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Dublin: 8 °C Thursday 23 May, 2013

The 9 at 9: Thursday

The nine stories you need to know as you start your day, including: search continues for baby missing from Belfast ferry, Obama supports gay marriage, and a possible smoking ban in cars…

Image: Ross Whitaker

EVERY MORNING, TheJournal.ie brings you the nine stories you need to know as you kick off your day.

1. #JOBS: Minister for Jobs Richard Bruton has welcomed the announcement from financial services company Aviva that the job losses at the company will be fewer than previously announced, and that it is to create an additional 220 jobs in Galway. The company had announced 770 job losses in October, but staff will be told later this morning that the figure is between 500 and 550, according to RTE.ie.

2. #MISSING: A search has resumed this morning for a baby who went overboard from a ferry in Belfast Lough yesterday evening. The baby is believed to have fallen from the ferry along with its mother, who was subsequently rescued and is being treated for suspected hypothermia. The ferry had arrived from Scotland and was preparing to dock at Belfast Harbour when the alarm was raised just after 6pm last night.

3. #OBAMA: Barack Obama has become the first US president to declare his full support for gay marriage, saying that it was “important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married”. In an interview on US television, Obama said he had hesitated on the issue because he had previously thought that civil unions were sufficient rather than full marriage rights.

4. #SMOKING BAN: The Health Minister has said he will not oppose a bill proposed by a group of Senators to ban smoking in cars when children are present. James Reilly raised some concerns in relation to the drafting of the bill but one of the Senators who proposed the bill said that these concerns could be worked out. The bill was brought before the Seanad last night by senators John Crown, Jillian van Turnhout and Mark Daly.

5. #FINE: A major hospital is facing a fine of up to €1.75 million over its failure to cut waiting list times. The new special delivery unit of the HSE is to introduce fines of €25,000 for every month a patient is waiting more than one year for a planned in-patient procedure, the Irish Examiner reports, in a bid to tackle Ireland’s waiting lists of around 200,000 people.

6. #DEATHS: Postmortems are due to be carried out today on the bodies of twin brothers discovered at a flat in Limerick city yesterday afternoon. The brothers, who were in their 20s, were discovered at the apartment on Steamboat Quay in the centre of the city.

7. #BULLYING: A garda who worked on the investigation into the death of Latvian woman Baiba Saulite who was shot dead outside her home in Dublin is suing Garda authorities for alleged bullying and harrassment. The Irish Examiner reports that Garda Declan Nyhan also alleges he was not paid while he was on sick leave. The claims are denied by Garda authorities.

8. #CRASH: The wreckage of a Russian Superjet plane which disappeared over Indonesia yesterday has been found at the side of a cliff near a dormant volcano. The jet, which was carrying 47 people, went off radar during a test flight yesterday afternoon. There is little hope that any survivors will be found.

9. #NO LIMBS, NO LIMITS: She’s already spoken at a United Nations technology conference but Cork teenager Joanne O’Riordan has big plans for what she wants to do next – including finally getting the robot she wants, visiting a princess from Saudi Arabia, and possibly even getting a song recorded by One Direction. Her brother has been telling TheJournal.ie everything that’s happened in the few weeks since the UN conference.

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Comments (6 Comments)

  • Cavan 10/05/12 #

    So, our hospitals have no money and are short staffed as is.
    And our government want to fine them for inefficient waiting times?
    Who REALLY pays? SICK PATIENTS.

    This money is being taken directly from funds that would pay for treatments.

    What should happen is people should be removed from their jobs and replaced by people who are competent.

    Reply
  • ‘no limbs no limits’…fair play to that girl Joanne O Riordan….she’s head and shoulders above the rest of us!

    Reply
  • Good Man Obama – why is Gay Marriage even a topic??? Love is love and knows no limits!!!Good Man!!

    Reply
  • I believe smoking around children should be banned full stop. And when you open the window of the car the smoke still goes into the back of the car and even bits of ashes.

    Who ends up paying the hospital fines and where is the money going? Sounds a bit fishy to me. Says someone who had their private health insurance milked of €20,000 by a backwater hospital who never gave me the treatment that I needed. Just drugs drugs drugs $$$

    Reply
  • dd

    Reply
  • Sure, let’s scapegoat the hospitals… They are underfunded and under-staffed already due to cuts, scaring them into shortening waiting lists will only mean all patient care gets minimized to streamline things. Medicine does not thrive when streamlined people.
    Working in an HSE funded organisation- not healthcare- I have already seen a touch of what the cuts and fear have done to us. We are short- staffed, our case load has increased 40%, and we all walk on on eggshells for fear of giving the HSE any cause to do away with us. Instead of focusing on the real care the clients need, we have to spend energy we cannot spare covering our asses because we are all living in an atmosphere of fear… more paperwork, more red- tape, less time to actually work with the people.
    I know doctors and nurses.. every one I know works like a demon, every single one gives what they have to get the job done right.. and every single one is over- stretched now.. If the waiting lists are too long, maybe it’s our system, not the hospitals.
    Go on, introduce fines to hospitals.. see exactly how it helps the people that need help.
    Bleeding madness.

    Reply

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