LAST UPDATE | 3 Jan 2022

GOOD MORNING. Here is all the news you need to know as you start your day.

Over the asking price

1. A convent building and site beside Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital was sold by the Sisters of Mercy to the HSE for over €2.7m earlier this year – despite being listed for €1.9m just six months earlier, a Noteworthy investigation has revealed.

The HSE has said the building has a “strategic value” due to its location adjoining the hospital campus and its “sustainability for the relocation of non-core hospital functions”.

Building bombs

2. Irish army bomb disposal officers have told The Journal that a large amount of information on the internet about how to construct explosive devices could be aiding criminal gangs who use them to carry out attacks and intimidate rivals. 

In recent times pipe bombs and other devices have become a feature of Irish organised crime gangs’ threats against rivals – with frequent callouts in recent years to parts of Dublin, Galway, Limerick, Cork and Louth. 

Experts said due to the improvised nature of the devices, they have no way of knowing when they are called to a scene whether a device will work the way the bomb-maker intended “or go off in some other way”. 

An assault in Dublin

3. Gardaí are appealing for witnesses to an assault on a teenage girl on Ballyfermot Road in Dublin on the night of 30 December.

They are also appealing to anyone who was in the area at the time and who may have camera footage to make it available to them.

Covid vaccines

4. All children aged 5-11 can be registered for a Covid-19 vaccine from today, RTÉ reports. 

Up until now registration was only open to children in this age group if they were high-risk or living with someone who is considered high-risk.

Road crash in Meath

5. Seven people were taken to hospital yesterday evening after a two-car collision in Co Meath.

Two men and two women aged in their 70s and 80s, a man and woman in their 40s and a teenager were taken to Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital. All seven are understood to have non-life threatening injuries. 

Pressure on the healthcare service

6. Hospitals are continuing to face pressure with upwards of 6,000 healthcare staff on Covid-related leave alone, according to The Irish Times.

As the health service faces into the busiest week of the year, there are concerns about how services will operate with this level of staff shortages. 

A fire at the South African parliament building

7. A man is being detained in connection with a massive fire in South Africa’s houses of parliament, which burned down the the entire National Assembly where parliamentarians sit.

No casualties have been reported . The man who was arrested is facing charges of arson, housebreaking and theft. 

The resignation of Sudan’s Prime Minister

8. More than two months after a coup and following another deadly crackdown on protests, Sudan’s civilian Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok resigned last night.

“I have tried my best to stop the country from sliding towards disaster,” Hamdok said last night, addressing the nation on state television. Sudan “is crossing a dangerous turning point that threatens its whole survival”, he said.

Damaged defibrillators

9. There have been calls for harsher penalties for interfering with a defibtilator following a number of incidents in recent weeks. 

At least four public defibrillators were vandalised, according to the Community First Responders Ireland Network (CFR Ireland).

Three of the devices were damaged and one was stolen from a bus depot in Co Mayo.