“Unemployment is falling, investment is on the rise, and the Irish consumer is looking ahead with more confidence.”

Princess Cristina, the sister of Spain’s King Felipe VI, will become the first member of the royal family to stand in the dock after a judge yesterday ordered her to be put on trial on charges of tax fraud.

Is there no end to the hard-neck approach of agencies created by governments to carry out major projects? 

President Michael D Higgins has hit the right note in his Christmas and the New Year address to Irish people at home and abroad. Following his State visit to the UK earlier in the year, it is indeed fair to say the people of Ireland and Britain will “no longer look at each other with doubtful eyes”.

It is nigh impossible for those of us fortunate enough to have a roof over our heads to imagine the plight of families at imminent risk of becoming homeless.

How demeaning it is to our democracy, and how chillingly illustrative of where power really lies, that Taoiseach Enda Kenny has had to intervene to request the European Central Bank to attend our banking inquiry.

The tragic deaths of eight people in a single car crash were recalled at Letterkenny Circuit Court this week when the driver of one of the cars involved, 26-year-old Shaun Kelly of Buncrana, Co Donegal, was sentenced to four years in prison with the last two years suspended for dangerous driving causing the deaths.

It was inevitable that the shocking abuse of residents uncovered at Áras Attracta in Swinford, a care home for adults with intellectual disabilities, was not an isolated case.

Rather than be upset that members of the European Parliament might have their expenses cut by anything up to 50% because of poor attendance records, most people will wonder why they get any at all if they do not turn up for work.

The announcement, more than half a century and 11 White House presidents in the making, that Barack Obama has decided that America will end its aggressive economic isolation of Cuba and restore diplomatic relations, ends a tyranny that diminished America by sustaining poverty— and facilitating human rights abuses in Cuba — is a victory for pragmatic decency and considerable political courage.