The man who led one of Northern Ireland’s biggest St Patrick’s Day parades for 10 years has pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting a young girl. John Linton Corry received a two-year suspended jail sentence for two counts of indecent assault on a child.

Northern Ireland has the worst record in the UK for patients failing to turn up for hospital appointments, it has been revealed. And the problem has been costing the NHS here millions of pounds a year – as well as putting people’s health at risk.

The two nursing unions involved in a dispute with the Government are preparing a major escalation of their campaign. In the row for better pay and shorter working hours, the unions are planning to hold one-hour work stoppages at around 50 hospitals and mental health facilities.

Gardai in Co Limerick are holding a 21-year-old man following a cannabis seizure yesterday afternoon. The man was detained after a search of a van on the N20 at Rourke’s Cross.

An Ulster hospital was today investigating claims that a 91-year-old woman was sent home from hospital in a taxi – at midnight. According to the SDLP’s Tommy Gallagher, the widow, who declined to be named, was discharged from the Erne Hospital in Enniskillen and told to take a taxi the 25 miles to her rural house near the village of Belleek.

A jury at the Central Criminal Court has been told that a 21-year-old man accused of murdering his 17-year-old sister was suffering from a mental disorder at the time of her killing. Patrick O’Dwyer of Shrohill, Ennistymon, Co Clare, denies murdering his sister, Marguerite, on 29 November, 2004.

Health Minister Mary Harney is expected to get a frosty reception when she addresses the annual conference of the Psychiatric Nurses Association in Co Donegal today.

Missed and cancelled hospital outpatient appointments cost the health service in Northern Ireland more than £11m, an Audit Office report has said. It said about one in 10 outpatient appointments does not take place.

The ongoing political difficulties in the Irish health service have taken another turn with the publication of advertisements for 68 new consultant roles throughout the country. Controversy surrounds the lack of agreed contractual terms and conditions for the new jobs that offer a top salary of more than €200,000.

The Irish Medical Organisation is calling on non-consultant hospital doctors not to apply for the new jobs as full consultants due to be advertised by the HSE tomorrow. The organisation has also written to doctors associations in other countries including Britain and the US asking them to make a similar request to their members.