IF Germany is wrestling with uncertainties about its national identity, its small southern neighbour is struggling with political and cultural questions so alike as to be identical.

LEO VARADKAR, making his first visit to Cork as Taoiseach, brought good news from Dublin yesterday, when at a Chamber of Commerce and Irish Examiner business breakfast he announced that planning work on the long-awaited Cork-Limerick motorway was at last to be started.

AS rookies in the international men’s Test cricket league, Ireland’s XI might have hoped for understrength opponents for their debut five-day contest in Dublin next May; the West Indies, currently, just aren’t cutting it. 

THE move towards electric vehicles appears to be unstoppable and it is now entirely feasible that, within a generation or so, petrol and diesel fuelled cars will become as rare as the gramophone.

THERE is something oddly comforting about the fact that beer was ranked alongside bread as the most important dietary staple in Elizabethan Ireland.

THE secret of Colm Cooper’s success as a player lay not in his feet but in his head. 

THERE are certain events in the history of the State that continue to engage, concern, challenge and even shame us.

HERE’S a question for pub quiz fans: What is the EELT?

LAST year’s Brexit vote in the UK provoked a mixture of shock and awe in Brussels but, as soon as they had picked themselves up off their marble floors, leading EU politicians, bureaucrats and policy makers were quick to announce that the community of nations still had a glorious future, remaining strong, resolute, economically powerful and united.

Paschal Donohoe’s first budget was a bit like The Late Late Show — something for everyone in the audience, a stand-still patchwork quilt that is prudent and sober but lacking in ambition. It tinkers at the edges but fails to offer an overall vision for the future.