THE tattered reputation of Irish banks — or indeed Ireland — will not be improved by yesterday’s €7 million raid on the Bank of Ireland at College Green in Dublin.

THE majority of us are social beings. Most of us would not have it any other way; we could not survive much, less be happy, if it were otherwise.

THERE’S hardly a retail business in the county that rents its premises that is not trying to get their landlord to cut rents to reflect our new reality.

MOST of us will be surprised to learn that a prisoner has died in an Irish jail every six weeks for the last two years. This figure — 16 deaths — is not the kind of statistic that we imagine defines our society.

IT IS difficult to disagree with Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s Dáil assertion — supported by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore — yesterday that strikes will “do nothing” to help the country resolve the difficulties we all face.

YESTERDAY’S fraud squad raid on Anglo Irish Bank offices in Dublin would have been greeted with a muted cheer, the kind that greets a losing team’s consolation try in the dying minutes of a 32-8 defeat at Lansdowne Road.

THE Catholic Church in Ireland, through the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church (NBSC), yesterday published revised guidelines on child protection following the recent scandal over allegations of child abuse by clerics in Cloyne.

IT is an unfortunate but entirely illustrative irony that Eating Disorders Awareness Week began yesterday, just as half the world sat up agog at the chemically and surgically modified waif-women who high-heeled it up the red carpet to the Oscars ceremony at the Kodak Theatre in Los Angles or at London Fashion Week.

ANYONE who cares for proper management and use of public resources cannot but be outraged by the news that the Health Service Executive paid €51 million to external consultants in the last four years.

The Dáil Public Accounts Committee, which monitors public spending, last week issued a scathing report on the travel abuses within Fás. The state training agency wrongly allowed executives and board members to travel first class since 1992.