Your Thursday evening catch-up
TOP STORIES
A 10-year old boy who it is claimed suffered brain damage at birth in a Cork hospital has settled his action against the HSE with an interim payout of €2m. Lee Gibson has cerebral palsy, cannot talk and is confined to a wheelchair. His case will come back before the High Court again in two years time for assessment of general damages in the case.
A leading lawyer has accused the State of having a ‘deny and defend’ policy and blamed it for massive payments to lawyers in medical negligence cases. Cork-based solicitor Ernest Cantillon was commenting yesterday on new figures provided by Health Minister Leo Varadkar that show in one case, the State Claims Agency (SCA) paid out over €1.1m in legal fees to a plaintiff’s lawyers last year.
A senior Garda refused to grant an Anti-Austerity Alliance councillor a permit for house-to-house and street collections in Dublin because she believed the money would be used for illegal acts, a court has heard.
The Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said the election will be early in the spring. Mr Kenny reiterated his intention to have a 2016 election while speaking at an event in Madrid today.
The laws to allow full civil marriage for same-sex couples have completed their journey through the Oireachtas. The Marriage Bill is now ready to be signed into law next week.
WORLD
A knife-wielding masked man stabbed four people at a school in southern Sweden, killing one teacher and a student before being shot dead by police. Students fled from the Kronan school in Trollhattan, near Goteborg, Sweden’s second-largest city, as the attack took place in a nearby cafe. The school has 400 students, ranging from pre-school to high school.
The US military has freed a number of Kurdish captives in a rescue mission in northern Iraq and one American was killed in the operation, a US defence official said. One official said the rescue effort was carried out overnight in the vicinity of Hawija, an Islamic State stronghold west of Kirkuk.
