THE Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin, has become a clarion voice on behalf of minority groups and the oppressed.

The High Court awarded €70,000 in damages to the Gray family, because they had to leave their family home in Ballybunion, Co Kerry as a result of the gardaí allegedly leaking information to the press about a nephew, James O’Donoghue, a convicted rapist, who had come to live with them.

It was largely as a result of the Irish Examiner’s series on domestic violence that the Justice Committee of the Dáil held a hearing on domestic violence yesterday.

WITH companies lining up for Bupa’s lucrative business, following its decision to pull out of the Irish health insurance market, the British-owned group yesterday lost another hand in the high-stakes poker game surrounding the controversial issue of risk equalisation.

IT IS offensive in the extreme that politicians should seek to override the decisions of the courts by seeking the early release of convicted criminals.

BY any yardstick, the fact that nearly €18 million was spent last year providing security in the health service illustrates the scale of the problem facing staff at hospitals up and down the country.

RUSHING a sick child to hospital is distressing at the best of times but it defies credulity that parents should be expected to undertake this daunting journey by train.

Just when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern may have imagined that the issue of the money he accepted as Finance Minister was safely behind him, it was revisited once again by the man he succeeded.

Despite the fact that the incidence of cancer is expected to practically double in the country over the next 14 years, a national strategy on the disease — the second — launched last year remains in limbo.

As FAMILIES and friends of the seven fishermen who perished in awesome seas waited in growing hopelessness, the country shares in their appalling and dreadful anguish.