YESTERDAY, as SIPTU took what may be one of its final stands in its rearguard action against modernisation at Aer Lingus, the announcement of a merger of two of the world’s biggest airlines underlined the challenges facing that industry.

WORKERS and businesses who relied on national agreements to regulate pay have been, by and large, well served by the process and we are about to discover if that positive trend can be sustained.

BECAUSE the cost of processing a planning application is far greater than the fee charged, anyone submitting an application to a local authority next year could, in theory, face fees up to 750% of current rates.

PRESIDENT Patrick Hillery, who died on Saturday aged 84, was of the generation who succeeded the revolutionaries-turned-politicians who shaped post-colonial Ireland in the second quarter of the last century.

ENERGY and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan will bring legislation to cabinet tomorrow proposing a ban on advertising of junk food on children’s television.

THE statutory inquiry conducted by senior counsel Hugh Hartnett into the death of 14-year-old Brian Rossiter in a cell at Clonmel Garda station on September 11, 2002, has concluded that there was no evidence he was assaulted while he was in the station, but that he was unlawfully detained by gardaí.

THE prime function of a government is to protect its citizens. In the circumstances, Labour TD Pat Rabbitte has highlighted the case of Leslie McCabe, a 16-year-old Down’s syndrome girl who has been left on the waiting list for speech therapy.

For years the Government has been telling us that we have never had it so good, but not enough was being done to ensure that the benefits of the Celtic Tiger economy were being protected.

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the signing of the Good Friday agreement.

Patient A, the unidentified 51-year-old Tipperary woman at the centre of last week’s cancer misdiagnosis controversy, has issued a statement covering multiple misdiagnoses of her breast cancer over a period of 18 months from September 2005 to March 2007.