Man dies in Storm Eunice
A council worker has been killed after being hit by a falling tree in Co Wexford. The man, aged in his 60s, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Gardaí and emergency services attended the incident on Friday morning in the Ballythomas area in the north of the county, and Wexford County Council has offered condolences to his family, work colleagues and friends.
The entire country remains under a yellow warning, and a similar snow and ice alert. Met Éireann has issued new weather warnings for Saturday and Sunday, covering 10 counties in the west.
Over 80,000 homes are also without power due to the storm, with the majority of outages reported in Kerry, Cork and Waterford.
With the storm tracking eastwards, London’s O2 arena has been shut after parts of its roof were ripped off in high winds as Storm Eunice struck.
Taoiseach speaks on mask mandate
A further 8,593 cases of Covid-19 were reported on Friday, with 4,821 confirmed by PCR test while a further 3,772 people registered a positive antigen test through the HSE portal.
The Taoiseach has confirmed an end to mandatory mask wearing in almost all settings from February 28th, also confirming the Government would be accepting the chief medical officer's recommendation to stand down Nphet in its current form.
The decision to end mandatory mask wearing in almost all settings comes as a number of health professionals and experts have expressed concern over the rule change and cautioned there is a risk the move will be misinterpreted.
The country's testing and tracing system is also likely to scale down on the recommendation of Nphet, with a targeted approach identified as the way forward.
Pedestrian hit by truck
A female pedestrian has died following a collision with a truck in Dun Laoghaire.
Gardaí are investigating the fatal incident which occurred on Friday morning at around 10am, at the junction of George's Street Lower and Convent Lane in the Dublin coastal suburb.
The pedestrian, a woman aged in her 70s, was fatally injured in the collision. She has been removed from the scene to St Columcille's Hospital, Loughlinstown where a postmortem will take place in due course.
The driver of the truck, a man in his late 30s, and his passenger, another man in his late 30s, were treated at the scene for injuries which are not believed to be life-threatening.
Today in the courts
The Special Criminal Court has found that a GAA All-Ireland club championship winner was involved with a cross-Border gang that stole hundreds of thousands of euro by using stolen diggers to pull ATMs from walls.
Meanwhile, a drunk man on the Dart who bit a commuter after he “chivalrously” intervened to stop him acting aggressively towards a woman has received a fully suspended sentence.
In the High Court, Sunway Travel was ordered to pay €12,000 to a man and his young son over an incident in which the boy was injured by an aparthotel room ceiling fan which was too low.
The High Court separately heard that a 74-year-old man being transported to hospital by ambulance died when he had a heart attack after the vehicle crashed into a toll plaza barrier on the M3 motorway and there was an "inexcusable" delay in getting him to hospital.
Alleged IRA man Seamus Marley, who was jailed for raping two teenage boys in the early 1990s, meanwhile failed in a High Court application seeking his release from jail.
