Covid: 271 new cases confirmed
There have been an additional 271 confirmed cases of Covid-19, the Department of Health said on Tuesday.
There are currently 77 people in hospital with the disease, 27 of whom are in intensive care units.
Daily case numbers in the Republic may change due to future data review, validation and update, owing to the HSE cyberattack.
Deirdre Morley committed to Central Mental Hospital
Paediatric nurse Deirdre Morley, who smothered her three young children at their family home and was found not guilty of their murders by reason of insanity, has been committed to the Central Mental Hospital (CMH) today.
A Central Criminal Court judge made the order this morning, nearly three weeks after a jury returned the special verdicts following the trial of the 44-year-old highly trained clinical nurse.
Mr Justice Paul Coffey said today that Ms Morley continues to suffer from a mental disorder under the meaning of the legislation and is in need of inpatient care at a designated centre.
Ms Morley, of Parson's Court, Newcastle, Co Dublin, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the murder of her sons Conor McGinley (9) and Darragh McGinley (7) and her daughter Carla McGinley (3). The children's bodies were discovered at the family home just before 8pm on January 24th last year.
Students prepare for Leaving Cert
Minister for Education Norma Foley has said additional third-level places this year will ease demand caused by increased applications and the potential impact of accredited grades.
Speaking ahead of the beginning of the Leaving Certificate written exams on Wednesday, Ms Foley said despite increases in the number of applications being made to the Central Application Office (CAO) "we're actually talking really of an increase of just 300 Leaving Cert students”.
The Minister added: “There are other students and perhaps some of them may be older candidates or mature students - they will have different mechanisms to achieve their place in college.”
Turning to the start of the written exams on Wednesday, the Minister wished students the best of luck and recognised the "enormous body of work" done by schools to allow of the accredited grades process to go ahead.
“I’m very pleased that the majority of students have opted to take both accredited grades, and the Leaving Cert exams,” Ms Foley said.
“It's been a remarkably challenging year for them, but they have shown remarkable resilience, goodwill, and good humour,” she added.
News websites recover from outage
A number of major websites are back online following a widespread outage that left many unable to access critical services.
The Irish Times was among a raft of sites affected just before 11am on Tuesday, as well as international news publishers including The Guardian and Independent, and social platforms such as Reddit.
The incident has been linked to the US firm Fastly, which helps speed up loading times by storing versions of a company’s website in local servers, meaning less data has to be transferred from long distances.
