LIKE it or not, Minister Éamon Ó Cuív’s proposal to set up a night-time rural transport scheme is a blatant pre-election bid to buy votes.

SOME 138,000 extra people could be at risk of falling into poverty in the midst of our unprecedented economic prosperity, according to the Conference of Religious in Ireland.

THE Health Strategy outlined in 2001 is in tatters. It promised an action plan for rehabilitation and physiotherapy, as well psychological assessment for thousands of people with neurological conditions, but six years later the plan has still not been implemented.

After signing a major energy initiative in Brussels yesterday, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern admitted that Ireland will have to make significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in coming years.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Féin were the main winners in the Assembly elections in Northern Ireland this week.

THE one thing we can be sure of, following the seventh rise in interest rates in 15 months, is that the latest increase will immediately be passed on to struggling mortgage holders and borrowers up and down the country.

CONCERNS over the direct link between cocaine and violence in local communities will be heightened by a major new report showing that the killer drug is destroying lives in all sections of Irish society.

WITH the manufacturing sector in steep decline, the loss of 280 more jobs, almost half the workforce at the Procter and Gamble plant in Nenagh, is a psychological blow to the Irish economy and a body blow to a region where more than 1,200 workers have been made redundant in recent times.

THE shoddy state of disrepair at Munster’s only TB (tuberculosis) testing lab is symbolic of Ireland’s creaking health service.

WHILE the Government is to be commended for speedily closing the loophole in the child-protection law, which exposes vulnerable children to sexual predators, the worrying aspect of the latest legal crisis is that emergency legislation is once again being rushed through the Oireachtas.