AFTER Ireland’s air and sea ports were on high alert following the escape of a violent and dangerous prisoner who stabbed two prison officers, the spotlight rightly turned to the vexed issue of security. 

ORIGINALLY conceived as a time of religious reflection to help Christians rediscover their faith through prayer, penance and fasting, Lent as it was known to generations of Irish people was based on the 40-day fast of Jesus in the desert. 

THE Common Agricultural Policy and the Single Payment Scheme seem a closed book that cannot be reviewed but figures revealed today can hardly pass without some sort of scrutiny. 

IT is tragic but not unexpected that the ceasefire agreed between France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia last week seems as ineffective as earlier agreements made in efforts to end the fighting in Ukraine.

THE intervention of the Geneva-based Japan Tobacco Group in our Government’s entirely legitimate and laudable campaign to protect Irish citizens from the odious and often fatal consequences of smoking tobacco is as outrageous as it was inevitable. 

YESTERDAY’S assertion by Ashoka Mody, the former IMF chief of mission to Ireland, that Enda Kenny’s Government “blew” an opportunity to get a deal on debt write-down and a “slower pace of austerity” from the troika when it took office four years ago, will hardly enhance the reputation of the Coalition.

FOOD labelling is a fraught issue and one where the interests of consumers are not served as well as they might be. 

CANNABIS is sometimes seen as a relatively innocuous drug, especially when compared to other, harder, more destructive substances. 

IN THE days immediately after the January 7 attack on the Paris headquarters of the provocative magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which two Islamist terrorists initially killed 11 people and injured 11, the West was united in its outrage.

RUGBY is at at a decisive crossroads. It can continue its evolution towards a sport where physical domination is everything, with the awful collateral damage that brings, or it can try to return to a more balanced, ecumenical, and probably more skilful game.