Today nearly 60,000 young people will get Junior Certificate results.

Ever since it became apparent that Rory McIlroy could be a world great in his sport some people have, for less than honourable reasons, tried to force him to declare allegiance to either Ireland or Britain.

Yesterday’s IMF report was as clear as any of these things can be.

In the past four years we have had good reason to look anew at our relationship with Europe.

The images from the funeral of Alan Ryan in Dublin on Saturday will send a shiver down the spine of anyone over a certain age on this island.

Since the moment, nearly two weeks ago, when Professor Stephen Hawking, astrophysicist and occasional Simpsons guest, arrived in his space-age chair at London’s Olympic Stadium to take part in the opening ceremony of the Paralympics, we have seen the very best of the human spirit.

Some aspects of our history are so heartbreaking that it is natural to turn away, to avoid confronting the hardships and humiliations suffered by earlier generations.

Even at the best of times life can throw up situations so bizarre, so off kilter that they challenge everyday logic to the extent that they make it difficult to know whether to laugh or to cry.

The food riots of 2008 were a reminder of our infallibility and of how precarious life can be for the great swathes of humanity living at the very edge of subsistence.

It would be wrong to blame the Government’s crass handling of the controversy over savage health cuts solely on ministerial ineptitude.