EVEN the most committed Europhiles must occasionally wonder if Greece might have been treated more generously by the European Union when its economy imploded. 

THE people of Stockholm, despite their high-minded commitment to liberalism and tolerance, may not be in a mood this morning to split hairs about how those who carry out terror attacks are described.

AS Sir Humphrey Appleby understood, every political crisis, every scandal, no matter how noxious, offers opportunity if appreciated in the correct perspective. 

THERE were no startling revelations in the census details published by the CSO yesterday.

THE ruling by Britain’s supreme court yesterday that a man was wrong to take his daughter out of school to take her to visit Disney World will have those in the travel industry who increase prices for school holiday time periods popping the champagne corks. 

THE UN is in danger of becoming as irrelevant and ineffectual as the League of Nations that preceded it — able to condemn atrocities but not halt them. The chemical attack in Syria, most likely by government forces, is the most recent example.

SHANE ROSS’s proposal for an automatic ban on drink drivers is welcome if it saves just one life, but it must be part of a broader-based attempt to reinvigorate efforts to halt the recent rise in road deaths.

AS expected, the chief executive of the Football Association of Ireland, John Delaney, has been elected to the Uefa executive committee. That makes him only the second Irishman to hold a seat at the top of European football, after Dundalk’s Des Casey in 1994.

Colm Cooper, one of the great Gaelic footballers, retired from inter-county competition yesterday. 

Efforts to make the centre of Cork City less vulnerable to regular, devastating flooding have been ongoing, more or less since Sisyphus was a boy.