THOUSANDS of protesters in Ireland hit the streets on Saturday after a serving soldier was given a suspended sentence for his brutal assault on a woman in Limerick last November.
Cathal Crotty was given a three-year suspended sentence on Thursday for beating Natasha O’Brien six times until she was unconscious after she asked him to stop shouting homophobic abuse.
Mr Crotty later boasted about the attack on social media.
NORMA AUSTIN HART reports from a conference on on the rights of women prisoners in the Scottish criminal justice system
AARON SMITH discusses why the Protestant diaspora are still part of Yeats’s ‘Indomitable Irishry’, and an integral part of any future united Ireland.
The independent TD’s campaign has put important issues like Irish reunification and military neutrality at the heart of the political conversation, argues SEAN MacBRADAIGH


