A 37-year-old man has been sentenced to three and a half years yesterday at the Central Criminal Court for perverting the course of justice and withholding information from gardaí, in relation to the murder of a man whose body was found in a Co Waterford wood.

The High Court has criticised the East Coast Area Health Board over the death of a girl who absconded from Newtown House in Co Wicklow and died of a heroin overdose.

An unprecedented High Court inquiry gets underway today into the circumstances of the death of 15-year-old Kim O'Donovan.