THE State and its agents have built an impenetrable wall of silence around itself and its at-arms-length employees and their occasional failings.

THE murder of David Byrne, a 33-year-old father-of-one, in a Dublin hotel was one of the most audacious attacks on an individual in recent Irish history.

WHEN Britain’s Queen Elizabeth came to Cork, in 2011, as part of her official visit to Ireland, she was shown a statue of her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria, a locally made sculpture that once graced the highest gable of Queen’s University Cork, now University College Cork.

THE indications are that neither Enda Kenny nor Micheál Martin will be elected Taoiseach today when the Dáil returns.

THIS year, as we mark the centenary of one of the foundational events of this Republic, the Irish language — regarded as something almost sacred by some of those who sacrificed so much that we might have an independent parliament — is at a pretty low ebb. Its future may not be entirely certain but its prospects are hardly enviable.

IT is far easier to accept the idea of climate change than it is to imagine how our world might change because of what now seems an irreversible phenomena.