If you have the time, tune into the Employment Bar Association’s webinar on employment and the workplace after Covid at 4.30 this afternoon. With Aislinn Kelly-Lyth (Oxford University) on ‘big data’, Danny McCoy (IBEC), Shana Cohen (TASC), and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, the webinar is free but you have to register through the EBA website here. 

The Taoiseach has said health authorities here will immediately endeavour to begin using the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab again if the European Medicines Agency gives the vaccine the all clear following a meeting today.

Meanwhile, Gardaí have arrested 21 people after a number of anti-lockdown events were held in Dublin yesterday.

The Examiner reports on the Irish Postmasters’ Union (IPU) and the Independent Postmasters’ Group’s (IPG) blunt appraisal of what could happen come July, when transformation payments from An Post are due to stop and there is no alternative arrangement in place. IPU general secretary Ned O’Hara said that, unless a solution is found, as many as 200 post offices could close over the next 12 to 18 months — a quarter of the entire network.

Government departments, local authorities and State agencies will be given targets to take on apprentices as part of new strategy to boost the number of school leavers choosing alternatives to third level. The action plan, to be launched soon, aims to increase the number of annual apprenticeship registrations from 6,500 to 10,000 by 2025. At present there are only about 300 apprenticeships in the wider public sector.

The Council of Europe has dismissed a claim that the rights of Irish Defence Forces members are being violated because Irish law does not recognise their right to seek discharge for conscientious objection. PDForra, which represents 6,500 enlisted personnel, last year brought a case to the Council of Europe seeking that the Irish State recognise the right of members of the Defence Forces to register as conscientious objectors.

On a lighter note, a made-up word from The Simpsons has officially been recognised by one of the biggest online dictionaries. Called ‘embiggen’, it means to make or become bigger. The word was created by the show’s writers after they were asked to make up a word which sounded real but was not.

And finally, to wrap it up for today, following on from Roísín’s zen on Tuesday of this Kerry man’s sensational – and totally deadpan – walrus impression, a rabbit hole of edits of the clip on Twitter led me to this gem. As usual, the Internet does not disappoint. 

It’s not the first time our imaginations have been captured by colourful characters on the national broadcaster, such as when this happened or this. Icons, the lot of them.