Pay parking could be introduced in some Co Cork towns and abolished in others as new municipal districts are scheduled to replace town councils in June.

An international group of consultants is to be appointed by the Government to examine the use of fluoride in the public water supply.

Many people face being buried outside their own towns and villages as a graveyards run out of plots and there’s difficulty finding suitable alternative land in their localities.

A report says €75m is needed to bring the only main road in West Cork up to a reasonable standard — but at the current rate of government investment it will take several generations before this is achieved.

A special forum is to be set up in West Cork aimed at boosting the region’s economic development, especially in terms of its agriculture, fishing and tourism industries.

Council officials have been told that people in a flood-plagued town in County Cork can no longer accept delays in plans to remedy the problem.

Two floods within 12 hours left dozens of homes damaged as surface water depths topped 20in in a West Cork market town.

A health watchdog maintains it is not responsible for the imminent closure of a community nursing home in Co Cork, despite being accused of “putting a gun to the head” of its voluntary board and “treating nine elderly patients cruelly”.

Fears have been expressed that senior county council management may be withdrawn from West Cork as a result of boundary changes and local government reform.

Reducing the number of councillors in West Cork is a blow to local areas, says Sean O’Riordan

Cork County Council officials are to write to the National Roads Authority (NRA) seeking funding to make safe a 1.2km stretch of road in West Cork which has been the scene of several fatal accidents in recent years.

Bad weather and the possibility of oil on the road may have played their part in a crash which claimed the life of a 64-year-old drapery assistant.

Unless the Government provides emergency funds, the people of Cork will have to live with either pothole-ridden roads or flooded properties — or both — for years to come.

A committee which represents householders and businesses in a West Cork town has expressed concern about an eight-month delay in €10m flood-prevention plans.

Proposals by the Courts Service to transfer court sittings in Skibbereen, Clonakilty, and Kinsale to Cork City have been described as “wholly illogical, irrational”, and could leave the towns “under-policed”.

The crumbling wreck of the Tit Bonhomme was barely visible to relatives who revisited the tragic site at Adam Island yesterday.

Hollywood legend Jeremy Irons is expected to lend his support to a campaign to ensure all artifacts discovered in Cork remain in the county and are not sent to the National Museum in Dublin.

Cash-stricken Cork County Council cannot afford to fix some of the “appalling” and “impassable” roads on its seven inhabited islands.

Cork County Council members stood in silence yesterday as one of its members recited the Fisherman’s Prayer in remembrance of the dead and those still missing from the trawler Tit Bonhomme.