A round-up of today's other stories in brief...
Dublin school wins Irish Aid awards
Pupils of a Dublin national school were yesterday named as overall winners of Our World Irish Aid Awards at a ceremony in Dublin.
The fifth class pupils of Clonburris National School in Clondalkin won the award for their project, titled “A Bright Future Is In Our Hands”.
They produced a book on the Millennium Development Goals and wrote an accompanying song.
Man arrested after heroin seizure
Gardaí arrested a man in Dublin yesterday after seizing €500,000 worth of heroin in Tallaght.
A house on Suncroft Drive was searched yesterday morning following an ongoing operation by the Tallaght Drugs Unit assisted by the Garda National Drugs Unit, targeting the sale and supply of controlled drugs.
Heroin with an estimated street value of €500,000 was seized.
A Garda spokesman said a 21-year-old man was arrested at the scene. He is being held at Tallaght Garda station.
Appeal for British mother and child
Merseyside police are seeking the assistance of the Irish public in locating 30-year-old Laura Halligan and her three-year-old daughter Grace who were last seen in Liverpool on Wednesday.
The mother and daughter took a taxi from Liverpool to Holyhead and may have taken a ferry to Ireland. Laura is described as 5ft 10in, slim, with long blonde/light brown hair and blue eyes. Grace wears pink-framed glasses.
Officers would like to stress to Laura they just want to know she and Grace are safe. Anyone with information can contact Merseyside police on 0044 151 777 4568.
Judge criticises condition of centre
At the Dublin Children’s Court yesterday Judge Catherine Staines said: “I am very reluctant in sending anyone to St Patrick’s Institution in its current condition.”
Last week, Children’s Ombudsman Emily Logan called for the closure of the Dublin institution. Located beside Mountjoy Prison, the detention centre holds up to 65 sixteen- and 17-year-olds and twice that number of 18- to 21-year-olds.
The judge was dealing with the case of 16-year-old youth charged with travelling as a passenger in a stolen vehicle and possessing a screwdriver as a theft implement, in Clonshaugh, north Dublin, in the early hours of yesterday morning.
Assisted suicide meeting draws protesters
A group of protesters gathered outside a public meeting held by assisted suicide advocate Dr Philip Nitschke in Dublin yesterday.
His organisation, Exit International, provides information on assisted suicide and campaigns for the right of people to make informed decisions about when and how they will die.
The protesters carried banners saying “Lock up your grannies, Dr Death is here” and “Suicide promoter not welcome here”.
Inside the Seomra Spraoi social centre in the north inner city, about 30 people attended the meeting which included a demonstration of a machine dubbed “the laptop of death”.
Dr Nitschke said the device was a more sophisticated version of the machine he used when he administered a legal, voluntary lethal injection to terminally ill patients in 1996 in Australia.