An English drug trafficking syndicate is thought to have lost more than £70m-worth of cocaine after an overladen dinghy carrying packages ashore capsized in rough seas off south-west Ireland.

Children in Northern Ireland (CiNI), the regional umbrella body for the children’s sector in Northern Ireland, has welcomed today’s publication of NICCY’s (NI Commissioner for Children and Young People) research “Spending on Children in Northern Ireland”.

Sex offenders who have admitted abusing children are being let off with a caution rather than being brought before the courts, the Belfast Telegraph has revealed. Almost 90 sex offenders have been cautioned in the province over the past two years rather than being charged.

Northern Ireland is facing a childminding crisis unless urgent financial incentives are introduced, Stormont Ministers have been warned. With acute shortages in many areas, representatives of the profession called on the Executive to take immediate action to halt the exodus and attract new recruits.

Children are being short changed on social service spending, according to research for the NI Commissioner for Children and Young People. It found the expenditure per child in NI on personal social services was £287, compared with £513 in Scotland, £429 in Wales and £402 in England.

Rocketing house prices in Belfast are leading to ever longer waiting lists for rented social housing in Belfast, the Housing Executive has said. The number of home sales to first time buyers had plunged from nearly two thirds to just one third in six years.

There have been demands for extra security measures at hospitals after it emerged more than 1,000 assaults were launched on hospital staff in Belfast last year.

The Minister for Justice, Brian Lenihan, speaking on RTÉ’s Six One news has said there are ‘very serious problems’ in prisons. He added that ‘the first step we have to take is to secure our prisons…prison officers are in the front line, we need a second line’.

A public consultation will be held into plans to exhume hundreds of bodies from a graveyard in Omagh in order to make way for a new hospital building. Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said the Western Health and Social Care Trust was handling the issue as sensitively as possible.

The first ever multi-media support package for parents and carers of children with autism in Northern Ireland has been launched with the aim of ” answering all the questions that need answered”. Peat (Parents Education As Autism Therapists) has launched Simple Steps, a CD-Rom training and support package.