Anyone familiar with the litany of betrayal and abuse faced by Irish children over decades would expect — rightly — that today our services for children would be beyond reproach.

Events of recent days, weeks and months have shown how very important it is to have a reliable and utterly trustworthy justice system.

Coming so close to the centenary of the June 28, 1914, assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the murder that sparked the First World War, yesterday’s report from the UN refugee agency that the number of people driven from their homes by conflict or crisis is more than 50m for the first time since the Second World War is

As Fianna Fáil’s bruised justice spokesman Niall Collins might confirm, inappropriate lobbying can have negative and unintended consequences. As our economy still shows lobbying by narrow interests can have spectacular, destructive and long-lasting consequences.

The French academic Thomas Piketty is enjoying far more than the usual 15 seconds of fame, for an economist at least.

Politicians of all hues are quick to champion the independence of the judiciary — but only until one of them feels the need to try to influence our courts.

On the face of it, the Government’s decision yesterday to increase the tax take for the State from all future commercial oil and gas discoveries in Irish waters is a good one.

In what is clearly its most remarkable U-turn to date, the Government on Tuesday announced that it would return discretionary medical cards to over 15,000 people who had them removed between July 2011 and May 2014.

There is a refreshing ring of honesty and pragmatism to the "bonkers" response of former President Mary McAleese to Pope Francis’s call for a synod of bishops to review Catholic Church teaching on family life.

The Government’s decision to restore discretionary medical cards to around 15,000 people who lost them in the controversial eligibility review must get a cautious, qualified welcome. Experience shows it is best to wait until promises are delivered, and to see to what extent they are delivered, before this inevitable U-turn can be fully welcomed.