“THE first half was even and the second half was even worse” was how the late Moss Keane described a pretty dour, unentertaining game of rugby.

LESS than two hours before Brendan Howlin announced €1.4 billion spending cuts in the Dáil yesterday afternoon, a lunchtime meeting began in Paris that will, over time, have a far more profound impact on this society, our economy and the kind of ambitions we can imagine for our children.

Until now, the current Government has been getting away with blaming the last government.

An attempt is to be made this evening at the annual convention of the Mayo GAA to ban alcohol sponsorship logos from the Mayo inter-county jersey.

WHEN she addressed the Bundestag yesterday morning, German chancellor Angela Merkel could have been Taoiseach Enda Kenny speaking to the Dáil.

NOTHING shortens a grim, cold and dark winter like the prospect of great, sunny days ahead.

IT IS a victory for relentless marketing over sanity — not to mention self-preservation and education — that so many of us equate indulging a child with giving them a chance to overload with high-fat, salt-laden junk food and sugar-based soft drinks.

TONIGHT RTÉ will broadcast one of the annual set pieces of Irish television.

MORE than words could ever tell, the raw statistics of horrific child abuse by priests in six Catholic dioceses underscore the past record of cover-up within the church whose culture of denial, silence and hypocrisy in the face of damning allegations has seriously undermined its authority in the eyes of the Irish people.

AMID the pall of gloom that threatens to overwhelm the nation, it is indeed heartening to hear the tourism sector blowing its trumpet.