News Roundup #4

Katherine Donnelly: New frontiers are opening up in drive to lure foreign students
FOI request reveals that the highest number of international students in the Republic's third-level sector is University College Dublin, with 2,620 bringing in over €30 million. Total international students in Irish colleges amount to 32,000.

(My former colleagues in Scotland will no doubt wince at the statement that "Ireland is up against giants such as Australia, Canada and the US in seeking to lure them." It seems their efforts have gone unnoticed ...)

Shortall accused Reilly over second list
Documents obtained by the Irish Times under FOI show that then minister of state Róisín Shortall confronted Minister of Health James Reilly over changes to the list of primary health care centres which included two new centres in his own constituency. 

Pat Finucane murder pistol handed back to British Army by RUC
A bit of cross-border FOI - using the UK's Freedom of Information Act, RTE reporter Richard Dowling obtained from the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) a copy of a formerly secret chapter of the Stevens Report into the death of solicitor Pat Finucane at the hands of Loyalist paramilitaries. This showed that the gun used, which originated with the British Army, was handed back to them despite its status as evidence. Writing on the RTE website, Dowling points out that this request would not have been possible in the Republic as the Garda Siochana are still outside the remit of FOI in Ireland.