The golden eagle is to be reintroduced to Ireland almost a century after the species became extinct on the island. The golden eagle is to be reintroduced to Ireland almost a century after the species became extinct on the island. Up to 75 golden eagle chicks are to be moved from the Scottish Highlands to Co Donegal, where the birds were once native, as part of an ambitious five-year project to establish a breeding population. Habitat change and the popularity of game shooting on many estates in the 19th century led to the eagles becoming extinct.During the next few days, birds aged between five and six weeks will be collected from their nesting places across the western Highlands of Scotland, and the first 12 will be flown across the Irish Sea before the end of the month.On arriving in Donegal, they will be kept in specially made cages for another six weeks before they are ready to fly, when they will be released into the Derryveagh mountains in Glenveagh National Park.An adult golden eagle is thought to need an average daily food intake of about 230g (8oz) of meat. The mountains should offer a varied diet, including hare, rabbit, crows, seagulls, pigeons, mink, fox cubs, mice, rats and frogs.Each bird will be fitted with a numbered tag to aid visual identification and a radio transmitter, enabling their progress to be tracked.Lorcan O'Toole, a conservationist with experience of birds of prey and reintroduction programmes in Scotland, is managing the initiative. "Ireland appears to have lost six species of birds of prey in recent centuries, including some of our most striking and charismatic birds such as osprey, red kite and golden eagle," he said."We hope this imbalance and loss can be redressed in the new millennium."If the project is a success, up to eight pairs could be breeding by the year 2010, after the birds are released over a five-year period.Ronan Harrigan, chairman of the Curlew Trust, said: "This project's potential for Donegal is enormous. One has only to look at what followed in Scotland after the ospreys returned for the first time to breed, and the enormous tourist numbers that annually came to visit the first breeding sites."As the birds normally lay two eggs, but the elder chick often kills the younger one, only one will be selected from each nest for the transfer so that Scottish numbers are not affected.

The last breeding pair of golden eagles in Ireland was found on the north Co Mayo cliffs in 1912.. The former French foreign minister Roland Dumas ­ recently convicted of corruption ­ accused two senior, serving cabinet ministers yesterday of approving illegal payments to Germany's Christian Democrat party. The former French foreign minister Roland Dumas ­ recently convicted of corruption ­ accused two senior, serving cabinet ministers yesterday of approving illegal payments to Germany's Christian Democrat party. Dumas, convicted of taking de facto bribes from the Elf oil company, including a £1,100 pair of shoes, said the former President Fran?s Mitterrand was aware of the covert payments made by the company, which was then state-owned.He "underwrote the whole project", Dumas said, including the illegal payments allegedly made to Chancellor Helmut Kohl's Christian Democrat party as a kickback on Elf's purchase of the Leuna oil refinery in the former East Germany in 1992.It was "surely the truth" that all senior officials at the Elys?Palace ­ the Presidential residence ­ "knew all about this affair", Dumas told the newspaper Le Figaro. He identified, by name, two advisers to Mr Mitterrand: Elisabeth Guigou, now Employment Minister in the centre-left French coalition government, and Hubert V?ine, now Foreign Minister. He also said that the Prime Minister at the time, Edouard Balladur, "equally gave his approval".Both the serving ministers and Mr Balladur denied all knowledge of the affair. Dumas protested that he, alone, among senior French politicians, was being allowed to carry the can for the sprawling Elf affair, allegedly involving secret payments to serve French interests in Africa, Asia and Europe and kickbacks to French personalities and political parties.

He appeared to be especially furious with Ms Guigou, who was Justice Minister in 1998, at the time that he was first accused, but did nothing to try to help him."If you accuse me of trying to pay Ms Guigou back, I won't contradict you," Dumas said. "If she happens to be among those who transmitted Mitterrand's order [on the Leuna refinery] and said, 'You must sign', and yet the only thing that anyone cares about is the story of one pair of shoes, then that is terrifying."Dumas, 78, was convicted last month of "receiving embezzled funds" from Elf in 1989-93, in the form of gifts channelled through his mistress at the time, Christine Deviers-Joncour, including the hand-stitched Italian shoes. Deviers-Joncour and three other people were also convicted of abusing the company funds. All were given prison sentences; all have appealed.Dumas ­ for many years one of the most important figures in French Socialist politics ­ has always insisted that his role in the Elf affair must be judged against the background of the wider state-approved chicaneries at the oil company, including the controversial sale of French frigates to Taiwan.By naming other, senior politicians for the first time, Dumas seems to be planning a judicial scorched-earth policy before his appeal is heard later this year, or early next year.His accusations will also have reverberations in Germany where judicial authorities are investigating alleged illegal funding of the former Chancellor Kohl's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).