In an ideal world emergency services would always reach the scene of an accident in time to make a meaningful intervention and prevent any loss of life.

It is not so very long ago that every home was issued with iodine tablets to combat radiation in the event of a nuclear attack on Ireland.

László Andor the EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion has added his voice to the debate around inequality, social exclusion, falling wages, the dignity and legitimacy of working for little more than welfare rates and the millions of people trapped in poverty’s vicious pincher movement. He has also questioned governments’ commitment — or ability — to trying to protect the material security of the 124m Europeans at risk of poverty , the highest number in jeopardy since the foundation of the EEC in 1957.

In a culture where unfettered and spectacular fecundity was for so very long considered an essential expression of virility and something approaching civic and religious obligation a childless couple were often regarded in a peculiar, almost pitying light.

It is entirely appropriate that the An Post has issued a stamp to mark the bicentenary of the birth of writer and revolutionary Thomas Davis.

Ireland has every right to be proud and somewhat relieved at the safe return home of 100 troops after their hazardous tour of UN duty in the war zone of the Golan Heights in Syria.

Psychologically speaking, the odds on a person you know contracting ebola have suddenly narrowed. When Spanish health authorities revealed that another person was being monitored in Madrid for the dreaded disease, the threat was finally brought home to Europe’s door. So far, of the five people who have undergone tests for ebola in Spain, two have been found negative while a nurse confirmed as having caught the disease, possibly did so by touching her face with her glove after treating a priest who has died.

One way or another, the decision of the European Commission to back the building of a nuclear power plant in Somerset in southwest England, just 150 miles from the Irish coast, closer than Dublin is to Cork, will rekindle debate on the burning question of whether or not Ireland should go nuclear. Despite Government assurances that the new plant will not pose any danger to this country, opposition to the project is already growing among those who fear it will pave the way for more atomic plants across Europe.

It is astonishing and frightening that the Central Bank feels obliged to intervene in the mortgage market to outlaw practices at the root of our economic collapse.

Fergus O’Dowd’s assertion yesterday that Irish Water has "abjectly failed" in its approach to introducing water charges will be echoed far more widely than the utility company might care to acknowledge.