A Co Cork artist’s work as portrayed in a new film by Macroom native Dónal Ó Céilleachair is a reminder to us all to slow down and enjoy life.

The former operator of the National Aquatic Centre is claiming over €30m losses and damages over being pursued by a state-owned company for years to pay €10m Vat under the centre’s lease.

Author Dan Brown has been confirmed for the Dublin Writers Festival from May 20-26.

HE WAS heralded as its “white knight” for giving crucial support to a flagging development agenda.

A writer begins life as a poet, progresses to being a playwright and ends up as a novelist, John B Keane once revealed to me.

Taxpayers’ money will continue to be wasted because government departments are not taking the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee as seriously as they should, its chairman warned.

The Aquatic Centre affair was marked by incompetence, writes Michael Clifford

A litany of government departments and State agencies are expected to be heavily criticised for wasting huge sums of public money in a report to be published by an Oireachtas committee today.

For decades Paul Durcan has mapped our Free State as it descended into Hell. No other poet was so well-prepared for this prolonged and bitter cartography. Thomas McCarthy on his latest collection

The rush to build an aquatic centre resulted in a faulty building, an unsustainable business model, and also costly and still unresolved legal disputes, writes Investigations Correspondent Conor Ryan

Today the Public Accounts Committee will be looking into one of the most expensive corporate fiascoes in the history of Irish sport.

The National Aquatic Centre was planned in haste and will be repented as a financial drain for 20 years, writes Conor Ryan Investigative Correspondent

ELAN has formally agreed to pay over $200 million (€152m) in a settlement payment concerning marketing violations regarding one of its former drug products.

THE chairman of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee (PAC), Bernard Allen, has revealed the long-running legal action concerning the National Aquatic Centre is to be investigated.

A 43-year-old Dublin man was sentenced to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to murdering his wife in the Central Criminal Court today.

THE former holding company for the National Aquatic Centre more than halved its losses last year.

TAXPAYERS have been landed with a multimillion euro legal bill after a state agency ignored the advice of the Attorney General and subsequently lost its Supreme Court case.

Edited by Máire Nic Gearailt

PANICKED motorists had to be rescued from waters up to four feet deep in parts of Dublin after the weekend’s record rainfall trapped them in flash floods.

SOME might call it bare-faced cheek, but two of Ireland’s most spectacular beaches feature in a US guide to the Top 100 Places to Get Naked.

Kerry poet and philosopher John Moriarty has died aged 69 after a battle with cancer.

IT TOOK a surging second-half performance for Belvedere College to overcome St Andrew’s College 25-13 in the Powerade Leinster Schools Senior Cup first round at Templeville Road yesterday.

GAELTACHT Minister Eamon Ó Cuív yesterday said he was prepared to consider another proposal to change the official name of An Daingean, provided it was legal.

EXTRA American visitors are expected to visit the Dingle Peninsula next year, arising from the presence of a marketing group from the area at a recent trade show in Springfield, Massachusetts.

COISTE Daingean Uí Chúis, Dingle, is delighted to see the Government’s request that Ireland be referred to as ‘Éire Ireland’ on all future nameplates and signage used at official European Council and Council of Ministers meetings.

COISTE Daingean Uí Chúis, Dingle were surprised to see Gaeltacht Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv resubmitting that letter about Dingle (Irish Examiner, May 15).

WE wish to address some of the issues raised in Gaeltacht and Rural Affairs Minister Éamon Ó Cuív’s letter (Irish Examiner, April 18).

WE wish to address some of the issues raised in Gaeltacht and Rural Affairs Minister Éamon Ó Cuív’s letter (Irish Examiner, April 18).

THE disused site of an old boatyard in Dingle could yet be converted into a thing of beauty.

GAELTACHT Minister Éamon Ó Cuív will not be backing down on his decision to change Dingle to An Daingean - regardless of a local vote.

PADDY TEAHON, the former executive chairman of the State company that owns the €62 million National Aquatic Centre (NAC), has denied before the High Court that he was under extreme pressure from Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to have matters regarding the centre sorted so it would be open in time for the Special Olympics of summer 2003.

THREE Irish companies are set to expand in the Czech Republic. Westmeath-based Mergon International will invest €3 million in a new plant in Brno, the country’s second largest city, that will employ 80 people.

DINGLE people are the most independent in the country - almost 27% of the town’s workforce are self- employed, compared to a national average of 16.9%.

CHINESE poet Zhang Ye has been dropped from the programme for this year’s Féile na Bealtaine (Festival of May) in Dingle, Co Kerry, due to the SARS scare.