In Covid news, the chief medical officer says there's “significant and concerning indicators that this disease in moving in the wrong direction”, while a school in Kerry deals with an outbreak of the virus, and the Tánaiste says it's likely to be the second quarter of next year before people start to see the differences from Covid-19 vaccine rollout.

Nevertheless, The Irish Times leads this morning with news that Covid-19 restrictions will be eased from Friday despite growing concern over infection numbers on both sides of the Border ahead of the Christmas holidays. In the UK, restrictions ease but people are advised to scale back their Christmas plans.

Elsewhere, ICTU's Dr Laura Bambrick writes in the latest edition of Eolas magazine 'Workers have no rights to remote working: This needs fixing, while the sharing of hate speech on social media is to become a criminal offence under Government proposals to combat racism and bigotry. The planned law is to provide protection to trans and disabled people alongside ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants and other members of the LGBT community.

The new legislation also includes protections for social-media companies from prosecution. A sweet deal for them no doubt.

Elsewhere, it was the Taoiseach's last day in the Dáil before the break yesterday. As a parting gift to the opposition, the Irish news media and a sizable chunk of Irish Twitter, he left what Miriam Lord describes as Micheál’s Christmas Clanger.

Your Zen this morning comes from midwife Clodagh Maher, who didn’t think anything could perk her up after a busy 13-hour shift on Tuesday. But then she saw the DART arrive into Pearse station where the driver received a proposal of marriage. You don't believe me? Well take a look see for yourself here.

Niall