The country’s highest-ranking judge has said the courts must be a ‘backstop’ for resolving civil disputes when all other options have been exhausted.

The country’s highest-ranking judge has said the courts must be a ‘backstop’ for resolving civil disputes when all other options have been exhausted.

Newspapers are being inhibited from investigating and publishing on issues of public importance due to the Government’s failure to reform defamation laws.

The Press Council of Ireland and the Office of the Press Ombudsman launched their 2017 report yesterday.

The Press Ombudsman and Press Council have called for regulation of social media to stop spin, lies, and corporate interests distorting debate.

The essential work of the print media is no less important than decades ago. But for that work to continue, newspapers must be given a chance to survive, writes TP O’Mahony.

The Irish Press Council has received 35 complaints about the controversial Kevin Myers article.

Ireland’s former ambassador to the US has turned a speech by Gerry Adams on its head, urging elected Sinn Féin members to take their seats in Westminster. 

Fake news is impossible to regulate and will only be combatted by discerning readers and the strengthening of traditional media, the Communications Minister warns.

John Hume wanted to have talks with the IRA Army Council in what senior government officials thought was a plan for a public and damaging confrontation.

Exploiting the US president’s Irish ancestry helped Ireland retain its influence on Capitol Hill, writes Ryle Dwyer

The good working relationship between my father and President Reagan is well documented, as is the President’s intervention with Prime Minister Thatcher in 1984 to get the Anglo-Irish talks back on track.

Claims that keeping the Irish embassy in the Vatican open would help combat clerical child abuse were dismissed by Taoiseach Enda Kenny.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore has denied that Labour has a secular agenda which drove the decision to close the Vatican embassy.

The Government was wrong to close Ireland’s embassy to the Vatican, a former head of the Department of Foreign Affairs has said.

There’s quiet diplomacy and megaphone diplomacy.

Ryle Dwyer on how Irish affairs figured in US politics as Reagan came to power

ARCHBISHOP Tomás Ó Fiaich visited the United States in May 1979. He was invited to stay at the Irish embassy in Washington by Ambassador Seán Donlon, but he initially declined the invitation.

An influential priest accused the Irish ambassador to the US of trying to thwart attempts to raise the case of the Birmingham Six.

THE government was embarrassed after New York congressman Mario Biaggi wrote to taoiseach Jack Lynch on January 24, 1978, congratulating him on an RTÉ interview a fortnight earlier in which he called on the British to declare their intention to withdraw their troops from Northern Ireland.

Insurance company Hibernian Group has appointed Donal Byrne as its chairman.

The President of the University of Limerick Professor Roger Downer has resigned from his post for health reasons.

KILLALOE, a favourite retreat for the rich and famous, is now a hot-spot for marauding criminals ‘dispersed’ from Limerick city.

THE University of Limerick yesterday saluted a lawyer, an entrepreneur, a politician and a philanthropist with honorary doctorates.

The former President of the European Parliament, Pat Cox, and the late art historian and philanthropist, John Hunt, have been awarded honorary degrees at the University of Limerick.

AT the funeral Mass of Máirín Lynch in Cork’s North Cathedral yesterday, an old friend flicked through a small photo album and fought back tears.

Political Editor Harry McGee reports on the Oireachtas report on the Dublin/Monaghan bombings.

Anthony O’Reilly, the chairman of eircom and Independent News and Media, has denied approaching former government minister Michael Lowry in relation to the competition for Ireland’s second mobile phone licence.

FORMER Taoiseach John Bruton has claimed Independent Newspapers threatened in September 1996 to give the Rainbow Coalition bad publicity if the Fine Gael-led Government did not address grievances affecting the group’s interests.

FORMER Justice Minister Patrick Cooney wants a public inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the Dublin and Monaghan bombings because he believes his reputation has been “impugned unjustly” by Mr Justice Henry Barron’s report on the atrocities.

ONE of Limerick’s most famous sons and celebrated broadcaster, Terry Wogan, described the occasion as “one of the proudest moments” of his life.

ONE of the more surprising features of the newly-released State papers was the eagerness of British Prime Minister Ted Heath to establish a power-sharing executive in the North with an all-Irish dimension.

The Moriarty Tribunal has heard that Dr Tony O'Reilly was furious at not winning the second mobile phone licence.