The annual report of the Linkage Programme — which is aimed at assisting former offenders by helping them to gain access to training, education and employment — was published yesterday.

The Health Service Executive (HSE) is adopting a new communications strategy in which high profiled pundits, politicians and patient advocates will be offered an opportunity to question senior HSE management about the malfunctioning of the health service.

EVEN the steadfast optimists left amongst us, as cherished and rare as a busy auctioneer, will be rattled by this morning’s ESRI quarterly economic commentary.

NOTHING ever stays the same and work and management practices evolve relentlessly.

THERE may be little enough we, as a small island of less than five million people bobbing away like so much flotsam between continental Europe and the Atlantic’s western fringes, can do to influence climate change, but we can prepare for the consequences projected by so many reputable scientists.

THIS is not a time of cheering news, of sunny, optimistic days on which the sun never sets.

PUT against the backdrop of last week’s unrelenting bad news, today’s stories of curtailed or closed health services look little more than transient irritations.

AS SPRING moves ever closer towards summer, it is inevitable that our roads get busier, especially at weekends.

The death of a two-year-old child in a domestic accident must be every parent’s worst nightmare.

Thousands of people took to the streets yesterday collecting on behalf of the Special Olympics movement, which seeks to help people with intellectual disabilities by harnessing the power of sport to unite people in the spirit of acceptance and inclusion.