There is no escaping the fact that two of the more vulnerable segments of Irish society — elderly citizens in their twilight years and jobless young people seeking work — have been targeted by Fine Gael and Labour in the 2014 budget.

When Finance Minister Michael Noonan and his sidekick Brendan Howlin took to the stage in the Dáil yesterday, it was expected that their double shuffle would mask the effects of a budget that will only emerge in the coming months.

A scandal around the byzantine ways of the Catholic Church in Germany makes the excesses of our own former Bishop Eamon Casey seem positively frugal.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Finance Minister Michael Noonan is the most important man in your life this week.

On average, more than one child in care is injured every day, and more than 56% of those injuries require hospital treatment. These figures form part of a very disturbing picture.

The release of John Gilligan from prison raises many questions. There have undoubtedly been significant developments since he was incarcerated.

It is a pity that Taoiseach Enda Kenny is not as good a listener as he is a talker. He continues to insist that there has been no change in policy regarding the allocation of discretionary medical cards.

There appears to be a lack of joined-up thinking by the Government — or at least an element of contradiction — when it comes to taxing the hospitality sector.

The Health Information Quality Authority (Hiqa) report is an appalling indictment of the failure to implement a safe infrastructure over a number of years. The authority emphasised that the medics missed 13 chances to save the life of Savita Halappanavar.

All too often, parents in the past were lulled into a false sense of security that their children were occupied watching television, but it was largely controlled. Now children have the added distractions of video games or the internet, which is essentially unmonitored, because they can expose children to dangerous levels of explicit sex and violence.