A Cork man jailed for life last year for the murder of a mother-of-three in her home, which he then set on fire, has moved to appeal his conviction.

A murder trial has heard that text messages between the deceased and a man accused of her murder were of good nature in the hours before her body was found.

A man accused of murdering a woman he had been in a three-month relationship with told gardaí that a knife was no sooner in his hands "than it was in her neck", a jury has heard.

A 37-year-old man has gone on trial accused of murdering a woman he had been "an item" with for three months.

Fás wrote off more than €1m on a temporary office in Offaly and is selling a site it bought for €1.5 million for just €150,000.

Waterford Institute of Technology’s financial officer raised concerns with the college’s former president Kieran Byrne about his travel expenses a decade before lavish spending cost him his job, TDs have been told.

A report on excessive credit card spending by the Health and Safety Authority on items such as dinners, entertainment and travel is to be submitted to the Oireachtas spending watchdog committee.

HUNDREDS of “working poor” families face cuts of €120 to their weekly income under a measure buried in the small print of budget legislation.

MORE than 40,000 unemployed people in line for a state-provided job or training course failed to turn up for interview.

UNEMPLOYMENT benefits, including housingallowances, should be reduced and the amount of welfare paid should decrease according to the length of time a person is without a job, the OECD economic report on Ireland recommends.

A HIGH Court dispute between Fás and its now former director of health and safety Greg Craig has been settled.

FÁS has agreed not to take any steps to sack its director of health and safety, Greg Craig, pending a two-week High Court determination in October of his purported dismissal three weeks ago.

FÁS has been blocked by the High Court from taking any further steps to sack health and safety director Greg Craig and from making disparaging comments to the media about him.

MORE than 100 Fás staff members have refused to give up their claim to 70 days-a-year of paid leave in an impasse that threatens to derail the Croke Park deal.

EDUCATION and Skills Minister Ruairi Quinn said a decision on a six-figure public relations contract issued by Fás to an outside agency was made prior to the general election.

BUILD it, and they’ll come, organise it and they’ll run — and run it they did, more than 1,400 hardy souls and hardened soles turning up for a trinity of inaugural races, in the fortnight run-up to Christmas.

FETAC has put a hold on the issuing of almost all certificates to Fás pending the results of a national audit.

FÁS staff accidentally sent out an email containing 2,000 confidential email addresses to all the participants on its work placement programme.

A SENIOR Department of Enterprise official was accused of allowing the head of his department mislead an Oireachtas Committee about concerns over a multi-million euro Fás training scheme.

WARNINGS about waste and mismanagement of a €126 million Fás “slush fund” were ignored by the Department of Enterprise as far back as 2006.

FÁS has been accused of dashing the dreams of 32 young apprentice jockeys after their training course was cancelled without notice.

ENTERPRISE Minister Batt O’Keeffe last night met with worker representatives and management at the Schering-Plough factory in Bandon.

THE Enterprise Minister must establish a taskforce in his constituency after a pharmaceutical giant yesterday announced plans to shed 160 jobs over three years.

JOBS agency Fás has vowed to continue efforts to secure EU funding despite the agency being “battered” with financial scandals and allegations.

A MASSIVE €4.5 million was paid out to SIPTU and ICTU from the misspent Fás training package which has caused the European Commission to withhold €57m in social funding.

THE Government is rejecting calls to close down Fás after the state training agency was embroiled in fresh controversy over how it used EU money.

POLITICIANS probing the bank guarantee have obtained up to 40 files on ministers’ meetings, legal advice and the role of banks on the night the state assurance on deposits was agreed.

THE state’s jobs agency, Fás, has admitted it is unlikely to recoup taxpayers’ money from a company which falsified the results of a computer training course.

DESPITE a 16% increase in the number of job vacancies reported to it, Fás has a pessimistic outlook for the economy, believing average employment will drop by a further 22,000 during 2011.

A development officer with the state training and employment authority FÁS who claimed that she was bullied at work has settled her High Court action for damages.

THE head of a top European Parliament employment committee said yesterday she was surprised at the level of bureaucracy adopted by Irish state agencies in the dispersal of €22.8 million from the European Globalisation Fund (EGF).

MEP Alan Kelly, who was to the fore in forcing the EU Commission to approve the European Globalisation Fund (EGF) to assist workers hit by the Dell pull-out, remains very unhappy at the way the fund has being managed in this country.

A WHOLE raft of courses have been opened up with funding from the European Globalisation Fund.

THE Department of Finance allowed Fás to break bonus payment limits for senior managers despite suspicions the awards were divvied out inappropriately.

UP to 200 former Dell workers yesterday picketed an office scheduled to distribute EU funding for retraining programmes.

A FUND of almost €23 million set up to assist former Dell workers and others who lost their jobs as a result of the closure of the computer giant’s Limerick plant will become available today after the workers’ programme was signed off by the EU Commission.

GREEN shoots? I have them.

FORMER Fás boss Rody Molloy got a severance package worth almost €900,000 more than would have been payable to a comparable public servant taking early retirement.

MORE lone parents should be allowed access to the Rental Accommodation Scheme, while Fás needs to drop its “stupid” start times for courses, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

JUST 12 trainees have completed courses at a €6.7m Fás college which opened at the start of the year, prompting the Dáil’s Public Accounts watchdog (PAC) to launch an investigation.

MOVE aside Miriam O’Callaghan, stand down Sean O’Rourke and forget The Frontline.

FÁS was embroiled in fresh controversy last night as it emerged the number of its managers shot up by 70% during a time of largely full employment.

FÁS has admitted that it is concerned about the validity of qualifications in up to 15 more courses run at its training centre in Dundalk, Co Louth.