The field, the plaster face of the Virgin Mary, the labouring, dying 15-year-old, the dead baby…

Your lunchtime headlines.

Here's all you need to know this Tuesday morning.

‘Who knows where the thread is going to unravel?’ asks O’Reilly

Can we name any medical/social scandal that has affected only the male gender?

Thank you, Leo Varadkar. Thank you for acknowledging that abortion has always existed in Ireland.

Irene Kelleher is taking her fictional play, Mary and Me, to the Edinburgh Fringe. It was inspired by the tragic events in Granard in 1984, writes Colette Sheridan

ANYONE with a trace of humanity must feel a mixture of shock, horror, and sadness at the discovery of the body of a newborn girl at a recycling plant in Co Wicklow.

THE gardaí are to be praised for their sensitive handling of the search to identify abandoned baby Maria.

It’s a great little country, a great little sick country.

The tragic death 30 years ago of Irish schoolgirl Ann Lovett is the subject of a play to be staged in London next month.

SHE was a darling daughter, her death notice said, and a happy, intelligent, interested girl, according to her school.

SEVERAL days after 15-year-old Ann Lovett died in hospital, just hours after giving birth to a 6½lb baby boy found dead beside a Co Longford grotto, an anonymous caller phoned the Sunday Tribune newspaper to explain what had happened on that cold and dark winter afternoon on Jan 31, 1984 outside Granard.

Some strands of history are inescapable, they live with us forever — and so they should. Just as we can’t choose our family we cannot choose our past, it is our undeniable, irreversible path to our present.

I was moved to write this when I read Brian Meaney’s recent letter (Jan 17) about the case of Ann Lovett, her child and his New Year’s resolution to visit their grave on the 30th anniversary of their deaths.

WHAT thoughts went through Ann Lovett’s mind as she awaited the birth of her secret baby 30 years ago will never be known, but a major research project over the next three years will try to better understand what drives expectant mothers to conceal their pregnancies.

It dominated Irish TV in the 1980s — and now Dallas is coming back. Suzanne Harrington on the return of JR and Bobby Ewing.

Ireland was a very different place in the 1980s. From Sir Henrys in Cork to The Afro Spot in Dublin, Suzanne Harrington recalls the decade that changed everything

FOLLOWING the tragic discovery of a baby’s body in a farm building in Co Meath, why won’t the Government realise that we need a sex education system that actually teaches adolescents about sex and its consequences and removes the stigma of abortion.

SHAMEFUL echoes of an uncaring Ireland are redolent in the disappointment voiced by Olive Braiden, chairperson of the Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA), who has revealed that some pharmacists refuse to sell contraceptives or the morning-after-pill because they disapprove of their use.

THE discovery of the body of a newborn baby will have sent shivers down the spine of any resident of Granard, Co Longford, old enough to remember the lonely deaths of 15-year-old Ann Lovett and her secret child 21 years ago.

Caroline O'Doherty - on what the death of a teen mother taught us.