THIS week we were forced to acknowledge one unpleasant reality, one we have denied for far too long. We had to accept that our once booming economy is in recession.

Worker safety is vital to life and limb, but the latest figures released yesterday by the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) provides cold comfort.

The Government’s decision to publish the heads of a Civil Partnership Bill should be warmly welcomed. The proposed legislation dealing with the rights and duties of cohabitants is likely to provoke plenty of debate, if not controversy.

THIS was not in the script; we thought recession was like St Patrick and his snakes. Gone, banished, never again to trouble us even if the Celtic Tiger had fled to pastures new.

ZIMBABWE has endured all sorts of deprivations during the despotic Mugabe years, since 1980, but even that chaos took a new and sinister turn yesterday when opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai sought refuge at the Dutch Embassy in Harare, shortly after police took away 60 people from his party’s headquarters.

ONE should never underestimate the ability of bureaucrats to foul up, and the health service has been providing a stream of appalling examples in recent years.

DURING the closing session of the Eucharistic Congress in Quebec City yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI announced that the next Eucharistic Congress — the 50th — will be held in Dublin in 2012.

AT the time the crimes were committed the girl was so young that we cannot name her.

AS health, education and capital programme cuts start to have an impact the news that the Government may be vulnerable to compensation claims from MRSA victims will send a shiver down the spine of ministers who know the real cost of the army deafness claims, the Residential Institutions Redress Board, blood and hep C claims.

JUST as time forces us to accept that no relationship lasts forever, we must hope that no conflict can last forever either.