The Vietnam war and Lyndon B Johnson put in appearances at the Jobstown trial yesterday. It’s all a long, long way from a west Dublin enclave and water charges, but such is the meandering journey of this unique trial.

Free speech is upheld, but political caprice is unrestrained, in an Oireachtas where voluntary restraint is in short supply, writes Gerard Howlin.

THE wife of bankrupt businessman Sean Quinn is making “incredible” claims she does not have to repay a €3 million bank loan because she is a homemaker unduly influenced by her husband and regularly signed documents he put in front of her without reading them, the Commercial Court was told yesterday.

RTÉ is agreed to pay compensatory and aggravated damages to Fr Kevin Reynolds after he settled his action for defamation arising from the broadcaster’s Prime Time Investigates programme, “Mission to Prey”.