Infant death rates at the Bessborough mother-and-baby home in Cork soared to almost 70% in the early 1940s.

A former mother superior at Bessborough Mother and Baby Home has said its adoptions were not forced, that mothers were well-fed, and that its high historic death rates could be explained by lack of access to antibiotics.

Child death rates in three mother-and-baby homes that were run by religious orders were as high as 50% during the 1940s.

As the Church plans to discuss erecting a memorial to the 800 babies and children in a mass burial site in Co Galway, the Adoption Rights Alliance has called for a public inquiry into all deaths of babies, children, and mothers at mother-and- baby homes around the country.

Brian Shivers has today been acquitted of murdering two British soldiers in the North.

Pilots who were left out of pocket for up to €83,000 for flight training with the Pilot Training Centre of Ireland are planning to picket the Dáil on Wednesday.

FORMER billionaire tycoon Sean Quinn has claimed he is being scapegoated by Anglo Irish Bank after a judge ruled he was not entitled to file for bankruptcy in the North.

Former tycoon Sean Quinn could be effectively barred from relaunching his business career after a Belfast court ruled today that his bankruptcy should be dealt with in Dublin.

A judge ruled today that former billionaire Sean Quinn was not entitled to file for bankruptcy in the North.

Belfast High Court has heard that former billionaire Sean Quinn has moved his centre of main business interests to an industrial estate in Fermanagh.

A bid to overturn the bankruptcy of Sean Quinn, once the richest man in Ireland, will be heard next month, a court in the North has ruled.

Presbyterian Mutual Society (PMS) savers in the North suffered a fresh blow today after a judge ruled that those with less than £20,000 (€23,025) should not receive interim payments from the administrators.

TWELVE months after they were visited by heartbreak in the national decider, Mayo’s minor footballers established a platform for revenge after claiming the scalp of Down in yesterday’s ESB All-Ireland MFC semi-final in Croke Park.

A solicitor caught inciting murder when police bugged his conversations with a suspected terrorist client inside a police station was jailed for 10 years today.

The jailing of a solicitor caught plotting murder when police bugged his conversations with suspected terrorist clients will provide a salutary reminder to the whole profession about the standards required of them, a court heard today.

Unedited video footage of loyalist killer Michael Stone launching his alleged murder bid against senior Sinn Féin members inside the Northern Ireland Assembly was played at his trial in Belfast today.

FEDERATION of International Banks in Ireland (FIBI) chairman, Michael Deeny has warned against complacency in the bid to keep Ireland a leading player in the international banking industry.

Top Belfast loyalist William “Mo” Courtney was jailed for eight years today over the killing of one of deposed terror boss Johnny Adair’s closest associates.

Sinn Féin were tonight celebrating a strategic victory with an expected hat-trick in West Tyrone.

The father of a loyalist paramilitary leader gunned down in prison won a legal challenge against a decision to hold the inquiry into the killing under controversial legislation passed last year.

The SDLP tonight chose Assembly Member Eugene McMenamin as its candidate for the British General Election in West Tyrone.

A Northern Ireland man who plunged to his death while climbing a mountain in New Zealand had told his family how lucky he was to have escaped the Asian tsunami, it emerged tonight.

A former health board chief and a solicitor were among six Northern Ireland judicial appointments today.

A GP demanding a new hospital in a town where terrorists killed 29 people tonight emerged a shock winner in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections.