THE refrigeration company owned by former Fine Gael minister Michael Lowry, Garuda, saw pre-tax profits fall slightly to €454,815 last year.

The High Court has made an order for the extradition to the UK of a convicted murderer, who was recently released from prison here after serving a sentence for rape of a young female tourist.

The High Court has remanded in custody a convicted murderer and rapist whose extradition is being sought by the UK authorities.

THERE is a terrible irony and sadness in the fact that on the very day that one of the traditional authority figures in our society — a cardinal of the Catholic Church — finally accepts that a person, an office, entrusted with such authority, can no longer seek refuge in secrecy, obfuscation or legal point scoring, that our Taoiseach turns to the High Court to stymie the Mahon Tribunal’s investigations into his finances.

Despite the slowdown in the economy, An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern can take justifiable satisfaction from this country’s continuing economic success, especially when compared with other countries that were for so long considered models of economic achievement.

THE President of the High Court Mr Justice Joseph Finnegan was last night nominated by the Government as a member of the Supreme Court.

AT the opening of the Cleraun media conference in Dublin last Saturday, Communications Minister Noel Dempsey was forceful in criticising The Irish Times for breaking the story about the money given to Bertie Ahern.

SEAMUS MOYNIHAN, the former captain of the Kerry football team, announced his retirement from the sport this week. In the process, he set an example which could be followed to the benefit of the whole nation.

In his RTÉ interview on Tuesday evening, Bertie Ahern raised the Pied Piper analogy of up to 50 journalists pursing him in recent days. This amounted to a subliminal suggestion that those reporters doing their jobs were akin to rats. It was one of a number of aspects of his interview that provoked further questions.

A 29 year-old man with a history of mental illness who stabbed a homeless alcoholic in Limerick had his 10-year jail sentence reduced by three years today.

A garda who was cleared of assaulting three protestors during an anti-globalisation protest on May Day 2002 has lost his legal bid to stop the Garda Complaints Board from dealing with a complaint against him.

THE recent disclosures at the Moriarty Tribunal would hardly have been newsworthy if Charlie Haughey had not accepted money from Ben Dunne.

FORMER supermarket boss Ben Dunne is expected to tell the Moriarty Tribunal that he simply forgot to inform an earlier public inquiry about an important meeting he had with the Revenue Commissioners which was arranged by Charles Haughey.

THE chairman of the Revenue Commissioners held a series of meetings with supermarket boss Ben Dunne in 1987 at the request of then Taoiseach Charles J Haughey at a time when Dunnes Stores was facing a multi-million pound tax bill.

The only man convicted of the manslaughter of teenager Brian Murphy is prepared to go to the Supreme Court to prevent a retrial going ahead, a court heard today.

THE Supreme Court yesterday cut by almost half a record award of €600,000 to a woman who was repeatedly sexually abused during her early teenage years.

The family of the slain teenager Brian Murphy said tonight that the criminal justice system was “in tatters” and had swung too far in favour of the accused.

LAWYERS for the only man jailed for the killing of student Brian Murphy outside Club Anabel at Dublin’s Burlington Hotel in August 2000 submitted yesterday that some of the statements of his co-accused were highly prejudicial to him and went well beyond the prosecution’s case against him.

Drugs baron John Gilligan today won the right to appeal his conviction on two points of law in the Supreme Court.

THERE were calls yesterday for the State witness protection programme to be put on a statutory basis.

The Government has appointed High Court Judge Brian McCracken to the Supreme Court.

Pearse Farrell of Farrell Grant Sparks, the court appointed examiner of DCP, presented his scheme of arrangement to Mr Justice Brian McCracken.