Veteran journalist Mark Costigan is to be appointed Deputy Government Press Secretary and the Head of Government Information Services, it emerged tonight.

An 18-year-old Kilkenny youth has been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a 36-year-old woman two years ago.

Mr Justice Michael Peart has told the jury in the trial of a teenager charged with murder that it must draw no inference from the fact that the accused has given no evidence. The accused, he said, needs to prove nothing.

The jury in the trial of a teenager charged with murder has been told that if the accused is not guilty, he must be the unluckiest man in Ireland to have all the evidence stacked against him.

The trial of a Kilkenny teenager accused of the murder of a mother-of-two has heard the 18-year-old's DNA was found on a Sony Playstation allegedly belonging to the deceased’s eldest son.

The Central Criminal Court has heard that a Kilkenny teenager told different stories to gardaí and to friends about an injury he sustained around the time of a murder of which he’s accused.

A Kilkenny teenager accused of murder allegedly said: "I didn’t do it, you are not going to make me say I did it" when he was arrested by gardaí in connection with the murder of a 36-year-old mother of three.

The trial of a young Kilkenny man, accused of murdering his friend’s mother, has heard that he used a bloody €50 note to pay for a playstation game on the evening of the killing.

The Central Criminal Court has heard that the Kilkenny house in which a 36-year-old mother-of-two died was "the scene of a sustained and violent assault and two deliberate fires".

A number of gardaí have given evidence today to the Central Criminal Court in the trial of an 18-year-old Kilkenny man, accused of murdering his friend’s mother.

The Central Criminal Court heard today that a Kilkenny mother-of-two was stabbed 35 times by an intruder, who left the blade of a knife in her scalp.

The trial has begun at the Central Criminal Court of an 18-year-old man, who is accused of murdering a 36-year-old mother-of-two in Kilkenny City two years ago.