IT is entirely appropriate that President Mary McAleese should convene a meeting of the Council of State to consider the Criminal Justice Bill if she has even the slightest doubt about the ability of the legislation to achieve its objective.

COLM McCARTHY’S An Bord Snip Nua was given a specific but limited task and yesterday it delivered a range of options that identified savings in public expenditure of over €5 billion, €2bn more than the target figure set by Government.

ONE of Tony Blair’s staff — Jo Moore — earned a degree of infamy for herself and her profession on 9/11. As the World Trade Centre collapsed killing thousands, she described it as “a good day to bury bad news”.

THE Cabinet yesterday discussed Colm McCarthy’s An Bord Snip Nua’s suggestions on how we can try to save this country from bankruptcy. It must have been a chastening experience for most ministers, especially those who have dedicated the last decades of their lives to trying to realise their vision of a brighter, better Ireland.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama has acknowledged that Palestinians cannot be treated as they have been by Israel and that progress will have to be made towards establishing and independent homeland for those displaced by Israeli expansion.

WE have all heard of friends, neighbours or relatives who have lost substantial sums because of the stock markets’ collapse. Anyone involved in a private-sector pension scheme has had to revise their expectations downwards to reflect the failure of our financial system and our financiers.

HOW heartbreaking it must be for the relatives of anyone killed by the IRA during the North’s 30 years of terror to listen to Sinn Féin spokesmen attack the “dissident republicans” who orchestrated the violence around the North over the last few days.

In recent years there has been much hype about our drugs problems, but usually when people talk about drugs, they are not talking about the most prevalent and most abused drug in the country – alcohol. Irish people spend more on alcohol annually that any other people.

The Garda Representative Association (GRA) has welcomed the latest initiative to face down gangland crime, but it has reservations about the possible constitutionality of the legislation. Since the Dáil passed the Criminal Justice Bill last week, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern has admitted that there is “an awful lot of confusion” about the use of a garda’s opinion in evidence.

THE whole country will breathe a sigh of relief today when pickets are lifted by electricians from key construction sites. Though the weekend agreement may not bring final closure, it will at least mean a temporary end to a strike which has cost the economy an estimated €230 million.