INTENSE anger over Máire Geoghegan-Quinn’s €108,000 Oireachtas pension saw the embattled EU commissioner surrender the payment to the state last night after the row threatened to damage Brian Cowen’s authority.

HOW nuclear physics helped reveal that a Bronze Age sword was never used to kill anyone has been explained to EU research commissioner Máire Geoghegan-Quinn on her first visit to one of the EU’s flagship research laboratories.

IRELAND’S nominee for European Commissioner, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, will be the country’s first woman in the job and is tipped to get the prestigious budget portfolio.