WITH a stroke of his pen President Barack Obama has taken one of our self-serving, lazy and threadbare excuses for not doing enough to protect the environment or save energy out of play.

AS our political representatives return to Leinster House after their Christmas break today, their attention will focus on our economic crisis.

NO ONE should be surprised that relatives of the children abused by their mother in Roscommon have objected to the Health Services Executive being involved in investigating the scandal.

Following a meeting with Minister for Children Barry Andrews over the weekend, Cardinal Seán Brady and Archbishop Diarmuid Martin announced that the country’s Catholic bishops are committed to telling the HSE whether all allegations of clerical child sexual abuse have been reported to the civil authorities.

In the past six years the state has paid over €700 million in rent to what are some of the country’s wealthiest property developers.

THERE was an unfortunate but illustrative coincidence yesterday when two strands of our national tragedy overlapped.

IN a week dominated by child protection issues it is good to see that the new Adoption Bill has been welcomed by parents’ groups and social workers.

WE have had to accept that terrible abuse was inflicted on thousands of children by evil and predatory paedophiles so we should not be easily shocked when another horror story kicks its way into our consciousness.

THE number of people losing their jobs continues to rise and has passed 300,000. It is feared that this figure will continue to grow in the immediate future.

The chairman of the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority (IFSRA), Jim Farrell, testified yesterday before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance and the Public Service that his office was too trusting in depending on the ethics of officials.