As the old saying goes, it’s a long road without a turn, and for Messrs Frank Dunlop, Jim Kennedy, Liam Cosgrave, Don Lydon, Colm McGrath and Tony Fox that fateful bend arrived yesterday when the damning last chapter of the Mahon Tribunal on Planning and Payments was finally published.

Not before time, some home truths about Ireland’s flourishing drugs trade were spelled out yesterday at the MacGill summer school in Donegal by a man who knows what he’s talking about, Inspector of Prisons Judge Michael Reilly.

The President’s decision to sign the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill into law may in time be seen as a miscalculation. He could have referred the bill to the Supreme Court and secured a definitive verdict.

The warm, kind and very generous tributes that followed news of broadcaster Colm Murray’s death yesterday said everything about a man who was admired and loved by so many people.

It must concern anyone who values the integrity of the State’s relationship with its citizens that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission has been so openly critical of the force’s response to their investigations.

The horsemeat scandal has had an inevitable impact on the meat industry.

The terror attacks on New York almost 12 years ago hardened attitudes on security in a way that very often jars with the expectations of those happy to live in, or visit, a free, tolerant and open society.

President Higgins has called on the Council of State to deliberate on the constitutionality of the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill and the process, invoked in only the most exceptional circumstances, begins today.

The most infamous set of lips in the world, the most infamous male ones anyway, were 70 years old yesterday.

One of the criteria investors use when considering a location is access.