Antisocial behaviour due largely to the influence of drugs, especially alcohol, has become endemic in this country.

This week marks the start of Lent and older people will no doubt be mindful of the great changes that have occurred in recent years. Many were proud to carry the mark of the ashes at the beginning of Lent.

MANY parents who complained to Catholic Church authorities because priests were abusing their children were betrayed by the inadequate, cowardly and morally reprehensible response of the Church.

THE dispute between the Cork County Board and the county’s senior hurlers and footballers has meant that one National League game has already been deferred and that another — next week’s hurling league tie with Kilkenny — remains in jeopardy.

“IT IS not correct. If I said so I wasn’t correct. I can’t recall if I did say it, but if I, I, I did not say, or if I, I did say it, I didn’t mean to say it — that these issues could not be dealt with until the end of the Mahon Tribunal. That is not what Revenue said.”

Some government ministers appear to be in a state of blatant contradiction, affirming confidence in the Mahon Tribunal in the Dáil, while being bitterly critical of it in public. They can’t have it both ways and still retain public credibility.

Through the ages the wonders of science have never ceased to amaze. A chance discovery in a Canadian hospital during an operation on an obese man to try to suppress his appetite has uncovered a way of unlocking people’s memories.

THE DÁIL resumes today and faces economic challenges more pressing than at any time in recent years.

PAUL McGUINNESS, the manager of U2 for more than 30 years, has joined an argument that involves a growing number of disparate producers of all kinds of goods.

YESTERDAY a Nigerian, who has been charged with trying to sleep naked in a crib in the Redemptorist Church in Limerick on December 29, was remanded to prison following an assault in a hotel where he was accommodated by the State.