Details of the events leading to the death of Paddy Barry, the 82-year-old Waterford pensioner, are still very sketchy.

Health Minister Mary Harney has warned that the scale of the health cuts next year will be unprecedented. She told a conference on health funding that €1.2 billion needs to be cut from the existing €15bn in health spending.

THE Economic and Social Research Institute is expected to confirm tomorrow that State employees earned up to 25% more than private sector workers in 2006.

TWO tourists have died on Skellig Michael in the last five months.

ON the face of it, the first Global Irish Economic Forum has proved to be a resounding success.

IT’S appalling to think someone can be evicted from their home because they owe €50 in rent. Yet, according to Threshold, the housing aid body, that paltry amount recently led to an eviction in Kerry.

BECAUSE of the festering anger, the stress and great worry caused by economic circumstances and political failures it would be very easy to sneer at the Global Irish Economic Forum held at Farmleigh, in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, over this weekend.

SOME of the claims made during the first Lisbon campaign were laughable but dangerously misleading. Despite their hysteria and dishonesty, they contributed to the rejection of the treaty.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen insisted that the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) was not being set up to bail out the banks or the developers. Irrespective of the real aim, it would seem that the proposals have come to the rescue of the banks.

The findings of the health screening of 550 people undertaken by the VHI earlier this year have some frightening implications.