THERE was something of a sting in the tail of the jovial celebrations at the White House on St Patrick’s Day when President Obama indicated to the Taoiseach his concern that Islamic extremists may be using Ireland as a staging post to enter the United States in order to launch terrorist attacks there.

IN his 1974 novel, Take the War to Washington, Peter Van Greenaway deals with the Vietnam War, envisaging disaffected veterans literally bringing the conflict — with all its horrors — to the centre of power in the US.

YESTERDAY we celebrated our national day with a great, uplifting sense of fun and a determined, unrelenting pride.

AS a small island nation we need an efficient and active navy, especially for policing the waters around our coast and search and rescue operations.

THERE is an impressive directness, a reassuring absence of ambiguity or sentiment about the decision to sack three British judges because they used official IT accounts to watch pornography.

IT is one of the glories of today’s world that technological and communication advances have made the past — and education — far more accessible to everyone.

THIS is our national feast day though it has become a well-lubricated knees-up, international and secular, rather than what it once was — a day set aside to contemplate the legacy of the Welsh swineherd credited with introducing Christianity to this island and, to a considerable degree, an Irish nationalism more robust than it seems today.

When, in 1597, Shakespeare included the line “uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” in Henry IV, Part II, he can hardly have imagined how relevant, how very pertinent and precise, his observation would be on this small island more than four centuries later.

THE simple statistic, though it’s probably reflective of what happens in a lot of other European countries, that sex exploitation is behind seven in 10 cases of human trafficking into Ireland, is hardly something we can be proud of.

IN all but the most exceptional cases, facilitating a child’s non-attendance at school is, like a diet centred on junk food, a form of child abuse and should be treated as such.