If ever there was any doubt that Ireland is a nation of fixers it will be dispelled by the quashing of penalty points.

Never has the untimely death of a teenager carried such import.

The paper published by the Economic and Social Research Institute yesterday makes for depressing, challenging reading.

The effectiveness of the Freedom of Information Act and the threat it poses to those who might abuse their position can be seen in how it is limited, reduced or constrained.

Last week, the HSE admitted that more than 5,600 patients in Limerick have been waiting four years or more for an outpatient appointment.

The UN report published yesterday that suggested eating insects could help fight obesity may not have an immediate impact on the health of Irish people.

It must mean something significant, something both worrying and worthwhile, that it has taken five years since our economy collapsed before the gap between government spending and income manifested itself in potentially chaotic public sector/semi-state industrial action.

Every now and then an incident — like the destruction of archaeological remains, the destruction of a listed building or trees, the pollution, intentional or otherwise, of waterways — comes to light and suggests that we still have a considerable distance to go before our environment is safe in our hands.

“When I would re-create myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most interminable and, to the citizen, most dismal, swamp . . . There is the strength, the marrow of Nature. In short, all good things are wild and free.”

Apart at all from the wretched weather this was a challenging week.