WE ARE utterly dependent on imported energy and the crisis destroying Irish farming and commercial fishing may make us dependent on food imports as well.

WE may be staggering towards bankruptcy but the growing opposition to NAMA confirms that, in the credibility stakes at least, Brian Cowen’s Fianna Fáil is utterly bankrupt.

THE Commission on Taxation was given its remit in those heady days when increasing tax revenues was not a requirement. Government coffers overflowed with the bounty from a property-driven, credit-fuelled bonanza.

SCOTTISH Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill yesterday decided to release Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a 57-year-old Libyan national and former intelligence agent who was sentenced to a 27-year term in 2001 for his role in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, in which 270 people, the majority of them Americans, died.

ENCOURAGING investment will be a vital part of getting our economy back on its feet but that is no reason to tolerate blatant injustices in our tax system.

The United Nations Convention on the Right of the Child specifically stipulated that the views of children must be taken into account in matters affecting them. But legal proceedings are frequently taken with the children having no say at all.

People should welcome the decision of the Department of Finance to tighten rules relating to foreign travel by Government ministers and public servants. Henceforth they will have to cut out salubrious stays in five-star hotels in favour of less “extravagant” fare.

IN just over 40 days — October 2 — we will have the opportunity to vote, for the second time, on the Lisbon Treaty. Yesterday the Vote No to Lisbon group opened its campaign calling for a rejection of the Treaty.

THERE is growing momentum for an Oireachtas inquiry into the collapse of our banks.

IN the nine days since Mayo-based Garda Daryl Mullen suffered a life-threatening knife attack there have been three knife-related deaths and a series of other lethal but thankfully non-fatal attacks around the country.