LAST week we carried extensive interviews with Health Minister Mary Harney and HSE boss Prof Brendan Drumm.

ONE of the most telling revelations of our three-day investigation into the debacle of Ireland’s health service is the appalling lack of accountability and transparency within the HSE. The failure of managers and other officials within the organisation to put up their hands and accept responsibility for their actions, or inaction as the case may be, is something the public finds infuriating.

EVERY right-thinking person, regardless of who they might blame for the country’s economic woes, will welcome the decision by public sector workers belonging to the major SIPTU and IMPACT unions to back the Croke Park pay and reform deal.

SO, the net tightens. The first two reports into our brush with bankruptcy – ongoing – are direct enough to suggest a new, uncompromised relationship between the Central Bank, Government and banks.

MANKIND’S greatest global sports festival opens in South Africa this afternoon when the hosts play Mexico in World Cup 2010’s opening game.

When the state’s 11 health boards were being abolished to form the single Health Service Executive (HSE) at the beginning of 2005, Health Minister Mary Harney explained that government policy should be judged on the provision of better health services for people and better value for taxpayers’ money.

Some 20,000 people turned out to witness the opening of the Special Olympics at Thomond Park, Limerick, last evening.

IT is a relatively minor detail in the way we run our country, but it tells a hugely disturbing and disheartening story.

OVER 55,000 young Irish people will begin a rite of passage today when they begin their Leaving Certificate exams.

FOR seven weeks, the greatest superpower the world has seen has been unable to stop a cocktail of oil and methane – some suggest up to 25,000 barrels a day but no one really knows – pouring into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s broken, deep-ocean Macondo well.