Troops have funded and erected a memorial to Irish revolutionary leader Michael Collins at the barracks he set off from on the day he was ambushed.

For the first time since the Naval Service admitted women, there were no female officers commissioned yesterday.

Enda Kenny will today become the first serving Taoiseach to address the annual Béal na mBláth commemoration in Cork, to mark the 90th anniversary of the shooting dead of the former IRA commander and Ireland's second finance minister, Michael Collins.

THE late editor of the Sunday Independent Aengus Fanning was remembered yesterday as a newspaperman who had showed courage in exposing the hidden evils of Irish society.

QUEEN ELIZABETH II was formally welcomed to Ireland by the President Mary McAleese at Áras an Uachtaráin yesterday at her first official engagement at the start of her historic four-day state visit.

IT was a day when the world turned a little differently.

THE Defence Forces’ top brass were present at Haulbowline naval base yesterday to watch the latest group of young officers being commissioned.

Lieutenant General Dermot Earley is being laid to rest in Co Kildare today.

The funeral will take place in Co Kildare later today of the former Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Lieutenant Dermot Earley who died earlier this week.

HUGE crowds queued for up to three hours to pay their respects to the former Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Lieutenant General Dermot Earley, as his coffin lay in the garrison church at the Curragh yesterday.

The removal of the former Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Lieutenant General Dermot Earley will take place in Kildare tonight.

Defence Minister Willie O’Dea today begins an official three-day visit to Irish troops serving in Chad.

Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea and the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, Lieutenant General Dermot Earley have offered their condolences to the family of young soldier Aidan Holly, who died tragically yesterday in Spain.

Thirty-one cadets are graduating from the Defence Forces Training Centre in Kildare today.

IRISH peacekeeping troops in the Lebanon were wounded yesterday when their vehicle was hit in a roadside bomb attack.

IRELAND’S war dead were honoured at a ceremony in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, yesterday.

Irish and Argentinian naval personnel today joined forces to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the Mayo-born founder of the Argentine navy.

An army officer who served Ireland in the Middle East and at the UN was today named as the new Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces.

DEFENCE Minister Willie O’Dea took the salute yesterday from five young men and a woman who became the latest batch of officer cadets to be commissioned at the naval base in Haulbowline.

Minister for the Defence Forces Willie O’Dea officiated at an army commissioning ceremony in Co Kildare where a fifth of the cadets were women.

A company of soldiers which fought against overwhelming odds in the Congo for three days are to be finally honoured by the state today.

President Mary McAleese today appointed a senior lawyer and former Insurance Ombudsman as the first Ombudsman for the Defence Forces.

President Mary McAleese is to pay a morale-boosting pre-Christmas visit to Irish troops engaged in United Nations duty in Liberia next week.

TWO Irish corporals going to Kosovo next week on a peacekeeping tour won’t have far to go if they’re feeling homesick.

THE body of the Irish solider killed while on UN peacekeeping duties in Liberia last month was buried with full military honours in Dublin yesterday.

AN autopsy will be carried out in Dublin today on the body of Sgt Derek Mooney, the peacekeeping soldier who died in a road accident in Liberia, west Africa, on Thursday.