In The News

The long-predicted crack cocaine epidemic is here and has been compared to the heroin epidemic that ravaged communities and destroyed lives in Dublin in the 1980s.

It’s cheap at as little as €10 for a “rock”, though for users smoking that will last just minutes and they’ll spend the rest of their day focused on getting the drug, while eating and self-care become secondary concerns. It makes users agitated, paranoid and aggressive – with predictable results.

Unlike powder cocaine, Ireland’s crack cocaine problem is not distributed evenly across society. Why and how has the crisis developed? And why is crack addiction such a difficult drug to treat? And why are homeless women turning to crack cocaine in such numbers?

Eddie Mullins, who spent his career working in the prison service becoming the governor of Mountjoy jail, now heads up Merchants Quay Ireland, the Dublin-based charity offering services to homeless people and drug users. He describes the impact of the surging crack cocaine crisis on users and the wider community.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

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In the last week in June a boat set sail from The Gambia heading for the Canary Islands. On board were an estimated 200 people, made up mostly of men of all ages as well as about 20 women and five children.

Within weeks, only 36 would be alive; the rest killed by starvation and thirst as the engine failed and the boat got lost on the Atlantic migration route, now regarded as the deadliest in the world.

As the days went on, bodies were thrown overboard and tension rose between the remaining desperate travellers who had paid traffickers to take them from impoverishment in west Africa to what they hoped would be a better life in Europe.

A fishing boat found the distressed vessel in July, alerted authorities and the survivors were given medical attention in Mauritania before being returned home.

It is estimated that since 2022 more than 20,000 people have died on this route.

Sally Hayden, Irish Times reporter who specialises in migration, travelled to The Gambia and spoke to two of the survivors Alhagie Ngie (27) and Mustapha Secka (29) who gave eyewitness accounts.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

Sally Hayden’s reporting was supported by the Simon Cumbers Media Fund

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This episode was originally published in June 2026.

When Carlos Barragán discovered his mother was the victim of romance fraud, he flew to Lagos to find the con man – and found the Yahoo Boys, young men whose job it is to rip off westerners. The name comes from the old email platform, first used by the Nigerian scammers decades ago.

His mother, Silvia, had fallen in love online with flirtatious, sincere, handsome Brian; she bought rings, planned a future and was convinced that they would one day live together – when he was free to travel to Spain.

Her sons though, suspected something sinister was afoot, especially when “Brian” started to make financial demands.

Over the course of three years Carlos, a journalist, visited Nigeria multiple times to see the Yahoo Boys in action and to try to understand why this particularly cruel, exploitative form of online fraud has become such an earner for so many young men in Lagos. He also discovered a romance scam involving an Irish woman.

His compelling book, The Yahoo Boys: Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos by Carlos Barragán is published this week.

He talks about the experience on In the News.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey. 

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Every year, more than 10 million motorists drive through Dublin’s Phoenix Park. Almost all are breaking the speed limit.

All of the park’s attractions, including Dublin Zoo, the People’s Gardens, the Ashtown Castle Visitor Centre, Farmleigh House and almost 2,300 parking spaces, are accessed from Chesterfield Avenue, the main road that bisects the park. Yet there is no dedicated way for pedestrians to cross this 4km-long road.

And even if there were, crossing might still be perilous, as more than 95 per cent of motorists exceed the speed limit. And despite the addition of cycle lanes on some of the park’s roads, poor design and maintenance render many unfit for purpose.

It’s a problem that has been recognised for years, so why haven’t speeding motorists been stopped? And how Dublin’s biggest park become a commuter rat run?

Olivia Kelly, Irish Times Dublin editor and daily park user, explains.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Andrew McNair.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

By the time the final episode of The Traitors Ireland was aired last September, the nation was gripped.

The RTÉ version of the gameshow was a hit with nearly three quarters of a million people tuning in to see a trio of “Faithfuls”, Oyin, Vanessa and Kelly bag the prize.

It’s been quite the year for Vanessa Ogbonna and Oyin Adeyemi.

They came into the In the News studio to talk about their time in the castle under the watchful eye of Siobhán McSweeney; how they won and what the spent the prize on; how they dealt with social media trolls, and their fun new podcast, Oya C’mere.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Swiss media have compared what happened to Irish teenager Paula and her mother, Iwona, to the Pelicot case in France.

Prosecutors allege that Patrick Frei, 57, drugged and raped both Paula, then aged 14, and her mother, Iwona while they were living with him in the Swiss town of Untersiggenthal. It is also alleged that he filmed the assaults.

Paula and Iwona had moved from their home in Sligo in 2022 to live with Frei, a high-profile right-wing politician, a year after Iwona and Frei had begun a long-distance relationship.

So how did the case come to light and when did the alleged abuse begin? How did police build their case? And why did Swiss authorities move to deport Paula and Iwona while the investigation was under way?

Frei is due to stand trial in February 2027. His lawyer says he “disputes substantial parts of the allegations and, in particular, the legal characterisation of several of the charges”.

Conor Gallagher of The Irish Times investigations team travelled to Switzerland to speak with Paula and her mother, Iwona.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by John Casey.

Support services: Freephone 24-Hour DRCC National Helpline, 1800 77 8888; One in Four, 01-662 4070

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For Washington insiders observing how the Trump administration conducts its business, Natalie Harp is an alarming figure.

The 35-year-old White House aide appears never to leave the president’s side, whether he is meeting a world leader in the Oval Office or playing golf. Her influential role has been questioned, and ridiculed, for years.

Harp’s nickname is “the human printer”; she is rarely seen without a sheaf of documents ready for her boss. When it emerged that those documents included highly personal letters she had written to him, laying bare her devotion, insider gossip turned into public soap opera.

A political attack line delivered by Democratic senator Jon Ossoff put her in the public spotlight when he said of the president: “He doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenceless flying palace, gifted by the Emir of Qatar.”

Shawn McCreesh, a White House reporter for The New York Times, explains this latest, and perhaps most puzzling, controversy to hit the Trump administration.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan, with Andrew McNair.

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Now in its fifth week, the trial of Lindsay Clancy in the US for the murder of her three children has been headline news, with blanket TV and press coverage and endless online discussion.

What is known – and what she admits – is that on the evening of January 23rd, 2023 while her husband Patrick was out running errands, she killed their three children, Cora, 5, Dawson, 3 and Callan aged 8 months in their suburban home.

When Patrick came home, and before he found the children, he found her on the ground outside their house.

As Shanelle Kaul, a national correspondent for CBS News, tells In the News, his 911 call for help was one of the most harrowing evidence heard in court.

Her defence is that she was suffering from post-partum psychosis; the prosecution maintains her actions were deliberate.

As the jury prepare to begin deliberations this week, Kaul discusses the key evidence heard at the trial so far.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was originally published in March 2026.

In his new documentary Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars, director Mike Sheridan explores the profound influence of toxic discourse in the United States on the rest of the world – and in particular, Ireland.

Through interviews and examples he shows how, with the amplification of social media, legitimate grievance can bloom into conspiracist, and how easily performance, paranoia, and power intertwine.

As Irish Times reviewer Tara Brady notes, the film which “begins as a study of toxic discourse in the United States expands into a sobering excavation of recent unrest in Dublin. The riots of November 2023, along with the persistence of aggressive anti-immigrant demonstrations, are presented as symptoms of a transnational malaise”.

Sheridan explains to In the News how he made the documentary, how imported misinformation can gain such a powerful hold, and why high-profile US commentators including Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes became so invested in the Dublin riots without any apparent factual knowledge of what occurred.

Amplified: The Exportation of the Culture Wars is available to rent on Apple TV and other digital platforms

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode was originally published in March 2026.

If you got an invoice you’d been waiting for from your builder for work done, you’d get ready to pay it, wouldn’t you?

And if, a couple minutes after that, you got another invoice from the builder saying that actually he’d made a mistake and he’d given you the wrong bank details, you’d think nothing of it and proceed to pay.

Well that’s exactly what the reader who contacts our consumer affairs correspondent Conor Pope did. She sent the requested €30,000 to her builder and thought nothing more of it – until a week later when her builder contacted her politely wondering if where the payments was.

She is tech savvy, has been made aware through her work about all kinds of fraud, and is cautious by nature yet she had been the victim of payment redirection fraud – also known as invoice fraud.

Conor Pope came into the studio to explain how this scam worked and why this particular case should be a lesson to everyone who believes invoice scams are only targeted at big business.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.