GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Ryanair blames falling passenger traffic and high airport charges for its decision to stop Dublin-Kerry and Dublin-Cork flights in the south of Ireland. The company says it will end the first in early September and the second in late October. Ireland’s greatly improved highway system has cut travel time by road in the south, and the company mentions this as a factor in falling traffic, reports the Irish Times.
Forget gloomy stories of debt and financial ruin from Ireland: one postman from County Cork definitely won’t be feeling the pinch anymore, having just pocketed a €7 million jackpot win.
Pat Broderick of Kinsale in County Cork celebrated with his wife and daughter 31 March at the Lottery headquarters in Dublin. His wife Mary told reporters, “You go from wondering where to get the money to pay the bills to this. It’s so good!” It’s been a lucky year for Cork’s Lotto players, whose wins have so far amounted to €44 million in the National Lottery.
This comes as a stark contrast to the latest estimate of the bailout cost for Irish banks, which stands at a sobering €24 billion following Thursday’s stress tests. Patrick Honohan, Ireland’s central bank governor, has described the crisis in Ireland as ”one of the costliest banking crises in history”, with a total bill equal to €17,000 per Irish citizen.
Links to other websites: The Irish Times, The Guardian
Gardaí in Ireland have arrested seven people, originally from Morocco and Yemen, but all legal residents in Ireland, for plotting a murder abroad. Irish media are identifying the target abroad as Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who drew a cartoon of Mohammed that outraged Islamists when it appeared in the Danish press. Three women and four men were arrested in Cork and Waterford. Police say they were working with police services and intelligence groups in other countries.
Links to other sites: CNN, Irish Times
Two boys, Hassan and Hussein Benhaffaf, who were born conjoined, left the hospital in Cork, Ireland, to go home to their family, parents Angie and Azzedine and their two older children. The seven-week-old boys, who are joined at the chest, but who do not share any vital organs, are in good health. They will travel to London’s Great Ormond Street Hospital to be surgically separated in a few months, reports the Irish Times, which carries a photo released by the family.
Update 19:04 Ireland’s air traffic controllers are taking industrial action Wednesday 20 January, which will result in about 100 flights being cancelled in and out of Cork, Shannon and Dublin airports. Their union is backing 14controllers who were fired suspended Tuesday for refusing to cooperate with their employer, the Irish Aviation Authority, over using new technology, according to the Irish Times.
Paris airports cancelled about 15 percent of their flights 13-15 January, reports the Canadian Press news agency, when French air traffic controllers went on strike over pay and the possibility their civil servant status will change.
It’s been a rough end to the week in Ireland, which first lost its World Cup qualifying match to the French under questionable circumstances Wednesday 18 November, and then heavy rains set in. The country, like Britain, has massive flooding in many parts of the country: Galway was virtually cut off for much of Friday, access roads and the city centred in Ennis, County Clare were closed, Thomastown and Kilkenny in the south were badly hit by rivers that broke their banks, and parts of Cork were at one point under a metre of water. Clean-up costs are being estimated at tens of millions of euros in what one official says is the worst flooding the country has seen in 30 years.
Links to other sites: Irish Times, RTE
