AT A moment of crisis, it may be tempting to bend the rules, to take a short cut to quickly resolve a pressing problem — or take advantage of a buoyant, almost insatiable market.

THE tourism initiative launched yesterday seems impressive but it might be even more so if it had a budget. Despite that minor detail, a programme based on 5,000 years of history has, according to Fáilte Ireland, the potential to increase visitor numbers to the East of Ireland by 20% and tourism revenues by nearly €1bn by 2020.

FORMER president Mary McAleese has always been a committed Catholic, so her decision to declare she will vote for same-sex marriage next month is a significant intervention. 

HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON’S ambition has never been in question or hidden. 

THE Green Party had six deputies in the last Dáil, including two cabinet members. Now the party does not have even one representatinve in the Oireachtas.

PUBLIC transport has, despite a substantial annual taxpayer subsidy, never managed to break even in this country.

IN THE last few days, almost 1,000 migrants were rescued from three overcrowded skiffs off Libya. 

GROWING exchequer returns, increased retail activity, and an active housing market may be indications that our economic recovery continues apace, but a falling unemployment rate is the real acid test of policy and sentiment. 

IT IS possible to argue that not one Government minister has been as influential in their particular fiefdom as garda whistleblowers Maurice McCabe and John Wilson have been in our police force. 

THE bumbling Mr Bumble in Charles Dickens’ novel Oliver Twist declared the law to be an ‘ass’. He wasn’t, of course, reflecting on Ireland’s inheritance laws but the comment is prescient in light of the fact that wife-killer Eamonn Lillis emerges from prison today a wealthy man.