new investigation has shown the supply chain link between Russian missiles – ones used to deadly effect in Ukraine – and a factory in Limerick.

Aughinish Alumina was built near the Shannon Estuary in the 1980s to make alumina using raw bauxite from Guinea and Brazil.

A major employer in the area, it changed hands in 2006 when it was bought by a company called Rusal which at the time was controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaskaa.

It has become one of the Europe’s biggest sources of the vital raw material. Alumin...

The newly-formed Women’s Coalition on Immigration is calling on the Government to publish crime statistics broken down by country of origin and ethnicity.

It argues – without supporting evidence – that there is a link between the increase in reported incidents of sexual violence against women in Ireland and immigration.

The coalition was established in December by The Countess, a campaigning group led by barrister Laoise de Brún.

It was initially set up in 2020 to campaign against “gender identity politics”.

But why has it pivoted from trans issues to i...

Three victims of the IRA’s bombing campaign in Britain have spent the past four years building a legal case in an attempt to prove that Gerry Adams was a leading member of the IRA during the Troubles.

The former Sinn Féin leader spent two days in the witness box in London, maintaining he was never a member of the republican paramilitary organisation responsible for the injuries of John Clark in the Old Bailey explosion in 1973, Jonathan Ganesh at Canary Wharf in 1996 and Barry Laycock a few months later in Manchester.

The 77-ye...

When Michael and Rose Murray were refused planning permission for a substantial dormer bungalow in 2006 on land they owned in Co Meath, they went ahead with more ambitious plans anyway. They built a detached house that was twice the size of the one denied permission at scenic Faughan Hill. Shortly after they moved in, a complaint to Meath Co Council kick-started an epic legal battle that went all the way to the Supreme Court as the couple sought, to no avail over two decades, to be granted retrospective planning permission for their house. The process culminated this week with...

If you got an invoice you’d been waiting for from your builder for work done, you’d get ready to pay it, wouldn’t you?

And if, a couple minutes after that, you got another invoice from the builder saying that actually he’d made a mistake and he’d given you the wrong bank details, you’d think nothing of it and proceed to pay.

Well that’s exactly what the reader who contacts our consumer affairs correspondent Conor Pope did. She sent the requested €30,000 to her builder and thought nothing more of it – until a...

To keep Irish alive as a language for the modern world, new words are added all the time.

Bingewatch (craosfhéachaint), cryptocurrency (criptea-airgeadra), influencer (tionchairí ar líne) and mansplaining (fearmhíniú) are among the relatively recent English words that now have Irish translations.

It's great for communication, but who decides on these new translations – and how?

Irish Language Editor Éanna Ó Caollaí, writer Alan Titley and Cormac Breathnach from Focloir.ie are here to explain how new Irish words are born. This podcast is available in English and Irish. 

Hosted...

De réir mar a thagann coincheapa agus téarmaí nua chun cinn sa saol, tagann focail nua chun cinn sa chaint mar chur síos orthu.  Ar nós gach pobal teanga eile, forbraíonn focail, nathanna agus téarmaíocht go nádúrtha i bpobal labhartha na Gaeilge. Uaireanta eile, nuair a thagann téarmaí iasachta isteach sa ghnáthchaint, cumtar focail nua Gaeilge mar chur síos orthu le cur le stór na bhfocal in focloir.ie.

Is samplaí iad Bingewatch, cryptocurrency, influencer agus mansplaining de fhocail nua a tháinig chun cinn sa Bhéarl...

As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine enters its fifth year, day-to-day life has become wearyingly normal.

Having endured one of the coldest winters on record – mostly without electricity because of Russia’s bombing of power plants – the grinding misery of trying to survive for Ukranians goes on.

The devastation in the cities targeted by Russia is clear to see and cost in lives immense. Civilians are paying a massive price: official figures note that 55,000 Ukranians have been killed on the battlefield and the total death toll could be as high as 200,000 people. It is th...

Israeli air strikes on Lebanon have been relentless and growing in ferocity since the US and Israel launched its war against Iran on February 28th.

Saying it is targeting Hizbullah, the Iran-backed militia that essentially functions as a state-within-a state in Lebanon, Israel issues evacuation orders to residents in advance of its missile attacks. That has prompted a mass displacement of people seeking safety.

On Wednesday night, air strikes hit the Beirut seafront killing eight people and injuring more than 30 displaced people; families who had fled their homes on Israeli instructions and who...

News that Kinahan cartel founder Christy Kinahan snr and his sons, Daniel and Christopher jnr, have not left the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for four years offers real insight into how small their world has become.

Garda sources say that finding the Kinahans has never been the problem for the teams of detectives investigating them. What has proved difficult is building a case against the men who are the reported leaders of one of the biggest drugs cartels in the world.

According to crime and security editor Conor Lally they are literally too...

In the first wave of attacks on Iran, a primary school was hit, with a reported death toll of 175, most of them young girls.

It is the deadliest known episode of civilian casualties since the US and Israel launched its war in the region on February 28th.

In the immediate aftermath, no side took responsibility and who is to blame has become a question that the Trump administration is being called upon to answer.

And its answers are confusing and evasive, including the president’s claim that the school was hit by Ir...

As the conflict in Iran continues and spreads, global markets are down and oil prices are soaring. So what impact could the conflict have on the global economy and on energy costs here in Ireland? Irish Times economics columnist Cliff Taylor explains what we know.

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In his new documentary Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars, director Mike Sheridan explores the profound influence of toxic discourse in the United States on the rest of the world – and in particular, Ireland.

Through interviews and examples he shows how, with the amplification of social media, legitimate grievance can bloom into conspiracist, and how easily performance, paranoia, and power intertwine.

As Irish Times reviewer Tara Brady notes, the film which “begins as a study of toxic discourse in the United States expands into a sobering excavation of recent unrest in Dublin. The...

AI is turning the recruitment process upside down and leading to a jobs market which can be frustrating and difficult to navigate.

So while it is easy to apply for a job online – multiple jobs even, in one go – it’s a harsh reality particularly for business or tech graduates looking for their first job that their achievement-filled CV won’t be read by a person.

Instead it will be put through an AI-powered predictive hiring tool designed to evaluate CVs.

In a blink it will find keywords related to many cat...

Within minutes of the war beginning on Saturday, allies Israel and the US had achieved a stated goal: Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed alongside his powerful inner circle. 

His death would, according to both US president Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, pave the way for regime change, allowing opposition forces in Tehran to rise up and take control. 

Iran retaliated with attacks on Israel, while Iranian drones have also hit countries across the Middle East. Hizbullah, an Iranian-backed militia, fired missiles into Israel in the early days of the war, and...

In late January, the Spanish government announced a mass legalisation scheme which will provide migrants with a one-year, renewable residency permit, allowing them to be hired legally.

Opening for applications next month, it will benefit about half a million people.

For socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez, the move is about the Spanish values of dignity, community and justice. It also makes the country an outlier in Europe.

So who are the migrants likely to benefit from the amnesty and why, at a time when its European neighbours are tightening t...

A Dublin man who admitted killing a young American nurse in Budapest in November 2024 will face trial in April. He has pleaded not guilty to murder, insisting her death was the result of an accident during consensual sex.

The 38-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, previously admitted to killing Mackenzie Michalski (31) during a sexual encounter and hiding her body.

At a preliminary hearing in February, the man’s lawyer made an application to have his client released with an electronic tag until the end of his trial. The court heard that hi...

US president Donald Trump came to power promising an end to foreign entanglements. Instead he has ramped up American aggression against its enemies. The weekend's attack that killed Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei along with regime leaders and hundreds of others, including civilians, was his most extreme move yet. But it was done without the constitutionally required approval of Congress, and with polls showing little public support. Washington correspondent Keith Duggan reports on what was behind US president Donald Trump's decision, how it is being received in the US and what happens next.

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Ireland is to buy hundreds of new armoured vehicles and artillery pieces from France, a move that will significantly expand the capabilities of the Irish Army to conduct on-island defence.

The deal is expected to be worth €600 million and is the biggest investment in Army equipment in the history of the State. It is one of several deals with French suppliers to provide a range of equipment and services with an estimated €2billion spend.

The coming years will see Ireland work in closer co-operation with our European neighbours on security matters.

Ir...

When gardaí raided the homes of 11 senior members of the Black Axe crime organisation this week they found more than they expected.

As well as data-crammed mobile phones and laptops, they found merchandise emblazoned with the logo of the international fraud and money laundering gang.

The caps and bags – the sort of memorabilia a golf club might offer – feature “Ireland” and also slogans such as “Ireland Zone, Stay Safe”.

The gang has a significant operation in Ireland, having been linked to the theft and laundering of €94 million since 2020. Gardaí have arrested 636 people in relati...

On Sunday, authorities in Mexico attempted to capture the notorious cartel boss known as “El Mencho”.

They tracked Nemesio Rubén Oseguera Cervantes down to a cabin in the western state of Jalisco – his stronghold – and he was fatally wounded in the raid. The firefight also killed several of his heavily-armed accomplices, including his likely successor.

He was head of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), known for trafficking vast quantities of fentanyl and cocaine into the US.

In 2025 it was designated a foreign terrorist organisation by Donald Trump‘s administrat...

Nancy Guthrie was last seen at her Tucson, Arizona, home on January 31st when her son-in-law dropped her off there after an evening at her daughter’s house nearby. She lived alone.

Just hours later it is believed she was abducted from her home, her disappearance reported by friends the following day when she failed to show up for a church service.

As the daughter of Savannah Guthrie, presenter of NBC’s Today show, she is well-known to audiences having appeared several times on screen.

Every step of the investigation by loca...

Former British prince Andrew's fall from grace continued last week with his arrest as part of an investigation into whether he abused power by sharing confidential information with his friend Jeffrey Epstein.

Up to now the scrutiny of Andrew's relationship with the notorious Epstein has focussed on allegations of sexual exploitation. But this affair has shifted the focus onto Andrew's conduct while working as a trade envoy for Britain. In that time he travelled the world at British taxpayers expense, promoting British business but also making plenty of connections that he would use to his own...

What started as a one-man play about the life and times of Gerry Hutch became a two-hander this week when, in a curtain-raising surprise, Hutch himself appears on stage to deliver a prologue.

Rex Ryan premiered his play The Monk – called after the widely used nick-name of his subject – last summer but for its second outing it moved to a much larger Dublin venue, The Ambassador, for a weeklong run.

Ryan, who produces, stars and directs The Monk is, says Irish Times crime and security editor Conor Lally, a powerful presence on stage.

The Geran-2 is a deadly weapon; a drone bomb that can be launched from thousands of kilometres away and yet hit its target with precision accuracy.

Low cost and easy to make, this winter it has become a key weapon in Russia’s armoury as it pummels Ukraine, causing hundreds of deaths and cutting off energy supply.

And a key component in the Geran-2 design is a chip manufactured years ago by Taoglas, which is headquartered in Enniscorthy, Co Wexford.

So how did it make its way into Russia’s arma...

The tip-off that led the Garda to begin a major search for the bodies of Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob is likely not new according to crime and security editor Conor Lally.

The piece of land on the border of counties Wicklow and Kildare has been in the Garda’s sights for many years but since the disappearance of the young women, missing since the 1990s, are now considered murders, ongoing reviews of the files bring new leads and new thinking on the investigation.

News on Monday that gardaí had begun an ext...

Belfast man James O’Neill, or Jim as he was known, led an unconventional life. He was according to his family a highly intelligent man in his 40s who lived nomadically, sometimes sleeping rough, moving between cities.

His body found was found in Dublin’s Phoenix Park in November 2023 but his parents, Paul and Ann O’Neill were not informed of their son’s death until 13 months later.

That’s because his body was not identified when he was found or during the postmortem despite the fact that he had nine forms of ID in the...

Ultra-processed foods are irresistible – they’re made that way. The food manufacturers that dominate our supermarket shelves are constantly looking for ways to make us buy (and that means eat) more. And to find cheaper ingredients.

But isn’t just about everything in our diet, apart from fresh fruit and vegetables, processed in some way? So why has ultra-processed food become the focus of so much concern and debate?

Nutritionist Sarah Keogh gives her view on what’s happening on our plates.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

Ho...

The Jeffrey Epstein files reveal the convicted child sex offender was fascinated by magicians, and detail a years-long relationship between Epstein and David Blaine as well as an FBI investigation into alleged sexual misconduct by David Copperfield.

Since the files were released by the US department of justice two weeks ago, Irish Times journalist Naomi O’Leary has been combing through the documents.

It is not, she says, an easy cache to navigate, with a clunky search function and opaque filing system.

However she has been able to find multiple em...

For Alexander Abnos, senior sports editor at the Guardian US “removing the US as World Cup host would be eminently sad – and entirely justified”.

The 2026 Fifa World Cup will be hosted this summer by Mexico, Canada and the US.

But the killings by Ice agents of US citizens and their intimidatory presence on city streets has been well reported globally which may make travelling fans nervous. And that’s if they get in at all: the US president Donald Trump has imposed travel bans on several countries – including Senegal and Ivory Coast which have qualified...

The Irish Times wants to hear listener feedback on our two news podcasts: In The News and Early Edition.

This survey is open to anyone who has listened to either In The News or Early Edition – whether you listen regularly, occasionally, or have listened in the past.

On Monday, British prime minister Keir Starmer survived a day that could have ended his political career. The momentum against him had grown from Westminster whispers to the leader of Scottish Labour Anas Sarwar coming straight out and calling for him to step down. 

The...

Teacher Enoch Burke has been in and out of court – and of prison – over his refusal to stay away from the school he once worked for.

His legal challenges have clogged up the courts, but he is also involved in another process – an appeal against his dismissal before a disciplinary appeal panel.

Last month that panel fell apart when two of its three members stood down. But the courts need the disciplinary panel to finish its work before Burke’s case can be resolved.

So how is this new delay being viewed b...

On the night of his second birthday in May 1991, Seamus Daniel Howell’s mother Lesley was murdered by his father, Colin Howell, and his father’s lover, Hazel Stewart.

The pair also killed Stewart’s husband Trevor Buchanan.

They left the two bodies in a garage in Castlerock, Co Derry, staging the scene to make it look as if they had taken their own lives.

The pair had committed the perfect murder so they could be together. And they had got away with it.

That is until 2009 when Colin...