LAST UPDATE | 18 Dec 2025

GOOD MORNING.

Here’s all the news that you need to know as you start your day.

ESRI

1. One of the biggest think-tanks in the country has said the government did not pay attention to concerns it and other experts raised ahead of Budget 2026.

Tasers

2. Gardaí will launch a pilot today that will arm 128 frontline members with tasers for the first time.

EU Summit

3. A crunch European Council Summit today seeks to reach a resolution around plans to use frozen Russian state assets to support Ukraine.

Clondalkin

4. Gardaí have appealed for witnesses after a man was knocked down by a vehicle and seriously assaulted with weapons in a housing estate in west Dublin earlier this month.

Bondi Beach

5. Australia’s Prime Minister vowed to stamp out extremism as the nation mourned the youngest victim of the Bondi Beach shooting, a 10-year-old girl remembered as “our little ray of sunshine”.

Ghislaine Maxwell 

6. Jeffrey Epstein’s longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell asked a US federal judge to set aside her sex trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence.

Hunger strike

7. A Palestine Action-linked protester who has been on hunger strike in prison for 46 days has been taken to hospital, according to British media reports.

EuroMillions

8. A family syndicate in Co Cavan scooped the €17 million EuroMillions jackpot last week.

Fox hunting

9. A bill to ban fox hunting has been defeated in the Dáil.

The Animal Health and Welfare Bill 2025, spearheaded by Solidarity TD Ruth Coppinger, would have prohibited the use of canines to hunt or flush out foxes and prohibit trapping or snaring of the foxes in order to kill them. 

It would not have outlawed the shooting of foxes on one’s land for the purpose of protecting livestock. Some 124 TDs voted against the ban, while 24 voted in favour.