Revenue has secured repayments of almost €1 billion in warehoused debt in the past two years, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has heard. The Debt Warehousing Scheme was introduced in May 2020 to support to businesses struggling at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The balance in the warehouse peaked …

A 30-year-old man who claimed he was suffering from a sleep disorder when he raped a former colleague has been jailed for six years. The man, who cannot be named to protect the identity of his victim had called expert evidence at his trial to support his contention that he …

A report into Toy Show the Musical has found that the recording of the show’s sponsorship money was “not in line with generally accepted accounting practices”. The Grant Thornton report, which was released today, found there was “no objective justification” for the way a figure of €75,000 was recorded which …

A total of 32,695 new homes were completed last year, up 10% on a year earlier, new data from the Central Statistics Office shows. It follows the completion of 10,289 dwellings in the final three months of the year, an increase of 13% on the same quarter in 2022. The …

The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum will give back gold and silver artefacts looted during colonial times from Ghana’s Asante royal court, the museums and the palace have said. The Ghana agreement for a long-term loan of the items comes as international momentum grows for museums and …

Ireland’s fourth National Biodiversity Plan is being launched and the Government is hoping that legislation and new funding will help spearhead significant changes. It comes as natural habitats such as native plant species and the marine environment are in decline. The first plan was launched in April 2002, and while …

A Japanese court has sentenced to death the perpetrator of a 2019 arson attack on an animation studio that killed 36 people, local media reported. The blaze that ripped through the studios of Kyoto Animation four-and-a-half years ago was Japan’s deadliest crime in decades, stunning the anime industry and its …

Up to 29,000 housing units are being held up in the planning process or in judicial reviews, a new report from construction consultancy Mitchell McDermott has found. That amounts to almost a full year of housing output at current levels of delivery. The report calculates that 20,683 residential units are …

The President of the Irish Association for Emergency Medicine has warned there is a “massive capacity issue” in hospitals, with the Emergency Department at Cork University Hospital this morning running at over 300% capacity. Emergency departments remain under pressure with scores of patients waiting for a bed. Yesterday, figures from …

Both sides in the public sector pay talks will return to the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) today. Unions, staff associations and Government representatives were invited by the WRC to give an update on their positions. Pay talks were adjourned without agreement in the early hours of 11 January. The Government …