Defence Minister Paul Kehoe has been criticised as being “asleep at the wheel” after admitting he was not “briefed in advance” over the Navy staff shortages “fiasco”, which led to two vessels being docked.

A body has been recovered during the search for a missing woman in Co Clare.

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The partners of Defence Forces members are holding a 24-hour vigil outside Leinster House.

The US Navy have rescued 14 people at an elementary school in Texas after floodwaters from Hurricane Harvey threatened to immerse their shelter.

Penny-pinching Department of Defence (DoD) officials are “micro-managing” operations, even though most have no military experience, it has been claimed.

Latest: There is still no sign of missing Rescue 116 crewmen Ciarán Smith and Paul Ormsby, despite one of the largest sea searches ever undertaken in the history of the state.

The focus of the Irish Coast Guard helicopter Rescue 116 search mission off the North Mayo coast has shifted to the recovery of the remaining two missing crew members.

The Irish Navy ship, LÉ Samuel Beckett, has arrived back in Ireland just in time for Christmas.

Young members of the Defence Forces are disillusioned and leaving the Army, Naval Service, and Air Corps in droves because they cannot afford to live on their wages.

Two VIPs are back in their natural habitat thanks to the Naval Service who deposited them off the western coast of Gibraltar, on a patrol ship’s way to a migrant rescue mission in the Mediterranean Sea.

The Irish naval vessel LE Roisin has left Ireland for search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean.

Update: 6.05pm: SWAT teams are conducting floor-by- floor searches of the naval hospital.

Proud families gathered on the quayside yesterday to welcome home the crew of LÉ Niamh, who apart from rescuing migrants, assisted in the birth of one and the double resuscitation of an infant who nearly drowned.

THE Government is to provide new and upgraded equipment for the Army, Naval Service and Air Corps, including new aircraft and ships.

Naval associations around the world are backing a campaign to ensure two Irish veterans are given bravery awards 53 years after they helped save a ship’s crew during an explosion.

The walk up the hill to the imposing Beacon landmark in Baltimore can be a challenging climb at the best of times.

The number of lives saved by the Naval Service flagship LÉ Eithne passed the 2,000 mark after she picked up her largest number of migrants in any one day of operations off the coast of Libya.

The Naval Service LÉ Eithne has conducted its biggest migrant rescue operation to date when it took onboard 467 adults and children who had been trying to reach the EU in a dilapidated wooden barge and rubber raft.

A president, three ambassadors and around 5,300 cruise line passengers will come to Cobh on May 7 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania.

The bodies of a man and a woman have been recovered from the River Lee in Cork.

The Defence Forces are on a mission to recruit more women with a number of new child-friendly initiatives and visits to schools and colleges aiming to sell a career in the military.

Ahoy Daddy! A little girl welcomed her father home from sea yesterday as the State’s newest Naval Service patrol vessel opened to the public for the first time.

A ceremony to mark the naming and commissioning for the new Naval Service ship, the LÉ Samuel Beckett is underway in Dublin.

Civilian workers exposed to potentially deadly asbestos dust will be screened every two years for health defects.

The organisation representing naval ratings has demanded a thorough examination of all the Naval Service’s older ships to ensure they are asbestos-free.

The Naval Service will hold a special decommissioning service on the LÉ Emer next Friday and the vessel is to be sold off through public auction on Oct 23.

A former member of the Defence Forces has claimed she was sexually assaulted by a crewman while they worked on board an Irish naval vessel berthed at Naval Service headquarters.

Armed Naval Service teams from one of their ships boarded a sister vessel off the south coast as part of agency’s ongoing battle against drug smuggling.

The Vatican has been drawn into a new controversy after acknowledging that its bank’s new president is also chairman of a shipbuilder involved in the construction of warships – a significant conflict for an institution that has long shunned ties to military manufacturing.

A relative of one of the world’s greatest explorers believes there’s no reason why the Irish navy cannot, at some stage in the future, mount an expedition to the Antarctic.

NO BODIES were found aboard the wreckage of the Tit Bonhomme, as sea conditions eventually allowed Naval and Garda divers to search the trawler five days after it sank off West Cork.

NAVAL divers will make efforts again today to search the 21-metre, steel-hulled trawler the Tit Bonhomme, which is lying in a gully near Adam’s Island at the entrance to Glandore Harbour, in the hope the bodies of its five missing crew will be found on board.

A third day of searching has failed to locate the bodies of five fishermen missing after their trawler sank off West Cork.

A dive team from the Naval service has joined in the search for a missing person in Cork this morning.

Naval patrol vessel Le Emer has arrived to co-ordinate the search for two fishermen missing in the Irish sea.

NAVAL recruits have taken an oath of allegiance for the first time since the recruitment embargo came into force two years ago.

TWO Naval Service cadets swam 15km non-stop yesterday to raise money for a charity for those suffering from a muscle weakening disease.

THE words shipbuilding and Dublin are not often seen together – Harland and Wolfe in Belfast and the Verolme dockyard in Cork fit much better.

The Navy is to buy two new patrol vessels for its fleet, it was announced today.

THIRTEEN non-commissioned Naval Service officers made history yesterday when they became the first members of the Defence Forces to be presented with degrees at the National Maritime College.

NAVAL divers have recovered a Volkswagen Polo car which plunged off a cross-river ferry nine months ago, with the presumed loss of a man’s life.

LAST YEAR’S sharp rise in cigarette smuggling looks set to continue in 2010, with a massive haul of eight million cigarettes seized yesterday.