Time and tide wait for no man, not even Ronan O’Gara, who will be 36 on Thursday.

The Government has decided to hold three referendums before Christmas.

Education Minister Ruairi Quinn laid out an ambitious reform agenda when he entered Government and he has shown determination in its pursuit.

The late Brian Lenihan’s first-green-shoots-of-recovery claim made nearly three years ago was so disastrously off the mark that today most positive crystal ball gazing is reluctantly embraced like a long lost but still slightly malodorous great aunt.

For a Government that employs more than its fair share of highly paid spin doctors to manipulate public opinion, the Fine Gael-Labour coalition has a deplorable track record of getting things wrong.

The sharp increase in fatalities on Ireland’s roads is a worrying development.

It is almost inevitable that multibillion euro deals between governments and international investors trying to exploit a country’s natural resources give rise to a scepticism or suspicion.

Pope Benedict’s last general audience, in Rome yesterday, was an emotional, but nevertheless joyous, affair.

In the Dáil earlier this week, Taoiseach Enda Kenny fobbed off predictable questions from Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin about the latest set of allegations about the disgraced Michael Lowry with the predictable references to Fianna Fáil’s record.

Last weekend Ireland’s rugby team visited Edinburgh and contrived to lose a match they should have won easily and, as is usual when something like this happens, the commentary can be pretty stark, some of it even unforgiving, more utterly disproportionate.