If you're born and bred in a rural Midlands area...should you be entitled to build a house in your locality??....or is rural Ireland under threat from anyone who can afford to build a house anywhere they want?

Is the future of the Dean Maxwell nursing home in Roscrea in doubt?? There's growing concern after a letter sent by the Private Secretary to the Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly suggests that all people requiring long term residential care in the nursing home from Roscrea and the surrounding district of South Offaly, including Birr, will have to go to Nenagh!

And... concerns in Athlone over plans to develop fifty housing units per square hectare in the Monksland/Bealnamulla area.