He done it wonderful or he did it wonderfully ... does it really matter how precise the language is or how a sentence is constructed? Does it really matter that long-held but once-novel conventions of language are stretched to breaking point? Does it really matter how the bro hug is offered?

Irish people are far too easily satisfied, usually far too slow to complain about poor service or overcharging — at least we were.

This morning 56,990 young adults get their Leaving Certificate results. For a minority — barely more than 11,000 — this rite of passage marks and end, for the moment at least, of their formal education. 

The modest recovery of corncrake numbers, albeit from a disastrously low base, is a victory for planned conservation measures even if it took an EU court ruling to force us to do the right thing and protect the habitat this migratory bird depends on.

Tobacco conglomerates spent decades challenging the science that proved nicotine was addictive. They dishonestly spent decades rubbishing the science that identified their products as cancerous and the root cause of fatal diseases.

Two senior government figures — Public Expenditure and Reform Minister Brendan Howlin and junior minister Simon Harris — have suggested it may be possible, in the not-too-distant future, to consider reversing some pay and pension cuts, as well as new pension contributions imposed on public- sector workers in recent years.

What a joy and what an honour it is to watch Rory McIlroy’s great talent, courage and determination reach the level that has made him the great force in world golf. The 25-year-old from Holywood in Co Down is the third youngest player to win four Majors after Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.

The peacemakers may be blessed but even the most secure pacifist must sometimes be challenged by man’s capacity for brutality and carnage. The slaughter of at least 500 Iraqi Yazidi by Islamic State militants for no reason other than their religious identity must be one such dreadful moment.

Just this weekend Tunisian coastguards intercepted 90 migrants fleeing Libya in a makeshift boat bound for the Italian island of Lampedusa. Those unfortunate people are just a tiny proportion of the hundreds of thousands trying to reach countries where there is some prospect of living beyond crushing poverty or oppression. That they are willing to take such terrible risks and run a gauntlet of exploitation, kidnapping, and preying criminality is an indication of their desperation.

The establishment of Irish Water, after years of debate and denial and the introduction of domestic water charges, was to have been one of our great modernising projects.