It is unsurprising that Commissioner Martin Callinan defended the Garda handling of the penalty points controversy at yesterday’s Public Accounts Committee hearing. That he might do anything else is unimaginable, it would certainly be unprecedented.

Outgoing language commissioner Seán Ó Cuirreáin yesterday lamented that there are “widespread forces ... in the state sector ... that have little or no concern for the future of our national language”.

Given the vicious nature of recent attacks on elderly people, it is unsurprising that record numbers of pensioners are now turning to monitored personal alarms in a bid to remain safe in their own homes.

It is time to clear up the mess engulfing the Irish charities industry.

Every few decades, almost unfathomable savagery breaks out in some part of the world and reminds us all of the darkness that lurks, and will probably lurk forever, at the heart of humanity.

For a state as influenced by the Catholic Church, for a state where so many citizens are Catholic as this one, the closure of our embassy in the Vatican was a radical, unprecedented expression of dissatisfaction. Nevertheless it was entirely justified in the circumstances.

Inequality, like the poor, will always be with us, it seems, but yesterday’s Oxfam report which recorded that the combined wealth of the world’s 85 richest people is equal to that of the world’s poorest 3.5bn — half of the world’s population — is shocking.

Today we report on the consequences of being a whistleblower in Ireland.

Next Saturday, the Reform Alliance will hold its long-trumpeted, long-threatened, day-long conference in Dublin.

The visit of ESM fund chief Klaus Regling to Dublin yesterday, and that he came in an atmosphere far less fraught than might have been the case some years ago, was informative and slightly dispiriting.