Tomorrow’s elections will be an assessment of politicians and their policies. They will be an assessment of how promises were, or were not, delivered.

This week’s European and local elections will, if the polls are reliable, return a diverse range of representatives and mark another milestone in what seems the inevitable decline of the two parties which dominated Irish political life since the foundation of the State.

Last weekend, the country was excited and animated by the resumption of the GAA championships.

It may have taken six years to reach the point where our desire to have a decent, supportive, and caring society runs into the kind of life-defining, fundamental, brick-wall issues that can change a life or, in extreme cases, become a life-or-death issue, the kind of issues that define rather than just sustain a society.

There is a considerable body of evidence to suggest that rape victims do not get the support they need and deserve. It is often made far more difficult than it ought to be for victims to seek redress through our courts.

Any country where the number of people without a home, the number of people in danger of losing their home, and still others with decent jobs who cannot even dream of buying a family home, is rising to a crisis level can hardly imagine itself a success.

Rebuilding the credibility of An Garda Síochána was already recognised as a mammoth task, but today’s revelation that a Garda reservist has been arrested and questioned over the possibility that he inappropriately used the Garda computer system to spy on a former lover who had ended their relationship makes that task even more difficult and urgent.

The ratio of virtuous to venal politicians at local level is probably no different to that ratio anywhere else on the political pyramid but by their very immediacy, by their in-your-face familiarity, their foibles are all the more easily seen and criticised.

The arrival of the first — hopefully not the last — instalment of summer weather reminds us all, that despite cloud computing, CAT scans and Bill Gates that we are still sentient animals profoundly influenced by the world around us. Good weather makes for good moods, happy people and fun.

Shatter-gate and the story of the Garda whistleblowers refuse to go away.