Ireland’s world-beating ploughmen Eamonn Tracey from Carlow and John Whelan from Wexford will between them bid for their 13th top-two-in-the-world performances, after winning their national test matches at Carlow last week.

Two recent fires at The Shannon Key West Hotel have caused significant upset to parishioners on both sides of the River Shannon in Rooskey.

There is no blame as articulate as the accusations of the implicated, writes Gerard Howlin

As things stand, the bishop remains correct in the letter of the law, if not the spirit that currently appears to prevail with this Pope, writes Alison O’Connor

The Eighth Amendment was never about Catholicism. The Catholic Church did not insert it, the political system did, writes Victoria White.

Here are all the latest headlines this lunchtime...

THE announcement that the Sisters of Charity will not be involved in a new national maternity hospital must have been a bitter pill to swallow for the order, the Catholic hierarchy and the wider tradition of Irish Catholicism. 

The problem is we all know the Church plays a very long game, and sticks, religiously, to its beliefs, writes Alison O’Connor

On the basic issues of property and profiteering, it seems the Sisters are doing some good, writes Gerard Howlin. 

Latest: The deal to move Holles Street Hospital to St Vincent's in Dublin has been published.

In some ways, the controversy over the ownership of the new maternity hospital is the most bizarre I’ve ever come across. And the reason is simple. We don’t know enough about it to make a judgement. In fact, we don’t know anything.

Minister for Health Simon Harris said he does not believe there is a need to revisit the November agreement which was supposed to pave the way for the transfer of the national maternity hospital to the campus of St Vincent’s University Hospital in Elm Park.

It’s just over three years since Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan resigned. It’s not quite three years since Justice Minister Alan Shatter quit cabinet.

The Bishop of Elphin says he finds it difficult to see how any Catholic could “in good conscience” vote for an election candidate or party whose policy is to legalise abortion.

THE ARTIST David Hockney thinks gay people today are boring because they “want to be ordinary — they want to fit in.” 

PEOPLE of a certain age will remember, though many have deliberately forgotten, how strident some Catholic churchmen were in the pronouncements they made about issues that had little or nothing to do with religious life or faith.

As I read Suzanne Harrington’s article on Monday’s Irish Examiner the above question kept ringing in my ears. 

The same-sex marriage debate should revolve around real names and faces instead of labels and categories, a Church of Ireland bishop and advocate of gay marriage has said.

The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been accused by a TD of trying to link marriage equality with adoption and parenting issues in a bid to portray gay people as potential paedophiles.

Like the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, I would ask everyone to reflect deeply on the same-sex marriage referendum.

The Bishop of Elphin, Kevin Doran, recently compared homosexuals and people with Down Syndrome as being ‘not what God intended’.

The Catholic Bishop of Elphin Kevin Doran has accused the Government of misleading the public over the impact of the marriage equality referendum.

A Catholic Bishop has claimed that people who have children are not necessarily parents.

The Bishop of Cork and Ross has confirmed his intention to submit his letter of resignation to the Pope within two weeks.

A Catholic Bishop wants parishioners to help recruit priests.

A Mater Hospital board member who claimed the facility would ignore new abortion laws as they contradict its Catholic ethos has resigned after being overruled by colleagues.

A priest has resigned from the board of the one of the country’s largest Catholic-owned hospitals after its decision to carry out abortions under new laws.

The Mater hospital has over-ruled a leading board member who insisted the facility would not comply with Ireland’s abortion laws.

The Mater Hospital in Dublin stated today that it will comply with the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act.

Hospitals which refuse to carry out abortions to save women’s lives because of their religious ethos could face the withdrawal of State funding, the health minister has warned.

Despite the Government’s recent overwhelming majority on legislation allowing abortion in limited circumstances in this country, a potential obstacle remains in its path and threatens a looming clash with one voluntary hospital out of the seven selected among 25 hospitals nationwide as appropriate to perform abortions.

A priest on the board of governors of the Mater hospital in Dublin said it "cannot comply" with with the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act.

More than 80,000 pilgrims are due to attend the official closing ceremony of the 50th International Eucharistic Congress in Croke Park tomorrow.

The Catholic primate of All Ireland, Cardinal Seán Brady, has said it is “a matter of deep shame” that Church leaders did not always respond to the cries for help from clerical abuse victims.

The organisers of the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin have defended the absence of a senior member of the Irish hierarchy from making a speech on clerical sexual abuse during the event.

Pope Benedict XVI is unlikely to visit Ireland this summer, despite receiving an invitation to attend the International Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June.

An Irish delegation has met Pope Benedict XVI today as part of preparations for the International Eucharistic Congress (IEC2012) taking place here this summer.

Calls have been made on Vocations Sunday for religious life to be made more attractive to would-be priests and nuns.

COUPLES who are struggling to have children can now test their fertility in the privacy of their own homes with a simple kit costing €120.

A DUBLIN hospital has reversed a controversial decision to postpone a cancer drug trial it deferred because patient information leaflets contained wording at odds with its Catholic ethos.

Cancer sufferers at a top Dublin hospital were denied a potentially life-saving drug because abstinence was not considered as a means for female patients to avoid pregnancy, it emerged today.

THIS year 22 young Irish men will begin studying for the priesthood in colleges in Ireland and Rome.

The legacy of the late Pope John Paul II could have a lasting effect on the number young Irish men eager to join the priesthood.

Four students from the Pontifical Irish College in Rome are to be ordained to the Catholic priesthood this year, it was confirmed today.

MORE young people must be encouraged to enter the priesthood with only eight ordinations taking place across the country this year, it was urged yesterday.

SEX scandals and celibacy are the two main reasons why people are not entering the priesthood, according to the preliminary findings of a survey.

CATHOLIC bishops yesterday personally urged the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to actively oppose a new EU research programme that would fund human embryo research.

MASS-GOERS are to be counted in churches across a diocese this and next weekend as a bishop tries to place priests where they are most needed.