THE latest figures from the Department of Finance show that tax returns for the year are 5.8% ahead of target, with €31.6bn collected up to the end of September, representing a year-on-year increase of €2.74bn. This is a reassuring €1.74bn ahead of target.

AMERICA is in the deadly grip of a self-inflicted epidemic. Already this year, in just nine months, 9,940 people — more or less the population of Dungarvan — have been killed in assault incidents involving guns. Of those, 550 were children, and 1,962 were teenagers. This drip, drip of terrible violence can hardly be surprising as almost half of all guns in civilian ownership on the planet are held by Americans.

THERE will be very little sympathy for the seven men who were given sentences ranging from 12 to 20 years yesterday for their part in an aggravated burglary on a young family living in the countryside.

IT is an outrage that school authorities can refuse children a place in their local school because they have not been baptised in the Catholic Church.

THE news that Cork Airport is to begin its first ever scheduled transatlantic flights to Boston and New York comes as a major boost to the Munster region.

THE arrest yesterday of a man in connection with human trafficking in Co Donegal is a sign that the problem may be far greater here than many of us ever suspected.

THE European Commission has finally come to recognise the blindingly obvious: the EU’s banks are neither ready, willing nor able to become the engine for future economic growth.

EACH year, the publication of the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report is an occasion for despair, frustration, anger, and growing bewilderment. 

THE announcement of a €27bn capital plan to drive the development of infrastruce yesterday is very welcome, even if some of the timescales mentioned suggest we are trying to hold an All-Ireland final on Mars now water has been found there, rather than build a few miles of railway in Dublin.

THE hope that most of those young people who emigrated in the last decade to find work will, sooner or later, return to Ireland burns brightly in many a parent’s heart, even if they won’t give voice to that hope in case they jeopardise it.