Mater Private Cork will add another 25 staff members once it adds two now operating theatres and a 30-bed day care ward by the end of 2019.

The sister of a man missing for the past 15 years is appealing to anyone who knows where he is to come forward.

Nicholas O’Halloran began to give up on getting the double lung transplant he needed. Now he is living a life of hope, he tells Helen O’Callaghan.

Elber Twomey’s pain was etched on her face as she recalled the car crash that wiped out her family five years ago.

Hey Donna, 137 Rathmines Road, Dublin 6. Tel: 01-4913731;

A mother of five found dead in a hotel room in Galway earlier this week was the “very essence of life” and a much-loved parent, grandmother, and childminder, says the priest in her parish of Donoughmore, Co Cork.

Pauric Mahony held fragile hope in his hands. Kilkenny and Waterford stood, battle-weary, on the cusp of the All-Ireland final last year when Mahony faced a last-minute free. His delivery was answering prayers until Eoin Murphy reached above the Kilkenny crossbar to pluck it from the sky. And hope melted away in the Déise camp.

The filming of the next Star Wars blockbuster along with increased activity in Irish film, animation and television drama saw a record-breaking €250m production spend in Ireland in 2016, according to the Irish Film Board.

A nurse who helped fight Ebola faces being struck off after being accused of recording an inaccurate temperature on an airport screening form for a medic who had contracted the virus.

The family of a cyclist killed in a crash this week have thanked the community of Sheriff Street for staying with her in her dying moments.

“You may now turn over the page”

Look, we know it’s easy for those of us not actually doing exams to give well-meaning but perhaps unhelpful advice - the Leaving Cert is but a distant memory (except for those nightmares).

STYLISTICALLY similar to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting, the characters in Jules Grant’s debut novel do not only speak in dialect, they narrate in it too.

Shrug off any inhibitions, and embrace the cold-shoulder, writes Paula Burns

Like most offices this Christmas season, the staff of the Castlecourt Hotel Westport had their annual Kris Kringle gift giving yesterday.

“I know him from somewhere,” Irish mammy’s all over the country asked.

The Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB) is to supply an updated analysis of republican criminal activity to the high-level Garda assessment on the status of the Provisional IRA.

Donna Williams tells Micheál O’Mahony how she copes with autism.

What happened when a woman breastfed her son live on Irish telly?

The tugboat Gerry O’Sullivan sprayed arcs of water, other Navy ships sounded their horns in salutem and families cheered and waved flags on the quayside as the LÉ Eithne pulled into base.

A woman has claimed in the High Court that she suffered injuries after she was picked up and dropped on the head by a man she did not know, following unwanted pestering from him in a nightclub.

Oh Josh, come back to us. We miss you.

A gouda idea. Feta than last year.

Philomena Whitehouse was suffering from severe chest pains when she was forced to spend the night on a wheelchair in Dublin’s Beaumont Hospital.

A former IRA member arrested with his wife by Spanish police investigating a multi-million smuggling and money laundering operation is currently repaying close to €500,000 to the Criminal Assets Bureau here.

In reference to Cork woman Donna Hartnett, and the impassioned and compelling letter she wrote: it struck a chord and encapsulated the immense frustrations of ordinary families facing the onslaught of wave, upon wave of taxes and bills.

Donna Hartnett - who lives in Cobh with her husband and two children, said she was inspired to write the emotional letter after financial difficulties left her family feeling abandoned by the government.

Million Dollar Arm ***

Tune into RTE One at 11.05pm tonight for Dear Daughter, a drama documentary telling the true story of a girl's search for her parents and her horrific life in an orphanage.

This is the gaping wound six-year-old Limerick girl Abbie Cuddihy suffered when she was attacked by a large dog while out playing.

By David Raleigh

Breathless is inspired by the disappearance of several women, writes Colette Sheridan

An ice cream business owner who kept a vulnerable man like a “slave” has been jailed for six-and-a-half years by a judge who said it was “staggering” this could happen in modern society.

An ice cream business owner who kept a vulnerable man like a “slave” has been jailed for six-and-a-half years by a judge who said it was “staggering” this could happen in modern society.

NOW that Christmas is over and New Year’s resolutions are still fresh in our minds why don’t we all decide to spend even a couple of extra hours a week having fun in the kitchen with all the family, cooking from scratch and saving money to boot.

A Tap on the Window

Donna Karan created DKNY so her daughter would stop borrowing her clothes.

We may not know the name of the royal baby but the ‘Celtic baby’ is called Owen.

We meet Donna Ngai, 24, from Cork and Rosie O'Reilly, 33, from Dublin.

A father-of-three who punched and kicked his partner to the point of unconsciousness after the Swedish House Mafia concert in the Phoenix Park last summer has been sentenced to three years.

Gentildonna survived a stewards’ inquiry to see off Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe runner-up Orfevre and win the Japan Cup at Tokyo racecourse yesterday.