It seems incredible, even by the standards of the HSE, that the family of Savita Halappanavar was not told that a number of staff at University Hospital Galway, where she died after complications brought about by a miscarriage, were disciplined over their part in her death almost two years ago before details were published in the press.

In Irish terms, the appointment of former environment minister Phil Hogan as EU commissioner for agriculture and rural development can be regarded as something of a coup.

The simple, chilling fact that 10 people take their own life in Ireland every week means that there is hardly a family in the country that does not have first-hand experience of this modern tragedy, one that often has a catastrophic impact on a family’s — especially on partners or parents — emotional wellbeing, contentment, and security.

There can hardly be an Arctic misadventure or mystery more remembered in song and legend than the 1845 exhibition led by John Franklin to Canada’s Northwest Passage.

Almost nine years ago, on the night of November 2, 2005, Patrick O’Kelly, a 61-year-old security guard, fell from his bed in the then Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick where he was being treated for a suspected stroke. Within hours of that accident, his family was summoned to his bedside to be told that Mr O’Kelly was dying.

This week, Finance Minister Michael Noonan is in Europe trying to get support for proposals to refinance IMF loans. If he is successful, and the indications are that he may be, the deal could save us up to €400m every year until the debt is cleared. This would be a significant prize, one that would add to the growing sense of optimism around the economy.

Yesterday’s OECD Education at a Glance report records that our teachers are amongst the best paid in the developed world but that they work longer hours and have to deal with bigger classes than most of their peers in other countries.

It was an almost universal rite of passage in pre-pastoral culture that young men were sent to the forest or savannah, jungle or distant mountain range to single-handedly kill the wolf, the lion, the grizzly bear or whichever animal represented the greatest challenge to his community. If that young man returned with a trophy, his path to life’s next milestone was open and success a possibility. If he did not, it was no more than evolution in action and the tribe moved on.

Those at the centre of the scandals that so damaged the Central Remedial Clinic and Rehab can insist that they did nothing wrong, but the public perception is that executive pay and pensions at those government-supported charities were a pretty shabby example of snouts-in-the-trough greed.

Sunday’s All-Ireland hurling final was, by any criteria, a spectacular, heart-pumping event, one defined by skill, commitment and — if political correctness has not marked this word offside — manliness.