The number of referrals to the Child and Family Agency relating to alleged abuse have hit a quarterly high.

‘It’s one of the great things the GAA came up with’

New data from Tusla shows a rise of more than 6,000 referrals to the Child and Family Agency last year, with a corresponding rise in the number of cases awaiting social worker allocation, including 20% of cases deemed “high priority”.

The Rotunda Hospital is now taking patients seeking abortion from outside the Dublin area, not just its normal catchment area of North Dublin.

It will take 30 to 40 years of the current measures to eradicate bovine TB, according to the Department of Agriculture.

Tusla, the child and family agency, said it will address serious shortcomings highlighted by an inspection report into its fostering services in parts of Dublin, Kildare, and Wicklow, which included a shortage of social workers and foster carers.

Dozens of examples of bad practice flagged by probe of expenses paid to community healthcare staff.

Severe pressure on health and water services are being tackled by staff nationwide as the massive clean-up continues in the aftermath of Storm Emma.

Latest: As the snow melts drivers are being warned not to be lulled into a false sense of security.

During the Dublin Fringe festival, Override will explore our relationship with technology and how it will effect human relationships, writes Padraic Killeen

A new national autism registry offers a glimmer of hope to families who battle to access state services for their children and face long waiting lists, writes Helen O’Callaghan.       

Ireland’s first autism registry was launched last night by Children’s Minister Katherine Zappone.

Only around half of doctors around the country have signed up to provide free GP care for children under the age of 6.

The Grid Link Action Group is calling for the resignation of Eirgrid Project Manager, John Lowry, following his comments that the controversial new GridLink project cannot be located underground.

Further to Noel Baker’s report (‘Delays put children at significant risk: HIQA’, Nov 16, 2013), it is vital to note the HIQA report identifies a lack of resources as a central and significant problem that causes delays and limits services.

Vulnerable children in Kildare and West Wicklow were at “significant risk” due to insufficient resources and a backlog in assessing cases, according to a new Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) inspection report.

A quarter of all social worker jobs in the country are unfilled, with services in some areas on the verge of becoming “unsafe”, staff representatives have said.

The minister for children gave one of the creches at the centre of allegations of mistreatment a clean bill of health just a year earlier after parents reported another incident there to both the HSE and to the gardaí.

An investigation is continuing in to an aggravated burglary in West Wicklow this morning.

South Tipperary, Kerry, Waterford, Roscommon and Cork City have experienced the sharpest rises in the number of heroin addicts seeking help, figures show.

Gardaí have launched a murder inquiry after human remains found in the Wicklow Mountains were identified as those of missing teenager Marioara Rostas.

Gardaí believe human remains found in the Wicklow mountains are those of missing Romanian teenager Mariora Rostas.

GARDAÍ investigating the crimes of convicted rapist Larry Murphy have found nothing of value from their search of a hunter’s cabin near his former home in west Wicklow.

THE director of the Clare Crusaders Clinic in Ennis yesterday claimed that vital services from the HSE are not there for children requiring speech and language therapy.

A RECORD number of children required crisis intervention from the HSE last year, with the executive admitting that there is a “significant under-resourcing” of social work departments to meet the challenge.

COMMUNITY leaders in west Wicklow are setting up a crime text alert system linking several towns and involving gardaí in the wake of the release of local convicted sex offender Larry Murphy.

THE brother of Larry Murphy has said he hopes no other woman ever suffers at the hands of the rapist.

A PUBLIC meeting is to be held in west Wicklow tomorrow to coincide with the release of a notorious rapist from the area.

AHEAD of the expected freeing of rapist Larry Murphy there have been calls for sex offenders who shun therapy to be denied early release from jail.

GARDAÍ expect to have formal identification of skeletal remains found in a wooded area of Co Wicklow in the coming days.

ANXIOUS relatives of a missing Dublin man are waiting to discover if the decomposed skeletal remains discovered in a wooded area of Wicklow are those of their son.

Counselling services across the country were on standby today as survivors of clerical abuse mark the first anniversary of the harrowing Ryan Report.

THE Health Service Executive tried to block the publication of a magazine article detailing the innovation of an occupational therapist who saved the HSE more than €2.3m in the last two years and cut the waiting list for essential equipment in his area from 600 to zero.

DETECTIVES are closing in on two gunmen who nearly killed a young man early yesterday morning.

Donal Hickey looks at mountain biking in Ireland

EUROPEAN UNION agriculture policy will be shaped more and more by budgetary concerns, Irish farmers have been told.

LIVING in the heart of horse breeding and training country in the green plains to the west of the Wicklow mountains, the Sleator family were themselves connected with horseracing for many years.

A man and a woman are dead following a road accident in west Wicklow this afternoon.

AN INQUIRY has been ordered into a proposed land purchase deal between Roadstone and a local authority which is probing illegal dumping on part of the land.

NURSES have been accused of misleading people by saying there are more empty hospital beds than patients on trolleys.