Every evening, TheJournal.ie brings you a round-up of the day’s big news stories as well as the bits and pieces you may have missed.

• Naturally enough, most of the Sunday papers were plastered in wall-to-wall analysis of the Moriarty Tribunal, with the biggest news being that the Fine Gael-Labour-Democratic Left government of the day was apparently so unwilling to entertain criticism that it stonewalled any requests to investigate perceived unfairness in the Esat licencing process.
• The agriculture minister Simon Coveney this afternoon urged Lowry to attend next week’s debates in the Dáil, kicking off on Tuesday, at which the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal will be discussed.
• The stress tests due on Thursday could see Ireland having to shell out as much as €27bn to plug the hole in the banking sector. If they’re as bad as first thought, and need more than €35bn, there’s a chance they could completely empty the EU-IMF bailout fund set aside for them.
• The country’s newest private hospital is likely to enter liquidation this week – the Cork Medical Centre never opened to inpatients after VHI refused to offer cover to its customers.
• In Japan, earlier reports that put the level of radioactivity in the atmosphere at Fukushima at ten million times the regular amount turned out to be a mistake.
• Muammar Gaddafi has lost control of the towns of Ajdabiya and Brega – but is reported to have upped his offensive against the rebels holding the city of Misrata, the last major rebel-held city in the west of Libya. Speaking of Libya, here’s a video of a woman claiming to have been sexually assaulted by Gaddafi’s forces – only for his loyalists to then storm in and assault the journalists in the room.
• A new survey of people in same-sex relationships has found that over half of them believe the current government will legislate for same-sex marriage – but 89 per cent feel same-sex relationships offer them less rights than a traditional marriage.
• In case you’re seriously behind the times, the clocks went forward an hour at 1am – though did you know that once upon a time Ireland had its own time zone? Dublin Mean Time used to be 25 minutes behind Greenwich.

Speaking of all things Michael Lowry, here’s the latest from the Corrigan Brothers… all about the casino at Twomileborris, being locally dubbed ‘Lowryland’…

Making a difference

A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can make sure we can keep reliable, meaningful news open to everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

Support us Learn More