It took two recounts and four days but Holly McKeever Cairns has secured the final seat in Bantry West Cork LEA amid high drama on the 16th floor of Cork County Hall.

Latest: It took two recounts and four days but Holly McKeever Cairns has secured the final seat in Bantry West Cork LEA amid high drama on the 16th floor of Cork County Hall.

A special committee of Cork County Council is to look at the possibility of setting up women’s refuges and ‘safe houses’ after an impassioned plea was made by a councillor who described how she was once a victim of domestic abuse.

The income gap between those who qualify for council housing and those who can afford a mortgage in metropolitan Cork has widened at an alarming rate.

Social housing applicants who succeeded in securing homes later turned down Cork County Council offers on a number of grounds, including not being close to schools, public transport, and other amenities.

There may be good news for people who earn too much to qualify for social housing, but too little to buy their own home.

There may be good news ahead for people who are caught in a property limbo due to earning too much to qualify for Social Housing, but too little to buy their own home.

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker is to spend two days in Ireland this week as Brexit talks heat up.

Three-year-old plans to reform the Seanad by allowing all citizens to vote on who should be elected are set to be examined by a 26-person political committee amid fresh claims the changes are being deliberately delayed.

A total of 681 disabled people are currently on Cork County Council’s approved list for housing, according to figures released by the local authority.

It cost Cork County Council over €108,000 to fix up a vacant house to a standard which permitted it to be rented to a new tenant.

Cork County Council has promised to look into hardship cases after a new rent system introduced for its tenants saw an 80-year-old man’s rent double overnight.

Cork County Council wants Taoiseach Leo Varadkar to create a national emergency committee to tackle the housing crisis — one which will act with the same urgency which addressed the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in the North in 2001.

Plans are underway for the reform of the Seanad, the Taoiseach has said.

A county councillor has claimed he and some of his colleagues are being criticised by the public because of a new system which allows people to apply for local authority houses anywhere in Co Cork.

Cork County Council has investigated 444 complaints about alleged “neighbours from hell” in the past three years in its southern division alone. It has repossessed 21 homes from antisocial tenants.

Cork County Council officials have been told they must change their housing policy or they will kill off communities in north-west Cork, an area known as Western Duhallow.

The death of medieval historian Donnchadh Ó Corráin has been marked with fond tributes by friends, academics and ex-students.

The housing crisis has deepened in Co Cork, with an additional 540 applicants joining the county council’s waiting list in the past year.

The founding president of the University of Limerick is sending his honorary doctorate in the post back to the National University of Ireland, after failing to receive a formal response from it.

The founding president of the University of Limerick Professor Edward Walsh is handing back the honorary doctorate awarded to him by the NUI because he objects to former Taoiseach Brian Cowen receiving the honor.

Former taoiseach Brian Cowen has said he regrets that a quarter of a million people lost their jobs during the recession.

A scheme is progressing around the country whereby vacant private properties that are in need of an upgrade receive grant aid for residential use in the social housing sector.

A pilot scheme to allow people on the housing waiting list apply online for council houses in Cork has been heralded an outstanding success.

A new online pilot scheme that allows people on a council’s waiting list to express interest in vacant local authority housing has proved a great success.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has defended his decision to appoint Mary Mitchell O’Connor as Minister for Jobs.

An invasive plant species found on a site in Clonakilty earmarked for 56 council houses is being treated, but it has been claimed that construction on the badly-needed homes is unlikely to start until at least the end of 2017.

Council officials have been accused of ignoring villages in north-west Cork, which “are dying on their feet” because they are not being included in ambitious plans to tackle the housing crisis.

The Chairman of the advisory board on commemorations, Maurice Manning, has suggested that the 2022 commemorations for the Civil war will be “a huge test of our national maturity”.

The first blueway for people interested in watersports has been launched in West Cork, while another planned project envisages a greenway which will attract cyclists and walkers.

ALMOST three years ago the Government asked a simple enough question: Do you want to abolish the Seanad or leave it as it is?

Family, friends and politicians bade a final farewell to PJ Mara yesterday as the former government press secretary was laid to rest in Co Galway.

PJ Mara was the most famous political spin doctor in modern Irish history, having played a leading role in Fianna Fáil for more than 30 years.

Opposition leaders have accused Taoiseach Enda Kenny of not being serious about Seanad reform as they insisted he refused to discuss substantial issues at a face-to-face meeting on the future of the upper house.

Fashion designer Don O’Neill; Cork-based Irish furniture designer Joseph Walsh; and art historian and author Nicholas Fox Weber were conferred with honorary doctorates at a ceremony in the Aula Maxima at UCC yesterday.

FUNNY thing about Enda Kenny is that the attempt to take him out in 2010 was the making of him. Till then, for eight years since his election as party leader in 2002, he endured slights, put-downs and was at best just patronised by some of his own colleagues in Fine Gael. 

Reforming how the Seanad is elected would result in more younger voters and cheaper elections, according to proposals from a working group on overhauling the Upper House.

The Taoiseach has set up a working group to look at ways the Seanad could be reformed.

Politicians, academics, journalists, and the public have been paying tribute to current affairs mastermind Brian Farrell who died yesterday morning.

A councillor who says he is "deeply frustrated and angry" at the lack of action or response from officials to representations made on behalf of constituents, has posted a notice on his window apologising for the failure.