Temporary respite for Government as Flood takes an election break

Saturday/Sunday

While the war in Yugoslavia dominated news coverage in the past week, there was some respite for the Government from its own crises with the news that the Flood Tribunal is to suspend its public hearings during the European and local elections. The move, which is in keeping with precedent, eases the pressure on the Government to explain conflicting accounts of the payment to Mr Ray Burke in 1989 of £30,000.

Judges should see themselves as "trial managers, setting timetables and deadlines to speed up trials", the president of the Law Society, Mr Patrick O'Connor, told the society's annual conference.

The Sinn Fein Ardfheis heard its president, Mr Gerry Adams, stress his organisation's aims as liberation, emancipation and empowerment.

Monday

At midnight the first party of Kosovan refugees arrived in Farranfore, Co Kerry, where the Minister for Justice, Mr O'Donoghue, was waiting to welcome them.

Six men were arrested in Galway in connection with a fatal shooting at a Traveller's funeral in Ballymote, Co Sligo, the previous day. The killing was linked to a long-running feud between the Ward and McDonagh families.

Locals said there were fewer gardai present than on previous occasions when the Ward or McDonagh families gathered in Ballymote for funerals.

The number of non-nationals involved in organised crime here is insignificant, the Garda Commissioner, Mr Pat Byrne, told an international conference on policing.

Tuesday

In the first apology from government to children who suffered institutional abuse, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said: "On behalf of the State and all citizens of the State the Government wishes to make a sincere and long overdue apology to the victims of childhood abuse for our failure to intervene, to detect their pain, to come to their rescue."

The Government also announced that the victims will have an opportunity to have their experiences officially heard in September under a commission to be set up to inquire into the scandal.

A former financier, Mr Finbarr Ross, was extradited to Northern Ireland. Mr Ross, who is a member of the Community of the Light of Christ Church in Talequah, Oklahoma, is wanted in connection with the loss, by investors, of £7 million in 1984.

Gay Byrne was given the freedom of the city of Dublin by the Lord Mayor, Senator Joe Doyle, at the Mansion House.

Wednesday

An honorary doctorate of laws was conferred on Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton at NUI Galway, where she praised Irish efforts at peacemaking and warned of the "perils of indifference" to the Balkan crisis.

Suppressed portions of the 1996 Madonna House report were revealed in the RTE documentary States of Fear.

The documentary showed that beatings, humiliation and sexual assault on children occurred well into the 1990s.

"My instructions were to publish the lot," Mr Michael Noonan, who had been minister for health at the time, told The Irish Times. "Then the [legal] advice came back that we could not, and I said publish what we can."

Genetically-modified foods on sale in Ireland are as safe as their conventionally-grown counterparts, according to a Food Safety Authority of Ireland report.

Widespread concern was due to a lack of knowledge and information, said the FSAI chief executive, Dr Patrick Wall.

Thursday

A vision of environmentally clean urban growth centres connected by good road and rail infrastructure, with fibre-optic telecommunications and rapid access to ports and airports, was outlined at a seminar in Dublin.

The seminar was conducted by the Department of Finance and involved submissions from the social partners on the spending of £22 billion, the National Development Budget, over the next six years.

A second group of 157 ethnic Albanian refugees arrived to be accommodated in Kildare and Wicklow.

Barnardos celebrated its 10th year as an independent Irish organisation with a party attended by the President, Mrs McAleese, in Dublin's Temple Bar. In her address Mrs McAleese congratulated Barnardos on its achievements in the last decade but said there was still a need to spread the benefits of economic prosperity.