THE arrival of Shell in north Mayo should have been an occasion for celebration but, from an Irish perspective, nearly everything about the project has been disappointing.

KATHLEEN McMAHON, who quit as a prison governor, has not said anything that so many others deeply concerned with prisoner welfare and the effectiveness of our prison system have not said many times before.

Despite the Government spending over €4.7 billion on social housing during the past five years, the number of families and individuals on the housing lists have increased dramatically.

THERE are few issues as divisive in modern Ireland as abortion.

GREECE lost a considerable degree of sovereignty yesterday when prime minister George Papandreou sough an economic lifeline from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

IT has been suggested that if the Chinese spent more and the Americans saved more the world’s economy would not be in such a fix. Though it is just a recent trait we are told that our newfound reluctance to spend is one of the barriers to economic recovery. However, we all know that we need to save too.

IT’S probably expecting too much of the banks’ public interest directors to be thorns in the side of the culture that blithely stumped up the €1.5 million pension top-up for Bank of Ireland boss Richie Boucher.

IT is ironic that more people than ever might identify a snow leopard, though fewer and fewer of us have seen one in the wild or understand its needs.

Kieran Mulvey, the chief executive of the Labour Relations Commission, had denounced the proposed €1.5 million pension top-up being accorded to the Bank of Ireland chief executive, Richie Boucher.

The Commissioner for Aviation Regulation Cathal Guiomard was categorical yesterday in a radio interview that the airlines are responsible for the upkeep of passengers stranded abroad due to flight cancellations. This is the law of the land, he insisted.