Pensions have become a mainstream issue this election with many parties scrambling to address voter concerns about being left in limbo – denied access to the State pension for two or more years after they retire at 65. Sinn Féin has promised to lower the age for the State pension back to 65 while Labour leader Brendan Howlin is on record as saying that anyone seeking the party’s support in government would have to halt any plans to further increase the State pension age to 67.

School secretaries have suspended work-to-rule action, which commenced last Monday, after Forsa accepted an invitation to return to talks at the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC).

In a worsening case of shortage of hospital beds, an 88-year-old woman had to wait for 80 hours on a trolley for a bed in the emergency department (ED) in University Hospital Galway.

Fianna Fail have set out their plans to solve the current health crisis. The strategy includes adding five million home-help hours, doubling the National Treatment Purchase Fund, adding 2,600 more hospital beds and hiring an extra 4,000 nursing staff over five years.

Following last week’s incident where a man was seriously injured after his tent was removed by heavy machinery from the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal, new figures show a total of 222 homeless people died in Ireland last year in the worsening homeless crisis.

A newly published report by Oxfam found that Ireland has the fifth largest number of billionaires relative to its population of any country in the world, and claimed that global wealth inequality is out of control. As half of the world’s population now gets by on less than €5 a day, the issue of global wealth inequality is also highly gendered, the report revealed.

As for today’s Zen, enjoy this video of a baby trying ice-cream for the first time.