WITH controversy engulfing the Garth Brooks concerts at Croke Park, things look intractable following the country singer’s ominous threat that he will play all five concerts or none at all.

The mood music of the economy has an upbeat rhythm following the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showing gross domestic product (GDP) grew by an encouraging 2.7% in the first three months of the year.

It seems commonsense has finally prevailed in the row over controversial GAA plans to stage five consecutive Garth Brooks concerts at Croke Park.

To paraphrase a well-known commercial, ‘every little hurts’.

While hundreds of thousands are enjoying the blessings of sunny days and beach weather, the danger associated with swimming, water sports and diving have become all too apparent.

The lengthy and keenly anticipated report by Children’s Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly is a scathing indictment of the traumatic, distressing, humiliating and wrongful removal by gardaí of two Roma children from their families in Ireland after a wave of panic swept across Europe when a blonde, blue-eyed girl named Maria was found hiding in an encampment in Greece.

It is astonishing that long after caesarean section replaced the mediaeval practice of symphysiotomy, up to 1984 women were still having their pelvis broken during childbirth at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda.

Starkly contrasting faces of Ireland were plain to see yesterday as a cutting-edge company which began life as a cattle breeding society announced new jobs on a rising tide of economic optimism while, simultaneously, a social justice think-tank released a stinging report showing poverty levels increasing across the country which now ranks among the worst in Europe.

Now that Frances Fitzgerald appears to have settled comfortably into her role as minister for justice, perhaps she might show more enthusiasm than her predecessor for increasing the number of Garda patrols on our roads.

"In all of us, there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage, to know who we are and where we have come from.