Creches are to be given a financial bailout after the Government bowed to pressure to intervene in the insurance crisis that is threatening childcare providers.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone and her department are to be severely criticised for handing back almost €60m in State funding last year when 6,000 children were not allocated a social worker, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has rejected any suggestion that the decision not to publish the report of the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby Homes was due to its scathing criticism of the Government’s adoption tracing legislation.

One of the very first lessons in the How To Get Along In Politics Handbook (Haughey, Mandelson et al, 1978) is how to run down the clock in a television or radio studio.

The Department of Children and Youth Affairs has yet to reply to a request by the data protection commissioner for “certain information” regarding the new National Childcare Scheme and the Public Services Card, despite that request being made nearly two weeks ago.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone has acknowledged the “distress” experienced by adopted and illegally adopted people who are being refused access to personal information held by State bodies.

Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone must try to break the Anglo-American stranglehold on our work/life balance, writes Victoria White

Historian Catherine Corless, who exposed the Tuam Babies scandal, tells Donal O’Keeffe why she feels Tuam and Bessborough need to be excavated, and highlights Pope Francis’ apparent confusion about Tuam.

The vast majority of the almost 15,000 adopted people and natural parents on the national adoption tracing register will have to reapply to be added to the Government’s planned new register.

Conor O’Mahony of University College Cork has been appointed as the new Special Rapporteur on Child Protection.

Gráinne Healy has been appointed as the new chair of the Collaborative Forum on Mother and Baby Homes.

Tusla assesses the potential “harm” that could be caused to birth families before it decides on whether or not to release personal information to adopted people about their early lives.

The “unstated and hidden objective” of the Government’s planned legislation to grant adopted people basic information and tracing rights is to “prevent access” to personal records.

The Government’s controversial legislation to grant adopted people basic information and tracing rights breaches international human rights law and appears to “ignore EU law entirely”.

The death of a journalist doing their job should not be marked with silence and so Lyra McKee was honoured with prolonged applause and cheers.

Once upon a time, when black-and-white televisions were generally rented and butter was spared, planning a career path was straightforward enough. Go to school, get your exams — solely academic exams — and eventually get a job.

Scouting Ireland and Tusla are to be called before an Oireachtas committee to answer questions over serious child protection concerns in the organisation.

Here are all the latest headlines this lunchtime...

The trickle-down effect of a recession on children can mean poorer quality relationships with their mums and dads, particularly where parents feel the mental strain of trying to make ends meet.

The former adoption agency at the centre of the illegal adoptions scandal has gone into voluntary liquidation — just months after hundreds of illegal birth registrations were found in its files.

The Government’s planned legislation to allow people separated from their families through adoption to have access to their own records and histories has been slammed as “unfit for purpose” by a civil liberties group.

Rape Crisis Network Ireland (RCNI) has said that Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, appeared to be “in the dark” regarding its own use of joint garda-social worker interview teams in child sexual violence cases.

“Be prepared” is the scouting motto, but it is unlikely that Scouting Ireland was ready to deal with the fact that a full review of the organisation has found evidence of 71 alleged abusers and 108 victims between the 1960s and 1980s.

Adoption rights campaigner Paul Redmond has resigned from the Mother and Baby Homes Collaborative Forum, calling it “a cynical, time-wasting farce”.

Irish survivors of abuse will join international academics and activists in Boston today for a major conference on transitional justice.

The remains of hundreds of infants buried in a mass grave in Tuam will be exhumed as part of a “full forensic examination” of the site of the former mother and baby home.

The Adoption Authority (AAI) sent three reports on illegal birth registrations — including a spreadsheet of 90 cases — to the Department of Children in 2015, three years before the St Patrick’s Guild scandal.

More than two out of every five childcare services being funded by the State were found to be majorly non-compliant with requirements, a report has found.

The Adoption Authority of Ireland (AAI) reported at least one case of an illegal birth registration to the DPP and gardaí as far back as 2002.

Former Tánaiste Joan Burton has called for the Government to lift the veil of secrecy on birth details and adoptions to allow people access their personal histories.

Tusla was recording illegal adoptions and birth registrations in 2016 — two years before the agency’s revelation that it had uncovered unlawful registrations at St Patrick’s Guild.

A full trawl of hundreds of thousands of records, rather than a sample exercise, is needed to establish the facts in the illegal adoptions scandal, says Independents4-Change TD Clare Daly.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described the illegal adoption scandal as another ‘dark chapter’ in our history, which needs to be handled with the utmost sensitivity.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has promised to introduce legislation to legalise abortions “as quickly as possible,” and says drafting of the bill will begin immediately.

Two Government ministers have failed to express confidence in Department of Health chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan after he admitted last week he knew about the damning HSE cervical cancer memos in 2016.

Fine Gael will hold a private campaign meeting this morning with party TDs and senators who want to repeal the Eighth Amendment.

Tuam babies campaigner Catherine Corless has hit out at the Government for focusing “on cost” rather than committing to a full forensic excavation, exhumation, and DNA testing of the remains at the Tuam site.

The Government is to hold a special Cabinet meeting before the end of week in order to keep a referendum on the Eighth Amendment on track.

The Government is facing into three days of Dáil questioning on its Ireland 2040 plan unveiled on Friday.

Eoghan Murphy follows Regina Doherty in backing abortion recommendations.

The Government may be obliged to “fully investigate” the deaths of thousands of children who died in Ireland’s mother and baby homes under human rights law.

The Mother and Baby Homes Commission has admitted it will be “difficult to establish the facts” surrounding the burials of children who died in all of the homes it is investigating.

Most Irish youngsters aged seven to eight years are in very good health, according to their parents, the latest research from the ‘Growing Up in Ireland’ study reveals.

Exams are still a major cause of stress for teenagers despite reforms aimed at tackling the issue, a survey has found.