IRELAND

High seas off the coast of Co Mayo today Naoise Culhane Naoise Culhane

• Aoife Beary, the Blackrock, Co Dublin native who survived the 2015 Berkeley balcony collapse, has died aged 27.
• Public health officials confirmed an additional 17,071 new cases of Covid-19 in Ireland today.
• Booster vaccines are now available for anyone over the age of 16, with a self-referral portal available online.
• A man in his 20s has died following a single-vehicle collision in Co Longford last night.
• Gardaí have made a fresh appeal for witnesses after a motorcyclist involved in a fatal collision with a car in Co Tipperary earlier this week died in hospital.
  
• Ireland’s volunteer first responders are calling for harsh penalties for anyone who interferes with public defibrillators after a number of units were vandalised in recent weeks.
• Taoiseach Micheál Martin took aim at Sinn Féin for being “absolutely silent” on the Russian build-up of troops on the Ukrainian border.
• Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said campaigners like Vicky Phelan — who have called on the Government to introduce laws to give terminally ill people the option of medically assisted death — have made “a really compelling case”. 

THE WORLD

Firefighters struggling to contain the huge fire, which destroyed South Africa's national assembly building

#ROOF COLLAPSE: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said an arrest has been made after a fire completely destroyed the country’s national parliament building.

#KOREA: An unidentified person entered North Korea from South Korea on New Year’s Day, the military in Seoul said today, a rare breach of the heavily fortified border between the two neighbours.

#COLORADO: Three people are missing and at least 991 homes are thought to have been destroyed in wildfires in the US state of Colorado.

PARTING SHOT:

“While often underrated,” writes The Journal’s Christina Finn, “independent TD Catherine Connolly packs a punch where she knows how – grilling witnesses in committee, calling for accountability when it comes to the mismanagement of State funding, calling out the mistreatment of others, and giving the Taoiseach and Tánaiste a dressing down in the Dáil from time to time.” 

In this wide-ranging interview, the Leas Ceann Comhairle — who is rarely out front and centre in the media, Finn writes — touches on some of her biggest concerns heading into 2022.

One of those concerns, Connolly says, is the lack of democratic oversight of the Government’s wide-ranging Covid-19 emergency powers, which have been extended to 31 March.