Third level students, lecturers and higher education staff - including Fórsa’s Higher Education branch members across college campuses nationwide - staged lunchtime protests yesterday to highlight a “growing crisis” in higher education funding. Fórsa supported the student-led demonstrations and our own Kevin Donoghue is pictured in the Irish Times coverage.

The Northern Ireland Committee of the ICTU Education Group has released the findings of a major survey of teachers and support staff. The survey reveals that one in five school staff in the North are assaulted once a week.

The ESB has said it is working to develop a pipeline of projects that will enable it to generate "at least" 40% of its electricity from renewable or zero carbon sources by 2030.

The philosopher Mary Warnock died yesterday at the age of 94. Best known for her work in the area of fertility and IVF ethics, Baronness Warnock's work laid the foundations for special needs education in the UK. She produced a report in 1978 that recommended that children with special educational needs should be included and supported in mainstream classrooms, rather than go to specialised schools, paving the way for the creation of the special needs assistant. The 1981 Education Act brought in the duty to include children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Needless to say the front pages today are dominated by Brexit proceedings, with The Daily Star asking for a day off (a Break-xit) from the thousand-day saga. Huge numbers are expected to attend tomorrow's march for a People's Vote in London. Our own Bernard Harbor will be there too with a gang of family, but he won't have walked as far as Limerick man Edmund Sides, who's made his way on foot from Swansea (321km) to take part.

Your Zen moment this morning comes from an old favourite of ours in the communications unit. Alan Partridge has been back at the BBC in recent weeks co-presenting This Time, a glorious half hour of comedy which is almost indistinguishable from the One Show format it satirises. Steve Coogan continues to find new troughs of embarrassment and awkwardness into which Alan falls (nay, leaps enthusiastically), but this week's episode saw Alan come face to face with an oddly familiar-looking Sligo farmer Martin Brennan. It's a glorious thing.

Have a good weekend.