AS our policy-makers, guided by our guests from the IMF and the EU, walk a tightrope between austerity and chaos it is reassuring to know that the EU/IMF officials working in Dublin are considering how senior bondholders might be forced to pay some of the tremendous cost of rebuilding our beggared banks.

IT may be hard to believe it but there is far more to life than the economic crisis all around us.

EUROPEAN history shows us many examples of countries destroying themselves to deny invaders the resources they needed to continue their aggression.

ONLY a few countries have the capacity to undermine the stability of entire regions. Even fewer seem so far outside what is considered rational that normal negotiation procedures routinely fail to deter the most dangerous and extreme actions.

The National Recovery Plan, 2011-2014, published yesterday, outlines details of how the Government proposes to make €15 billion in savings.

OUR circumstances are chaotic but they could get still worse if we lose focus on the only, the very last, game in town.

RECENT days have given us terrible examples of the carnage violence against women and families can cause.

THOUGH the hangman knocked on the door slightly earlier than expected the moment the Greens pronounced sentence on this forlorn Government the undeniable force of our democracy was celebrated.

It was a very sad reflection on the state of our politics that the main emotional response of our people to the news that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Union were taking over control of our economic structures was not a sense of shame or embarrassment but general relief that somebody is at last going to assume responsibility for taking the necessary hard decisions.

A spokesman for the United Nations AIDS agency has welcomed a statement by Pope Benedict XVI in relation to the use of condoms.