THE thousands of committed staff working in our health service must be almost inured to the never-ending cascade of damaging reports. 

A COURTROOM is a difficult, stressful place for most lay people. 

FOR generations we, with a kind of mousy national pride diluted by crippling subservience, felt it was not a good thing to complain.

HAD Geert Wilders’ anti-Islam, anti-European Union Freedom party been more successful the result would have been a depressing affirmation that the election of Donald Trump and Brexit are part of a pattern casting a shadow over the liberal, stable and prosperous Europe of the last 70 years.

INCONSISTENCY in court rulings is a common theme, one that is often baffling and hard to understand.

IN a curious twist of fate, the Taoiseach will be the flagbearer of the EU when he meets President Trump at the White House today. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was to have met the President yesterday but snow storms in the US have delayed that meeting until tomorrow.

“MAY you live in interesting times” is an old saying purported to be a Chinese curse disguised as a blessing.

A NATIONAL survey of paediatric doctors reveals a worrying percentage of them are unaware of one of the major causes of preventable developmental delay in children.

A MID-TERM review of the Department of Education’s 2011-2020 literacy and numeracy strategy for schools has found that raise-the-bar targets set some years ago have been met or surpassed far more quickly than even the most optimistic predictions suggested. 

NOTHING has changed since the phrase ‘no taxation without representation’ was, apparently, coined by American lawyer James Otis in the 1760s, who wanted to end British colonisation of his nascent country, to undermine its core truth.