DETAILS revealed today about the secretive 2002 deal agreed by the then Minister for Education and Science Dr Michael Woods with Catholic religious orders implicated in child abuse suggest that it is even more inequitable than was first imagined.

WHAT a comforting refuge sport can offer in challenging and worrying times.

AS with more or less every other conversation in this country it was not too long before we focused on the money.

THIS week has been dominated by the appalling abuse report, how children were sent to institutions unfit for purpose and abused.

THE shock, outrage and deep anger that greeted Mr Justice Seán Ryan and the Child Abuse Commission’s (CAC) report was natural and absolutely justified.

THERE were hardly more than one or two events since the Famine more cathartic for Ireland than the long-resisted acceptance, a little more than a decade ago, that a great and unchecked evil was active at the centre of our childcare institutions.

EVEN in the days of almost regal abundance childcare costs represented a significant difficulty for very many young, working families.

PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s move to confront America’s hugely powerful if ailing motor industry is welcome even if it is belated.

THAT fewer than one-in-four – 12 out of 44 – of the Irish candidates standing for election to the European Parliament is a woman is a very poor reflection on how women have advanced in this society.

THERE are few situations more animated by sanctimony than when a person once addicted to nicotine or alcohol lectures someone who still smokes or drinks about the dangers of their habits.