LIKE so very many others Environment Minister and Green Party leader John Gormley seems to have toadjust his aspirations to match our new reality.

THOUGH the 11th anniversary of the last great outrage of the North’s Troubles approaches it seems we cannot dismiss the idea of another return to the terror and horrible bigotry that ruined so many lives in this country over the last 40 years.

ONE of the more colourful but chillingly accurate phrases used to embroider our public discourse in the not-too-distant past was given to us by a former EU commissioner.

THE Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission launched its annual report for 2008 yesterday, the first full year covered by the body.

ONE of the great advantages of being from the Southern capital is that if you are beaten in the football there is still the hurling. Latterly, if you were beaten in both there is, most of the time anyway, the rugby too.

Every day there seems to be further developments in reaction to the Ryan Report on child abuse of children in residential institutions. Yesterday, the director of CORI Justice, Fr Sean Healy, stated that the scale and the depth of the disclosures in the report necessitated a reassessment of what has been done to date.

It was not until the publication of the Ryan Report that people appreciated the depth of the depravity. Hence, the likely cost of the redress deal was seriously underestimated. This should act as a warning in relation to the National Assets Management Agency (NAMA).

WE have been reminded more vividly than is comfortable of the great wrongs, the great hatreds festering in our past over recent days and weeks.

YESTERDAY afternoon’s statement from the 18 Catholic congregations party to the scandalous Woods deal, which capped the religious organisations implicated in child abuse liability at €128 million, truly beggars belief.

OVER the last week we have been forced to recognise that the past is not a different country and that it can dominate the present in a profound way.