TRIBUTES poured in over the weekend to the writer and broadcaster Nuala Ó Faoláin, who died on Saturday morning three months after being diagnosed with cancer.

Renowned author Colm Toibin has been appointed as a member of the Arts Council, it was confirmed today.

AN accreditation system is the best way to help women with a crisis pregnancy avoid rogue counselling services, Tánaiste Mary Harney said yesterday.

FEAR of social stigma and upsetting family means women continue to hide pregnancy, forfeiting antenatal care to the detriment of their unborn child, new research has found.

THE Abbey Theatre has landed the biggest grant of its history with the Arts Council awarding it €25.7 million for the next three years.

The Arts Council is to fund the Abbey Theatre to the tune of more than €25m, it emerged today.

The Arts Council welcomed the retention of the artists’ tax exemption scheme tonight but expressed disappointment that it is to be capped at a level of €250,000 in any one tax year.

Hundreds of theatre actors and crews are struggling to stay above the breadline with many working multiple jobs to survive, a shocking report revealed today.

BISHOPS should have no involvement in crisis pregnancy counselling services, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

Maintaining tax breaks for artists is essential to keeping internationally-renowned writers, painters and performers in Ireland as well as encouraging new talent in the country, it was claimed today.

A JUDGE has been appointed chairman of the Abbey Theatre as the century-old institution undergoes a major reform.

ISN’T it time it was recognised that the Crisis Pregnancy Agency does what it says on the tin?

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.

Arts Minister John O’Donoghue today said a new corporate governance structure will be put in place at the trouble-struck Abbey Theatre.

THE Crisis Pregnancy Agency (CPA) is meeting Cura management next week to ask how they intend fulfilling their contract with the State body after Catholic bishops told the service to stop issuing abortion clinic contacts.

The Arts Council has confirmed that it will continue to channel Government funds to the Abbey theatre.

CARDINAL INNITZER of Vienna thought he could do a deal with Hitler. He supported the Anschluss, the 1938 unification of Austria and Germany. He even offered a ‘Heil Hitler’ when the Nazis marched into Vienna.

AN ARRANGEMENT between the State and the Catholic Church’s pregnancy advice service on issuing abortion clinic contacts must end, a moral theologian insisted yesterday.

Dan Buckley

MORE than 120,000 requests for information have been received by the Crisis Pregnancy Agency in the past two years.

CUTS in rent supplements will put pregnant women under even more pressure, the Crisis Pregnancy Agency has warned.

A STAGGERING 10,000 mobile text messages were made to a crisis pregnancy information service in one week last month after a TV campaign was launched to promote it.

NEW Arts Council chairperson Olive Braiden said yesterday she hopes to see the arts made more accessible especially to children and local communities, despite the 20% budget cut imposed by the Government at the start of this year.

Olive Braiden has been appointed as the new Chairperson of the Arts Council under the first Arts Act in 30 years.