In the jaundiced eyes of punters pummelled by a succession of tax hikes, the Universal Social Charge is without a shadow of doubt Ireland’s most hated and most politically toxic tax.

If anybody has the right to be upset by the constant bickering going on around him, it is the Ceann Comhairle of Dáil Éireann, Seán Barrett.

What part of “dangerous” do some drivers not understand? 

Depending on which side of the fence you stand on, Pope Francis’s scathing address to the Vatican curia was what happens when an outsider indifferent to institutional comforts and conventions assumes power and demands change or, if you take another view, the unprecedented speech was fleeting power speaking to real, permanent power in an attempt to rejuvenate a body grown insular and irrelevant.

The publication yesterday by Cancer Research UK of a report that showed that more than four in 10 cancers could be prevented if people led healthier lives hardly made for comforting holiday reading but then it was not intended as such.

The High Court decision to facilitate a clinically-dead pregnant woman being taken off life support brings some sort of conclusion to what was a tragic, heart-rending situation for all involved, especially for the family of the unfortunate woman.

On the eve of one of the great Christian festivals, even if we now celebrate materialism with the zeal we once reserved for Christmas religious observance, it may be appropriate to consider the consequences of being Christian in the many parts of the world where religious freedom is an unknown concept and where being a Christian may endanger your life.

The fall in Dublin house prices for November is so small — just 0.1%— that it may be unwise to suggest that the policy that decrees that prospective mortgage holders must have 20% of the purchase price of a property before applying for a home loan is working.

The Immigrant Council of Ireland reports that teenagers and women trafficked into Ireland for sex face “daily rapes” in brothels and are quickly moved around the country to satisfy demand from sex buyers for “fresh meat”.

So far this year, 191 people have died on our roads, one more than for the whole of 2013 and 29 more than in 2012.