As It Happened: Donohoe delivers his Brexit budget

Take a look back at how the 2020 Budget was delivered in realtime.

Donohoe defends no social welfare increase in Budget 2020

The Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe has defended no increase in personal social welfare rates in Budget 2020.

This sees pensioners stay on €248.30 a week and an invalidity pensioner on €208.50, among others.

But he told The Hard Shoulder on Newstalk: "For next year alone, we're going to have to set aside €365m of funding to deal with the affect that could happen on the Live Register if more people become unemployed because of a hard, no-deal Brexit."

Fianna Fáil: Allowing Budget 2020 to pass 'not an endorsement of Government'

Fianna Fáil has said that their allowing it to pass "should not be misread as an endorsement of this Government."

Rise TD Paul Murphy said Budget 2020 is "a tale of two budgets".

While the Peter McVerry Trust said the budget was "a missed opportunity" to strengthen ongoing work to prevent homelessness and deliver more social housing.

Varadkar, Johnson set to meet again this week

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson have spoken by phone to discuss Brexit.

It comes as talks between London and Brussels are breaking down, with Downing Street sources saying a deal is essentially impossible.

The German Chancellor Angela Merkel has told Mr Johnson a Brexit deal is "overwhelmingly unlikely", according to Downing Street.

Several towns excluded from TidyTowns competition after e-mail error

It has been revealed that a number of towns were excluded from this year's TidyTowns competition.

The Department of Rural and Community Development says a record number of 918 committees entered the event.

However the department believes that seven TidyTowns committees submitted an e-mail application which was not received by the department.