Latest: Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has suggested Leo Varadkar could be facing a worse local election performance than Enda Kenny.

Unless it’s squeaky tight, and it may be, we’ll know by lunch time on Saturday how Friday’s referendum went.

Charlie and his appearances on the Champs Elysee in 1987 and at Rome’s Stadio Olimpico three years later, writes Brendan O’Brien. 

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar could be hauled before a powerful Dáil committee to answer questions over the Strategic Communications Unit (SCU) controversy as soon as next week under plans to be finalised this morning.

The reselling of tickets above their face value is set to be banned under legislation expected to come before the Dáil shortly.

The abortion referendum battle for middle Ireland has begun, with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil members split on whether to allow unrestricted access to terminations up to the 12th week of pregnancy if the Eighth Amendment is repealed.

A former Sinn Féin councillor who waterboarded and threatened to kill a man who he believed was trying to defraud him was not a friend of Sinn Féin TDs Mary Lou Mc Donald and Gerry Adams, the Special Criminal Court was told today.

Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan said the phantom breath test scandal could have been caused by gardaí not thinking it was “important” to accurately record the data.

The cost to the State of funding Irish Water as its ‘sole customer’ would amount to some €1.2bn this year, a committee examining the future of water services heard.

Bus Eireann is losing €6m a year despite receiving a State subsidy of €40m, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has told the Dáil, writes Daniel McConnell of the Irish Examiner.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams may refuse to help other families of Troubles murder victims due to the fallout from his role in the Brian Stack controversy.

The Government has left the door open to the future privatisation of Irish Water, the Dáil heard last night.

Good afternoon. Here’s all the news you need to know this lunchtime.

A bill to liberalise the country’s abortion laws looks set to be declared “unconstitutional” by Attorney General Marie Whelan, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

Accusations that Finance Minister Michael Noonan is a “vulture-fund lover” sparked a major row at the Oireachtas Housing Committee yesterday.

Senior Fianna Fáil members believe a May election could be looming as talks to form a government continue.

Against the wider trend, Longford-Westmeath is one area where the Government stronghold is likely to remain.

Cork is set to get a €50m slice of social housing funding announced by the Government yesterday.

The Oireachtas banking inquiry is to recommend that the Government takes legal action against the European Central Bank (ECB), over its refusal to allow Ireland burn bondholders in 2010 and 2011, the Irish Examiner can reveal.

A government TD has contradicted senior coalition colleagues by claiming that Ireland is “not a neutral country and we never have been”.

TDs and Senators are being asked to consider passing a law which would create a specific offence of child grooming for sexual exploitation.

A Fine Gael TD has spoken about his disappointment that proposed laws allowing abortion in limited circumstances will still force women to travel abroad for a termination if they are carrying a foetus that has no chance of survival after birth.

The Government's abortion legislation will take a first step towards becoming law when it is introduced in the Dáil today.

No member of the Army Equitation School is paid in excess of €80,000 per annum.

Sinn Féin has urged all TDs in Leinster House to support its motion on abortion — even though one of its own deputies has yet to do so.

Health chiefs have launched investigations following the death of a woman in a Galway hospital after she was refused an abortion.

Labour rebels claim to have support in the parliamentary party for their calls for a wealth tax in the budget.

Sinn Féin wants the Taoiseach Enda Kenny to take a €60,000 pay cut.

LAST night’s Fianna Fáil meeting ended with a call of unity from Micheál Martin who told his supporters to unite behind Taoiseach Brian Cowen, following his side’s victory by a significant margin in a vote of confidence in his leadership.

WHEN the Dáil attendance record was changed to accommodate TDs who could not turn up because of the Icelandic ash cloud, the deputies argued the correction was incidental.

WATCHING the Fine Gael ‘celebration’ of Enda Kenny’s victory was one of the most pathetic political spectacles I’ve ever witnessed.

Workers at a frozen pizza factory ended their hunger strike today after striking a deal with bosses over the sacking of three men.

ANTI-POVERTY campaigners picketed the Dáil yesterday urging Finance Minister Brian Lenihan not to punish the poor in next week’s budget.

FINE Gael would support the principle of tough but fair decisions regarding public sector pay cuts, party leader Enda Kenny said yesterday.

A Fianna Fáil TD quit the party tonight in the first signs of a major backbench revolt over the Government's controversial Budget reforms.

IN light of the embarrassing position Kathleen Lynch TD has found herself in after supplying a character reference for a rapist awaiting sentence, the decision by the Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore to urge his party’s TDs to exercise caution when supplying such letters is a sensible one.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny will today offer his backing to the family of murdered Paul Quinn in their fight for justice.

GOVERNMENT policy of carbon emission charges is great news for the big-time polluters, according to Friends of the Earth (FOE), but not such good news for the PAYE citizens that will pay the price.

The Government is facing a revolt from Fianna Fáil members in Monaghan over its plans to downgrade the local hospital.

THERE will be no forced redundancies at the ESB generating station in Tarbert, Co Kerry, which is to close in 2010 with the loss of up to 129 jobs, the ESB pledged yesterday.

A successor to former Junior Transport Minister Ivor Callely will probably be announced next week, it emerged tonight.

CHARLES HAUGHEY made a rare public appearance yesterday when he was among the chief mourners at the funeral of his brother, Paraic, in Dublin.

Brian Cowen has refused to comment on the photograph of Sinn Féin TDs with the killers of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe that appeared in An Phoblacht.