President Michael D Higgins will be urged to take the unprecedented step of calling a referendum if the Irish Government rules against a vote on the new European treaty. Amid claims Taoiseach Enda Kenny and his EU counterparts crafted the pact to avoid the electorate, 16 left-wing TDs vowed to lobby the former Labour man if a public vote is ruled out.
Digital TV provider Sky has announced the creation of 800 jobs in Dublin. The company will open a customer contact centre in Burlington Plaza in the city centre in August. Recruitment is to start immediately and the positions are expected to be filled over the next two years.
Britain’s Conservative Party will set up a new party in Northern Ireland to deliver “mainstream, national politics”, it has been confirmed. Conservative Party co-chairman Andrew Feldman announced that the party had approved plans for the formation of the new Conservative and Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.
Some 25 EU nations have agreed upon a fiscal compact to bolster the euro by toughening the bloc’s budgetary rules. The UK and the Czech Republic are the only two members that will not sign up to the German-inspired pact.
Events have been held to mark the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Derry. Relatives of the victims attended a memorial service at a monument in Derry’s Bogside.
Stormont First Minister Peter Robinson has attended his first gaelic football match. In a significant development for community relations in Northern Ireland, he joined deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness at the McKenna Cup final.
Ireland’s economic crisis was caused by people’s mad borrowing, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has told the Davos global gathering. In a discussion on ways out of the country’s worst recession on record, Mr Kenny told the summit in the Swiss Alps that easy credit spawned greed.
The only man on the planet to run seven marathons in less than seven days on the seven continents is aiming to go one better by smashing the five-day barrier. Irish ultra runner Richard Donovan starts his epic quest in the extremes of Antarctica running the first 26 mile leg in -20C at the Russian Novo science base next Wednesday.
A killer infection that claimed the lives of three babies in a Belfast hospital has been traced to taps in the neo-natal unit, Northern Ireland’s health minister said. All the taps and connected pipe work in the room at the Royal Jubilee Maternity Hospital are to be removed as experts try to eradicate all traces of the pseudomonas bacteria, Edwin Poots told the Stormont Assembly.
A top Irish Air Corps flight instructor crashed into a mountainside with his trainee cadet after suffering disorientation, an investigation has found. Captain Derek Furniss, 32, and Cadet David Jevens, 22, died when their two-seater light aircraft went down in Connemara’s remote Crumlin Valley in October 2009.
