The performance was more industrious than inspirational but Cork City continued their incredible start to the season, marching to the EA Sports Cup semi-finals with a deserved win at Turner’s Cross yesterday.

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The Cheltenham Festival and St Patrick’s Day don’t always coincide on the calendar, but the organisers know a good thing when they see one. So it is that the third day of this four-day bonanza is always designated as ‘St Patrick’s Thursday’.

VISIONS. The modern ones relating to rural Ireland started with Éamon de Valera, when in 1943 in a St Patrick’s day radio address he asserted in what is known as the ‘comely maidens speech’ (wildly missquoted).

The second viewer who looked at 2, Ard Patrick in St Luke’s liked it so much that they immediately put in a bid of the €250,000 asking price.

THERE is a reassuring coincidence in the fact that in the very week that Pope Francis published an encyclical that argued strongly for a new, responsible attitude to environmental protection that a retired parish priest called for the badly eroded Croagh Patrick to be declared off-limits for many activities until a proper conservation plan is implemented.

Cllr Mick Finn said the plan, which is being introduced at the same time as proposed traffic changes around Grenville Place, will have a huge impact on people living in the Middle Parish, the city’s biggest residential area.

It’s a miracle the likes of St Patrick could have produced.

T’S nearly time to go rooting in the attic to find the green wig and the St Patrick’s cape and crozier, the plastic shillelagh and, if you’re of a certain generation and of an optimistic/desperate disposition, the kiss-me-quick-I’m-Irish hat.

CORK CITY will have a new landmark design building later this year, in one of it most prominent settings - half way up the vertiginous St Patrick’s Hill. A school redevelopment there has been designed by the winners of the 2015 Royal Gold Medal for Architecture, Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey.

AS agents Savills predict that 2015 will be the best year for retail in Cork since the downturn began in 2008, and witha number of tenant deals and relocations completed along Patrick’s Street (including SuperDry into the Moderne), a 75,000 sq ft site is now on the market for €6m at Grand Parade/Patrick Street: and retail deals are also flowing at suburban Mahon Point Shopping Centre for its owners, Deka.

Caher Island is reputed to have been visited by St Patrick. Dan MacCarthy visits on a special day

AIRTRICITY PREMIER DIVISION:

The number of offenders in Dóchas Women’s Prison continues to rise with 135 inmates packed into a jail with 105 beds.

Drogheda Utd 1 St Patrick’s Athletic 2

Airtricity League Premier Division:

With reference to recent reports in the Irish Examiner on the excellent work being carried out by the Cork Penny Dinners charity, it’s interesting to note that this charity was founded at a meeting in the Imperial Hotel on Mar 12, 1888.

The Children’s Ombudsman yesterday broke new ground as she activated a complaints procedure for 17-year-olds detained in St Patrick’s Institution for young offenders.

The Government should consider shutting down St Patrick’s Institution given growing revelations about violence there, penal reformers have suggested.

Sean O’Connor kept St Patrick’s Athletic’s slim title hopes alive with the only goal of the game against bottom club Dundalk at Oriel Park last night.

Despite the concession a stoppage time equaliser, St Patrick’s Athletic can travel home today confident of having given themselves every chance of making the third round of the Europa League.

A dramatic last minute equaliser by defender Pat Flynn salvaged a point for St Patrick’s Athletic in a tense Dublin derby with Shamrock Rovers at Tallaght Stadium yesterday.

Confident St Patrick’s Athletic were firmly in the driving seat against Monaghan United in Gortakeegan last night, winning 4-0 to stay on Sligo Rovers’ heels.

Dundalk scrambled a single goal FAI Ford Cup win over their Leinster Senior League opponents at Oriel Park last night.

Keith Duffy, the actor and ex-Boyzone star, has opened a small memorial garden in West Cork to honour a young woman who worked tirelessly for autistic children even though she was terminally ill with leukaemia.

The HSE has described as "inaccurate and uncorroborated" reports in the Limerick Post newspaper today about the housing of a convicted sex offender in a unit for homeless teenagers of both sexes.

Shelbourne showed their mettle to dig out a point with 10 men in a rousing Dublin derby at Tolka Park.

Protesters chanted and cheered as they marched down Wall Street to mark six months since the birth of the Occupy movement.

Kathryn Rudge is savouring her role in Opera North’s production of Giulio Cesare in Dublin next week, Nikki ffrench Davis reports

ST PATRICK’S ATHLETIC closed the gap on Shamrock Rovers to a point in the Premier Division last night, but they didn’t have it all their own way against the league’s basement club, which played the majority of the second half with 10 men.

Commuters returning to work, school and college in Dublin this morning are being urged to check if their normal routes have been affected by new traffic schemes.

A MAYO estate with “third- world” conditions is to get a €13 million makeover as part of plans to rejuvenate rundown residential areas around the country.

In HER third annual report published yesterday Ombudsman for Children Emily Logan highlighted her difficulties in hearing complaints from young offenders in certain detention centres, especially St Patrick’s Institute.

WITH reference to your report on the sale of rosary beads in the souvenir shop at St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin (January 23), these items are not commonly used in Anglican worship here and I would have thought there was already a sufficient number of other outlets available in the capital.

The makers of Jameson Irish Whiskey claim that labelling used on bottles of a rival brand of whiskey distributed in Russia is an infringement of their trade mark, the High Court heard yesterday.

LIKE most Irishmen and women, I left home at a very early age.

Heavy snow covered the Northern California mountains and rain and wind hit the US West Coast as a third day of winter storms left at least three people dead and hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in California, Oregon and Washington without power.