The tens of thousands of people expected to visit Ireland next year for The Gathering — the great welcome home festival — will come to a country utterly different to the one they might have left a few short years ago.

Six years ago, the Health Service Executive cleared a backlog of cervical smear tests by using a company in Texas to assess almost 40,000 samples.

One of the groups that has suffered severely in this recession is the self-employed. Many small businesses have had to close up shop.

The public reaction to the budget kite that children’s allowance payments might be cut for some better-off families does not auger well.

In less than three weeks’ time the television aerial on your, or on a neighbour’s, roof will be as obsolete as the radio sets that had to warm up before our grandparents could listen to Saturday night dancing on the radio.

It’s not as if anyone who gave it a moment’s thought hadn’t realised it.

It is unfortunate that the latest budget kite — cutting child benefits — should become public on a day the Government wrote a cheque for €1,000,000,000 to cover private bank debt.

Early last month, the cadaver of violent nationalism dusted itself off one more sorry time, stepped out from the shadows and, feeding on the anti-democratic delusions that have cost so many lives on this island marched behind the coffin, offensively draped in our national flag, of a dangerous Dublin criminal.

As ever, actions speak louder than words.

The Comptroller and Auditor General’s report is a set piece of our public life. Each year it uncovers waste and inefficiency.