CORK Opera House has played a pivotal role in the cultural life of the south of Ireland for over a century and a half and it is unfortunate that financial difficulties force its temporary closure.

ENDA KENNY’S tenacity won the day yesterday, but whether it is sufficient to win much else remains to be seen. In so many ways, maybe even too many, this is the very worst possible result for Fine Gael.

HEALTH Minister Mary Harney is to be congratulated on her promise to introduce legislation to force pharmacists to tell their customers that generic drugs – usually far cheaper than branded drugs – are available and suitable for their needs.

REPEATED warnings have been given in these columns that the most vulnerable people on the margins of society will become the innocent victims of government cutbacks in the recession now gripping the country. Unfortunately, mounting evidence suggests those warnings were all too accurate.

FIVE years have passed since a patient died when she was choked by a restraining belt after slipping down a chair but the public has yet to see the report conducted into the fatal incident.

EARLY yesterday morning relatives and supporters of the 14 civil rights protestors murdered in Derry on Bloody Sunday marched from Rossville Street, the British army paratroopers’ 1972 killing ground, to the city’s Guildhall, symbolically ending the banned march that was so savagely suppressed nearly four decades ago.

THE Irish Countrywomen’s Association marks a century of wonderful achievement this year.

TODAY the focus of Irish politicians should have been firmly fixed on Taoiseach Brian Cowen and his response to Fine Gael’s motion of no confidence in him.

THIS island – and those of us lucky enough to live on it despite everything – has many of the most beautiful beaches on the Atlantic seaboard.

AS a cadre of Leinster House foot soldiers is unnerved by withering opinion polls and an election looming on an not-so-distant horizon, Brian Cowen and Enda Kenny’s leaderships are under fire.