Every morning, TheJournal.ie brings you nine things you really need to know with your morning coffee.
1. #ROSCOMMON “Why are they only listening now?” The family at the centre of the Roscommon abuse case have spoken out after an inquiry team found the voices of the six children were ignored for 14 years by the HSE, which only took them into care in 2004. The Special Rapporteur on Child Protection, Geoffrey Shannon, says those responsible for the failure to act on the “risk indicators” must be held accountable. Their mother, an alcoholic, was last year sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to incest, sexual abuse, neglect and wilful ill-treatment. Her husband was later jailed for 12-and-a-half years for rape and sexual assault against one of his sons. The HSE is now to undertake an audit of child neglect cases.
2. #RETURNING IRISH More than 3,000 returning Irish emigrants have been refused social welfare payments because they haven’t been living in Ireland for the two years before they made their claims, forcing some onto the streets, the Dail’s Committee on Social Protection has been told.
3. #POLITICS Labour would increase the top tax rate for people earning over €100k to 48 per cent, implement a €200 tax on second homes, introduce a voluntary redundancy scheme for the public service, and bring in metered water charges, Eamon Gilmore has said. Meanwhile, Fine Gael claims there’s still no certainty over the size of the budget cutbacks needed. It says they could be as high as €20bn or as low as €9bn – depending on which annual growth forecasts from independent experts are used.
4. #TOLL DEBTS People owing between €900 and €3,500 in unpaid motorway toll fees have had their names and addresses published for the first time in the Stubbs Gazette.
5. #SAD The mother of a young man who killed himself by driving off a pier after being discharged from a hospital psychiatric unit has lost her action alleging the HSE failed to provide adequate care to her son.
6. #COURTS In the papers today is the story of the DJ, the eggs, the axe and the van. The reports reveal how Tipp FM presenter Norman Morrissey smashed two van windows with an axe, sending glass into a young woman’s eye during a row over damaged cars, a court heard yesterday.
7. #CHINA A Chinese woman has been snatched from her bed in the middle of the night after tweeting that she intended to march in support of imprisoned Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiabo.
8. #INDONESIA The death toll from a tsunami and a volcano has risen to 313, as the bodies of more victims of Indonesia’s triple whammy of natural disasters have been discovered.
9. #WE’VE HEARD IT ALL NOW Italian police are investigating a bizarre theft: the complete ransacking of a virtual home belonging to a cat. A Palermo woman says a digital thief emptied her seven-room home in the Facebook game Pet Society, taking her jacuzzi, designer sofa and billiards table, and leaving only her virtual cat behind. The damage came to €100 in payments for furniture, paintings, mirrors, and pet outfits, the AFP reports. The inquiry is for “illegal and aggravated entry” into someone’s email account — a charge that carries a potential prison sentence of between one and five years in prison under Italy’s criminal code, officials said on Friday.
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