KATHLEEN LYNCH TD has apologised for intervening with Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy in the case of a rapist sentenced to 14 years in jail by the Central Criminal Court last week. Trevor Casey was convicted of raping two sisters in their early teens.

TO SUGGEST that the Health Service Executive has an image and credibility problem is as obvious as saying fish need water.

THE weekend news that the Catholic Church’s director of child protection, Ian Elliott, and the Bishop of Cloyne, John Magee, are in serious conflict over the handling of child sexual abuse allegations made in the Cloyne diocese adds to the concern created by last week’s report that religious orders still owe the Government more than €50 million under a 2002 deal to compensate victims of clerical sexual abuse.

Integration Minister Conor Lenihan suggested that EU migrant workers who have lived in this country for a certain number of years should be given the right to vote in general elections.

It is no surprise that Aer Lingus had announced that it would honour the tickets for the €5 flights to the United States that it sold to up to 300 people between 7.30am and 9am on Wednesday.

WHEN our farmers, a sector of our community that benefited so tremendously from European Union membership, take to the streets to oppose the deal proposed by the EU’s trade commissioner Peter Mandelson at the World Trade Organisation’s Doha round, it may be time to sit up and listen.

THOUGH maybe not quiet as daunting as being made a Wehrmacht field marshal deep in the cold steppes of Stalin’s Soviet Union in, say, 1943, assuming leadership of the Progressive Democrats bring its own challenges.

Former president Patrick J Hillery was laid to rest yesterday following a state funeral in which the country did him and his family proud.

Niall McElwee taught child protection courses at the Athlone Institute of Technology for more than two years after his conviction for the indecent assault of two young women in the Netherlands.

THE EU Commission has rejected claims that producing biofuels is a “crime against humanity” that threatens world food supplies.