From today, public cancer patients in the south will be able to use a €3.8m PET/CT scanner at Cork University Hospital — but private patients will still be forced to travel to Dublin, Galway, or Waterford.

CHILDREN’S advocacy groups last night gave a guarded response to the proposed wording of the long-awaited constitutional amendment on children’s rights.

THE Gaeltacht will disappear within five years if proposed Government cutbacks of 80% are implemented, it was warned yesterday.

IT is incredible in a country that purports to be a modern democracy that a member of a political party has to take the Government to court to do something as basic, something as mundane as hold an election.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan will appear before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service today.

Top executives from RTE, TV3 and Newstalk will today appear before an Oireachtas Joint Committee.

Key figures of the "vote-no-to-Lisbon campaign" today accused the "yes" camp of evading discussion on the details of the Treaty and of trying to "frighten and bore" people into voting yes.

THE excellent report by Conor Ryan (Irish Examiner, June 26) about the Department of Social and Family Affairs clawing back assets saved by elderly pensioners from their non-contributory pensions is further evidence of the non-caring attitude of Minister Seamus Brennan and this Government towards the welfare of the elderly.

CIRCUIT Court Judge Brian Curtin has lost his Supreme Court challenge to an Oireachtas inquiry, which could lead to his removal from office if allegations of possession of child pornography are proved to be true.

THE debate on the Sea Fisheries and Maritime Jurisdiction Bill has been characterised to date by the quality of scrutiny by the Oireachtas Joint Committee.

THE European Commission could move to fine Ireland next October for not implementing the Nitrates Directive, according to the Department of the Environment.

Irish farmers deserve credit for how they have controlled the effluent from the livestock equivalent of 64 million humans. Instead, they get the Nitrates Directive, after 13 years of dithering. Stephen Cadogan reports.

THE Irish Bank Officials’ Association (IBOA) pasting of the Irish banking sector on Thursday before the Oireachtas Joint Committee and the Public Service was not pretty if you were a top banking executive.