The report on domestic violence, coming as it did on the day the mother-and-baby homes inquiry was announced, is another tragic indication of how we tolerate vile behaviour most often directed at women or children.

Anyone over 40 will remember a time when, if you were moving into a new house, you had to order a phone and maybe wait for up to a year before one was installed.

Yesterday’s decision by Cork County Council to take what is the first step towards banning the use of performing animals by circuses is a welcome one.

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin’s call for nothing short of a "full-bodied" judicial and independent investigation into every mother-and-baby home in Ireland effectively pre-empts the Government ‘scoping’ initiative to decide what kind of inquiry should be held into the mass burial of deceased babies.

Given the paramount importance of education in early childhood, it is worrying to learn that standards of care are still being compromised despite last year’s damning exposé of major flaws in the way some creches were run.

The past spoke loudly this week reminding us all that we are no more than a culmination of circumstances, some noble others less so, some fortuitous others contrived.

The news that the European Commission is to investigate what are described as tax breaks for multi nationals operating in Ireland will provoke some concern.

Seventy years ago today 7,000 ships crossed the English Channel to invade German-occupied France. They, and thousands of planes or gliders, brought a first wave of 150,000 Allied troops to Normandy’s beaches — more than 10,000 became casualties on that first day.

The increase in the number of Blue Flag awards to beaches and marinas around the coastline should be welcomed locally and at national level.

Just when people thought no more revelations remained to be uncovered, a truly shocking spectre — 800 dead babies dumped in a septic tank and innocent infants buried in mass graves — has come back to haunt the Irish State and the Catholic Church.