OUR health service confounds even the most determined efforts to see the glass half full on a far too frequent basis and today’s report that the HSE had, last month, to defer plans to open a €15m psychiatric unit at Cork University Hospital after unions voiced concerns over staffing and health and safety is, sadly, another such instance.

WHETHER or not the intervention of the Aer Lingus board and its chairman, Colm Barrington, in the debate around the sale of the Government’s share in the airline proves decisive only time can tell.

IMPOSING a fine on someone reflects the fact that the courts regards their offence as one that does not justify a custodial sentence, so it seems daft that almost 9,000 people were sent to prison, however briefly, because they did not pay fines last year.

JUST hours before Irish Water reminded us yesterday morning how very precarious our water supply is and that just under half — 49% — of the water processed for drinking in the State is lost because of endemic leaks in a dilapidated system, researchers at Columbia University warned that America’s south-west and the Great Plains will face decade-long droughts far worse than any experienced over the last 1,000 years because of climate change.

WE’VE never done long-term planning as well as we might like and yesterday, when he spoke to the Oireachtas health committee, HSE director general Tony O’Brien flagged another area of growing concern.

EVERY generation is sent challenges it might prefer to avoid. 

IT is far too early to celebrate the agreement aimed at ending the war in Ukraine reached after difficult talks in Belarus between the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

FOR the past seven years, the favoured mantra of many economists and bankers has been that it was impossible to foresee Ireland’s banking crisis.

IN 1898 the Skibbereen Eagle newspaper famously warned the Czar of Russia that it was keeping an eye on him.

DESPITE promises by the Government, Health Minister Leo Varadkar, and HSE management, the issue of overcrowding in the nation’s hospitals continues to worsen.