In The News

On Sunday, April 7th, 2024 there was a fatal road traffic crash in Churchtown, a suburb in south dublin. It happened early in the morning when a pensioner driving an old red van hit a tree.Unusually, the name of the dead man was not released though The Irish Times was able to report, through confidential information received at the time, that the dead man had been due in court the following day.He had been charged with more than 100 counts of sex abuse offences involving young boys dating back to the 1980s and 90s. His five victims were ready to give evidence but his death denied them any hope of justice.He wasn’t named at the time for legal reasons. But we are naming him now, thanks to the bravery of his victims, who since his death just over a year ago have met and given each other support.Neville Kearns lived in suburban Dublin and won the trust of the young teenagers who became his victim.One, who we are calling Chris, came in to studio to tell his story.Irish Times reporter Orla Ryan has talked to three of the men and explains why they chose to name him now and what it means to them.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sonia ‘Sunny’ Jacobs was 76 when she died on Tuesday morning in a house fire in Connemara.Her tragic death made headlines far beyond Galway and Ireland because Jacobs had led a truly remarkable life. It included a death row sentence for the murder of two policemen in Florida in 1976.She spent 17 years in a US jail, five in solitary confinement, before a deal with prosecutors saw her released in 1995.Another person died in the fire in the remote cottage, her carer a young man called Kevin Kelly from Moycullen.Her life – before and after that highway shooting – has been chronicled in books, a play and a film as Jacobs became a campaigner against the death penalty.In an extraordinary twist of fate, a coincidence that could barely have been imagined, she ended up married to a man whose experience mirrored hers. Peter Pringle had also been handed the death sentence over his part in the murder of two policemen: gardaí John Morley and Henry Byrne during a bank robbery in Co Roscommon in 1980.Irish Times reporter Ronan McGreevy has been in Connemara where Jacobs found peace and sanctuary and where she died. He tells In the News her story.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Children operated on when there was no need; industrial springs being used instead of approved medical devices; a doctor diverting children to his own private clinic leading to them facing dangerous treatment delays; and a poisonous work culture on the wards – these are some of the issues that have emerged in our children’s hospitals.And that’s before the not so little matter of the massive budgetary and time overruns that plague the unfinished national children’s hospital.The body tasked with overseeing the healthcare of the nation’s children is Children’s Health Ireland.It was founded in 2019 and in just six years has faced a mounting number of controversies and scandals.Questions are now being asked about the ability of CHI to do its job.And that’s a job that will get all the more complicated when the children’s hospitals, each with their own culture and way of doing things, have to merge under one roof when the new hospital opens.CHI is funded by the HSE and answers to it, so what role does the State’s healthcare body play in all this? And what is Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll McNeill going to do as CHI lurches from crisis to crisis?Irish Times health correspondent Shauna Bowers explains.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the early hours of May 8th, two masked men in a stolen Audi staged a drive-by shooting, firing nine shots indiscriminately at houses on Limerick's Hyde Road, including at April Collins’s home. More shots were fired at a Collins-owned home on the Hyde Road in November 2024, and in two separate attacks in January 2025. Since then, there have been a dozen violent incidents, including pipe and petrol bomb attacks. The Garda Emergency Response Unit now conducts nightly armed checkpoints in flashpoint areas. The gangs appear undeterred.Between February and April, the Cork-based bomb disposal unit was deployed on multiple occasions to deal with pipe bombs seized in Limerick’s criminal strongholds.In 2012 there was hope that the violent territorial feud between the city’s key drug suppliers, the McCarthy-Dundon gang and the Keane-Collopy gang had been calmed, particularly with the jailing of key members of the Dundon family. April Collins’s evidence sealed the case for the State. She moved away from Hyde Road following the court case but in late 2023 she moved back and tit-for-tat attacks ensued.And what of the new generation street criminals? Some are so young they were not even born when the original feud was in at its peak, but their actions show those gang lines that were drawn still exist: that the feud has never gone away.Brian Carroll tells In the News about the resurgence in drug-related gang violence in Limerick.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and Suzanne Brennan. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kerry farmer Michael Gaine’s disappearance on March 20th was first treated as a missing person’s case.Soon though, it was upgraded to a murder investigation as the Garda searched for his body and explored multiple lines of inquiry.Then the farmer’s body was found – in the most grisly of circumstances. He had been dismembered with his body parts deposited into the silage pit on his farm.One such line of inquiry involved Michael Kelley, an American who lived and worked on Gaine’s 1,000-acre farm for the past three years.Kelley has identified himself to the media as having been arrested and questioned in relation to Gaine’s murder. He was released without charge.So is he and what was he doing in Kerry? How did he come to live and work on the Gaine farm? And why is he giving interviews?Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From the moment he reported her missing in 2017, Richard Satchwell stuck to his story that his wife Tina had run off.His many media appeals begged her to come home. But as the jury heard during his five-week trial in the Central Criminal Court for her murder, she was indeed home and she had been all along.Richard had killed her in 2017, dug a hole under the stairs of their terraced Youghal home and buried her.The Garda did look for her – as a missing person – but “red flags” emerged soon after her disappearance were “simply ignored” by gardaí, the court was told.What were they? And why did it take until six years after her disappearance for a thorough search of the Satchwell house to take place?Irish Times legal affairs correspondent Mary Carolan tells In the News how the court case unfolded and what happens next.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon and John Casey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Shane O’Farrell was 23 when he was the victim of a hit-and-run near his home in Carrickmacross, Co Monaghan. A law graduate, he had just submitted his master’s thesis and was enjoying a carefree cycle on that August evening in 2011.Questions around how the crash happened soon turned to who was behind the wheel. It was Lithuanian Zigimantas Gridziuska, a man known to the Garda and the courts.On the day he killed Shane and drove off, he had more than 40 convictions, including some in Northern Ireland.So how was he free to go out and kill? He had breached his bail conditions many times so why was he not in prison?Since 2011, the O’Farrell family has been seeking answers and has worked tirelessly to understand how the justice system failed their son and brother. His parents Lucia and Jim, and his sisters, Hannah, Pia, Gemma and Aimee were in Leinster House last Tuesday to hear Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan give a State apology to the family “for the fact that the criminal justice system did not protect him [Shane] as it should have”.Gemma O’Farrell tells In the News about the family’s long campaign, how they were stonewalled and disrespected by branches and agencies of the State that should have helped them and how they persisted despite all that.Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan and John Casey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nearly thirty years ago, in August 1996, 25-year-old Fiona Pender disappeared and was never seen again. Detectives have always believed Ms Pender, who was seven months pregnant when she vanished, was murdered on the day she was last seen alive. However, her remains have never been found.Earlier this week, gardaí announced the case had formally been upgraded to a murder investigation and began a search and excavation operation at Graigue near Killeigh village in Co Offaly.Gardaí are now carrying out a second search operation in Co Laois.What does the upgrade to murder inquiry mean for the investigation and why are gardaí suddenly conducting new searches?And what do we know about the primary suspect in the case?Crime and security editor Conor Lally discusses the latest developments in the case.Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has published its latest projections for the 2030 climate targets and it’s bad news for Ireland.The Irish State has the worst emissions per capita in Europe – projections show our greenhouse gas emissions will fall by just 23 per cent by 2030, compared to our original national target of 51 per cent, according to EPA data published on Wednesday.The latest figures indicate none of the State’s biggest emitting sectors – transport, agriculture and electricity – will meet their climate commitments. In most sectors, emissions continue to rise or are going down only marginally.The cost of missing these targets is obvious – extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and disruptive. And countries who fail to meet these commitments must pay huge fines.What can Ireland do between now and 2030 to reduce emissions? And how much will Ireland pay if it fails to meet these legally-binding targets?Irish Times environment and science correspondent Kevin O’Sullivan discusses the implications of Ireland’s failure to meet climate targets. Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by John Casey. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Five years ago, and three months into the 2020 global pandemic, the Leaving Cert was cancelled.The Department of Education announced in May 2020 that students due to sit their final school exams would instead receive predicted or ‘calculated’ grades from their teachers.These much more generous results led to grade inflation which has seen tens of thousands of students receive bumper Leaving Cert results in recent years. The rise in grades also forced universities to use lotteries for entry to some high points courts, especially highly competitive courses such as medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and others.The Government is now moving to reduce this grade inflation, meaning Leaving Certificate results will be lower this year.What does this mean for the class of 2025 and what price will they pay for the reversing of grade inflation?Irish Times Education editor Carl O’Brien discusses the plans to bring grades back down to pre-pandemic levels.Presented by Sorcha Pollak. Produced by Declan Conlon.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.