ONE of the unnerving aspects of our current difficulties has been the near universal confusion about how we got into this mess or how we can get out of it.

Google’s plans to include in its database the full text of five of the world’s leading libraries is potentially the most exciting development since the advent of the printing press.

The Health Service Executive is no longer funding healthcare professionals to carry out mandatory training, because the HSE is seeking to cut its costs in the current exceptional economic circumstances.

In his first annual report, the Inspector of Prisons and Places of Detention, Judge Michael Reilly, paints an alarming picture of dangerous overcrowding in our jails.

All senior public servants, including government ministers, heads of departments and hospital consultants are likely to be subjected to salary cuts in line with a report commissioned by the Minister for Finance.

THERE is a refreshing whiff of democracy in action about the call from sections of the Green Party to hold a special party convention on the form that the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) might take and how it might do its business.

THE University of Limerick is to be congratulated on its positive move to help more second level students take higher level maths.

WITHIN hours of the Supreme Court decision on Tuesday evening to withdraw court protection from companies in Liam Carroll’s Zoe Group the High Court — inevitably — appointed a provisional liquidator to two Zoe companies.

IT is hard to comprehend much less accept that in the last nine years 496 children, mostly non-nationals, entrusted to the care of the state have gone missing. The majority, 434, have not been traced.

THERE was something refreshing about Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin’s plain speaking yesterday morning when she confirmed that child benefit and social welfare payments will be cut in the December budget.