If the allegation is true that unnamed officials attempted to interfere in the workings of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) it is a matter of the utmost gravity.

The centrality of agriculture in our society and economy was reaffirmed by two events yesterday.

Yesterday’s High Court ruling that awarded over €750,000 in damages to the widow of a victim of hired killers is a victory for tenacity and most of all justice.

Minister of State Alan Kelly’s budget kite-flying about funding private schools was as craven as it was irrational.

A previous financial regulator played his part in our economic collapse, but he was not the only regulator accused of being asleep at the wheel.

The two deaths in Cork last week as a result of overdosing on heroin highlights the fact that the drug problems have not gone away.

Marine Minister Simon Coveney has announced that the controversial practice of dumping valuable fish overboard because of EU quotas will be phased out from 2015.

The outrageous inconsistency of judicial sentencing in sexual offence cases, particularly in a country where sex abuse is endemic, has again been underlined by the latest in a growing litany of shocking decisions by judges.

Government stability is crucial, especially with the economy on the brink, but the problem facing the present administration is that the Fine Gael-Labour coalition appears to get more shaky by the day.

Yesterday’s protest by trawlerman Seamus O’Flaherty in Kilmore Quay, where he gave away monkfish — around €28.50 per kg from retailers yesterday — caught outside of quota limits rather than dump it at sea again highlights utterly wasteful if not immoral obligations faced by fishermen in a world where around one billion people go hungry every day.