Whoever takes over the reins as Labour leader will have his or her work cut out to reboot a party that has all but flatlined. But that is not the full story of what happened in the local and European elections.

The revelation that Ireland has the third highest number of drug-related deaths in Europe is horrifying.

It is almost an article of faith that a long, ultra-patient game is the best way to convince the EU and the ECB to reduce or, God forbid, cancel the €64bn private debt imposed on taxpayers to cover failed banking investments and to steady what was a staggering euro.

Art is an expression of our greatest hopes and fears, an expression of our interpretations of beauty and love, of all that is good and bad about humanity.

If you accept the rationale behind Eamon Gilmore’s honourable resignation then it is irrational and blindly partisan to suggest that Taoiseach Enda Kenny should not face a robust review of his leadership of the Government and of Fine Gael.

Over the coming days the primary and urgent focus for the Coalition parties will be on why they were at the wrong end of such a very serious kicking from the electorate.

It is virtually impossible for those of us whose lives have followed a relatively smooth path to imagine the despair suffered by a woman who lost her entire family in a car crash caused by a suicidal taxi-driver in England.

Those who tend to look down their noses at the boyband phenomenon would be laughing all the way to the bank if only they had the talent to fill Croke Park — not once, not twice, but three times.

Having taken the moral high ground by endorsing coalition legislation scrapping severance payments for ex-ministers, there is a bitter twist of irony about former minister Alan Shatter’s compromise of accepting the €70,000 payment and then giving the money away to the Jack and Jill charity.

Despite worrying claims that more than 150 Naval Service personnel and civilian workers were in contact with asbestos, a potentially lethal cancer causing substance, there has been an undue delay providing medical assessment for civilians working in the navy.