Mortgage rates
Mortgage interest rates may be set to rise, according to an expert, after ICS became the first provider to increase its fixed rates.
ICS Mortgages has announced a rate increase on all of its fixed mortgage rates with immediate effect.
The rises are a result of the increased cost of funding from the capital markets on which ICS is reliant.
Martina Hennessy, managing director of mortgage advice company doddl.ie, said: “After experiencing mortgage rate decreases for a number of years, the uplift by ICS Mortgages is a reminder that we are in a low rate environment, with mortgage rates the lowest they’ve been for over 12 years.
Covid hospital rates
Covid-19 hospitalisations surpassed 1,000 patients on Monday for the third time during the pandemic in Ireland.
The increase comes as the Department of Health confirmed 9,371 new cases of the virus on Monday - 2,100 confirmed through PCR testing and 7,271 uploaded to the HSE's antigen result portal.
Figures for the weekend have also been released, with 11,253 on Saturday and 11,266 on Sunday. Of those, 9,875 were verified by PCR tests.
University education
The Government has pledged to ensure that Ukrainians fleeing war can study at Irish universities.
Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris also confirmed that Irish students who fled from Ukraine will be able to continue their studies in Ireland, after places were made available by universities.
The majority of those students were studying medicine or dentistry.
Kinahan murder plot
A Dublin man will become the seventh person to be sentenced for participating in one of the Kinahan cartel's two plots to murder James 'Mago' Gately, an associate of the rival Hutch gang.
Martin Aylmer (35) with an address at Casino Park, Marino, Dublin 3 on Monday pleaded guilty to participation in the plan to murder Gately when the intended victim was living in Northern Ireland between September 7th, 2016 and April 6th, 2017.
The offence comes under Section 72 1 (A) of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 and the indictment states that Aylmer participated in the plot with knowledge of the existence of a criminal organisation and with the intention of enhancing that organisation's ability to carry out the murder.
Ukraine crisis
At least nine people were killed and nine more wounded in an air strike on a television tower in Ukraine's northern Rivne region on Monday, governor Vitaliy Koval said.
"There are still people under the rubble," he said in an online post.
Elsewhere, the mayor of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second largest city, has said the area has been under constant attack by Russian forces, who had fired at central districts causing an unspecified number of casualties. "They're firing at us constantly," Mayor Ihor Terekhov said on national television.
