NEED TO CATCH up? The Journal brings you a round-up of today’s news.

Roy O'Brien having a pint of Guinness in Toner's pub while watching ministers on television taking in the Dail about Budget 2027. RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

IRELAND

• Here are the main points of Budget 2027.
• Core social welfare payments, including the State pension, will see a €10 weekly increase from next year. 
• The government is cutting the carbon tax on home heating oil and gas, and shelving planned increases for the rest of its term. 
• The opposition has laid into the government’s budget, labelling it variously as “devoid of ambition”, “an insult to workers” and “a budget for those who are doing well”. 
• The national students’ union has said that the announcements in the budget today “fall desperately short of what students need”. 
• Noel Gallagher and Susan Sarandon are among almost 50 celebrities to sign an open letter of support for the residents of Garvaghy Road. 
• Ireland is the friendliest country in Europe, according to readers of Condé Nast.
• 44% of young people cannot afford mental health support, new research from Mental Health Ireland has found.
• A Cork man who went missing 34 years ago has been located deceased in the UK. 
• ASOS has said it is investigating “unauthorised activity” involving a third-party platform after customers were sent a phone alert saying the online retailer had been hacked.

INTERNATIONAL

Palestinians walk along a street surrounded by buildings destroyed in Israeli military strikes on Gaza City Alamy Alamy

#AI GONE WILD: OpenAI has conceded that it botched the handling of a hacking incident in Australia, vowing to rebuild trust in a nation it is courting to host massive data centres.

#US EXECUTION: Donald Trump has approved the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan, a US Army psychiatrist who shot dead 13 people at a military base in 2009, according to the Pentagon.

#ESPIONAGE: Germany’s former spy chief was arrested on suspicion of espionage, accused of seeking to pass sensitive information to overseas intelligence services, prosecutors said.

PARTING SHOT

Labour’s finance spokesperson Ged Nash was quick off the mark with his criticism of Finance Minister Simon Harris and Public Expenditure Minister Jack Chambers in the Dáil after they delivered Budget 2027.

“There you have it. The first budget of two, delivered by ‘Soundbite Simon’ and ‘Jack GPT’,” Nash deadpanned in the Dáil this afternoon as his party leader Ivana Bacik beamed beside him, clearly tickled by Nash’s use of alliteration.

Nash’s nickname for the public expenditure minister may have been borne from the style of language used in his budget speech, which exhibited some similarities to AI-generated writing.

For example, AI-generated text often relies on saying something is ‘not just X, it is Y’.

“Budget 2027 is not just an exercise in allocation; it’s also an exercise in reform,” Chambers said at one point. 

“Not only is Ireland’s agri-food sector supporting jobs and exports, but it’s also the driving force of our rural communities,” he said at another.

When he was later asked by The Journal about his new nickname and whether he used artificial intelligence to help write his budget speech, Chambers was defiant: 

 ”Absolutely not. Not at all.”

He said he wasn’t in the Dáil chamber for Nash’s remarks, but stressed that his budget speech was “very much written in the direction I’ve been bringing the budgetary process in the last number of weeks”.