It seemed recklessly unnecessary, and time has proven that it was, to close down Ireland’s sugar processing plants some years ago.

It is almost beyond comprehension that any entity should pay €600m to 4,300 businesses — an average of €140,000 — and not thoroughly access the effectiveness of that investment.

It seems that drink is losing its central role in Irish life.

Anyone who saw this week’s provocative RTÉ programme on how very young children, some no more than infants, were mistreated in creches will find it hard to forget the experience.

Some years ago, as ever more industrialised commercial fishing decimated fish population after fish population, conservationists suggested that the last generation of humans who would eat wild fish taken from our seas had been born.

The boy who cried wolf is one of folklore’s most easily recognised archetypes. Those who some years ago pointed to what they imagined as the “first green shoots of recovery” must know how he felt.

The disturbing revelations in undercover video footage of what goes on behind closed doors of some creches entrusted by parents to care for their children were yesterday described in the Dáil as a “wake-up call”.

At long last, the EU has finally woken up to the fact that austerity is not working.

Ireland has nearly 450,000 people out of work. Emigration seems — once again — to be draining the brightness out of our future.

Anything that can be done to discourage people from smoking is to be welcomed. Anything that can be done to try to help smokers break their self-destructive habit is to be encouraged.