Visitors such as Sinead O’Connor and Tommy Makem once enjoyed tea at one of the country’s oldest galvanised shops, which is hoping to ensure its future with nostalgia.

TRESSA Reeves never asked for anything for herself. All she ever wanted was for her son to be told the truth of who he was, writes Conall Ó Fátharta. It was a selfless act of a woman and a mother. A woman and mother ignored year after year by every State agency she asked to help her.

Despite protesting otherwise, the State knew about the practice of illegal adoption for years, with Tressa Reeves gathering evidence of her son’s illegal registration in 1997 and the authorities informed in 2001, writes Conall Ó Fátharta.

The Irish Examiner first wrote about Tressa Reeves in 2010. Her case sparked the first-ever audit of records by the then Adoption Board and highlighted again Ireland’s murky adoption history.

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Never Tickle A Tiger By Pamela Buchart (Bloomsbury; €8.80)

A Texas mother had a one-in-70-million kind of Valentine’s Day this year when she gave birth to two sets of identical twin boys.

A MAN accused of punching an Irish backpacker outside a takeaway shop in Sydney, Australia, has been ordered to face trial for manslaughter.

ADOPTION support groups have received a surge of calls to their helplines following the Irish Examiner’s special investigation into the issue of illegal adoption.

TRESSA REEVES stares at the framed piece of paper on the wall.

TRESSA REEVES was born Teresa Mary Donnelly in England to an Irish father and an English mother.

The prime suspect in the killing of an Irish man in Australia handed himself over to police hours after an emotional plea from the dead man’s mother, it emerged today.