Confusion reigned over the special pandemic recognition bonus for healthcare workers over the weekend, as Éamonn Donnelly also to Claire Byrne on Friday and you can listen back here. 

Éamonn is also quoted in this RTÉ piece that recaps the timeline of events leading up to the current situation. And this Indo piece believes fixing the health service would be a good way to honour sacrifices of health workers over the last 18 months.

Meanwhile, the Government is examining introducing a bank holiday between now and the end of the year as part of a pandemic bonus.

In case you missed it, Fórsa put up this statement on the website on Friday rejecting Irish Water’s claims that recent service shortcomings in Dublin and Wexford occurred because of the lack of a single national water utility.

From today, children who are close contacts of a person with Covid-19 in school will no longer have to restrict their movements if they don’t have symptoms. Existing rules around testing asymptomatic children who are close contacts and contact tracing will still apply for special education facilities. 

Iceland came close to becoming the first country in Europe to have a women-majority parliament after its election on Saturday, but a recount showed it fell short. The initial result would have made Iceland the first country in Europe to have more women than men in parliament.

Back here, over €150,000 in funding will be given to political parties and independent councillors in a bid to increase the number of female candidates and councillors in the next local election in 2024.

Elsewhere, Germany's Social Democrats have narrowly won the election as Merkel's CDU bloc sunk to a historic low. The first official provisional result gave the party a 25.7% share of the vote, ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, which won 24.1%. This marks a historic defeat for the Christian Democrats, who have held power for 16 years.

Voters in Switzerland have thrown their support behind allowing same-sex couples to marry, bringing the Alpine nation in line with many other countries in Western Europe. Official referendum results showed the measure passed with 64.1% of voters in favour and won a majority in all of Switzerland’s 26 states.

And finally to finish off, though there’s not much to laugh about in a fuel shortage crisis, when the BBC sent reporter Phil McCann to a BP station on Saturday to cover the unfolding events, Twitter was very quick to see the funny side of it. 

Have a good week everyone.