Over the past three years, Ireland has had one of the highest suicide rates in Europe, especially among young people.

Ireland’s shambolic health service has been compared by embattled Health Minister Dr James Reilly to a massive tanker that can’t be turned around overnight.

“Benny Hill economics” is a good title for the property tax farce currently playing in city and county halls up and down the country. Thanks to the byzantine workings of the state finances, local authorities will have to pay tax on their housing stock.

Anyone watching Monday night’s RTÉ 1 documentary on the Disappeared could not fail to be moved by the testimony of the families of those abducted and murdered by the IRA during the 1970s.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan declared yesterday that the Revenue were “very good at collecting taxes”.

It takes a lot of chutzpah for someone to confide in another that they suffer from depression or some other form of mental illness. It takes even more to tell the nation at large.

Two official reports published yesterday point to disturbing failures of our education system.

Already there is a whiff of sulphur in the air, a frisson of excitement following the news that Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane are expected to be named tomorrow by the FAI as managers of Ireland’s soccer team.

Despite the Government’s feeble bid to distance itself from the property tax controversy, the confusion in the minds of more than a one million people caused by a letter from the Revenue Commissioners is deeper and more politically embarrassing than ever.

For 17 years after its approval as a cholesterol-lowering drug, Lipitor was the best-selling branded medicine in the history of the pharmaceutical industry and a goldmine for Pfizer.