I HAVE a small girl who appears to be allergic to going to bed. Every night we make a deliberate visit to the kitchen for a last-minute snack but still she shouts from her room upstairs about how she is either hungry or thirsty.

THERE are groups all over the country busy making preparations for a traditional Irish wake – these are town councillors whose councils will disappear next month under what has been described by Environment Minister Phil Hogan as the most fundamental and radical reform of local Government structures since the 19th century.

By Alison O'Connor

MAKING predictions in politics is a mugs game, we only have to look back on the last few days to confirm that as a fact.

IF you can tell a lot about a restaurant by the state of it’s toilets, then you can surely tell a lot about a nation by the state of its main children’s hospital.

REMEMBER that crowd with the new broom and how they promised sweeping changes? It’s beginning to look like they could teach the old crowd how to suck eggs.

I WAS having a chat with my aunt — 80 years old yesterday — about how women’s place in society has changed. As I’d been arguing that women still had so far to travel, she told me a short story illustrating just how far we’ve come.

IT’S GETTING so it’s difficult to keep up. Since Christmas, we’ve had to work hard to keep abreast of all the unfolding scandals, while simultaneously maintaining our healthy sense of national moral indignation.

WHAT an extraordinary few days it has been. There is a temptation to reach for the term GUBU-esque in relation to what has unfolded with this blockbuster tale of bugging, surveilling, investigating and leaking.