EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning cup of coffee…
1.#REFERENDUM Minister Pat Rabbitte is calling for a re-run of the referendum on parliamentary inquiries, the Irish Times reports today. It says Minister Rabbitte said that the wording of the amendment – which was rejected in October – would probably need to be modified. He said it would give a parliamentary committee greater powers to investigate the banking collapse.
2.#CREDIT UNIONS A new survey by the Irish League of Credit Unions has shown that homeowners are struggling to make ends meet, with 40 per cent having to borrow money to pay bills, said RTÉ. It also showed that more than 1.8m people are left with €100 or less each month.
3.#ROAD CRASH Investigations continue into the car crash which caused the death of an Irish one-year old in Devon. His parents, Elber and Con Twomey, are fighting for their lives in hospital. The Irish Examiner reports that the driver of the other car may have been trying to take his own life.
4.#PHOENIX PARK A 23-year-old man charged in connection with stabbings at the Swedish House Mafia concert in the Phoenix Park on Sunday will appear before Dublin District Court today.
5.#ULSTER BANK The Central Bank has said that it can’t guarantee that the chaos at Ulster Bank won’t happen at other lenders in the future. Bernard Sheridan, director of consumer protection at Central Bank, told RTÉ’s This Week that officials are currently “not satisfied” about the reasons behind the Ulster Bank software failure.
6.#HOSPITAL FOOD Hospitals are spending around €2 on meals for patients, according to an investigation by the Irish Examiner today. The HSE said this was due to a cost-saving exercise but it aims to achieve the “highest standards in what we buy”. Hospital catering has been cut by 20 per cent – from €30.5m in 2008 to €24m in 2011.
7.#SYRIA President of Syria, Bashir Assad, has maintained that the United States is “part of the conflict. They offer the umbrella and political support to those gangs to… destabilise Syria”. He made the comments in an interview with German public broadcaster ARD yesterday. Meanwhile, Kofi Annan has arrived in Syria after admitting that his peace plan has so far failed to end nearly 16 months of carnage.
8.#BRUSSELS Minister Michael Noonan will travel to Brussels today for a meeting of finance ministers, where he is expected to ask for changes to bring about a 40 per cent cut in Irish debt figures, says the Irish Examiner. The euro dropped to its lowest level in two years this weekend.
9.#MALWARE A computer virus may cause thousands of computers to be knocked offline today after hackers infected up to four million computers with the DNSChanger Trojan. The FBI is investigating the case and shut down temporary servers at 4am Irish time. You can check your computer to see if it was affected.
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