Finance Minister Brian Cowen described his budget as the biggest support package for the low-income sector in the history of the State.

Yesterday, in a typically convoluted way, Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny used more than 700 words to preface a couple of questions, and the Taoiseach beat around the bush with more than 600 words evading the answers.

New arrangements for a Press Council and Ombudsman are warmly welcomed as a positive means of providing an easy, legitimate and inexpensive redress for people wronged by newspapers, while at the same time protecting the press freedom of responsible members of the industry.

Tim O’Malley, the minister of state with responsibility for mental health, came under sustained pressure yesterday to reconsider his position following his reckless allegation that medical consultants have deliberately kept waiting lists artificially high.

Irish medical consultants are on some kind of ego trip, getting pleasure out of the suffering of people on waiting lists, because it makes them feel more powerful to have a hundred or 200 people on their list.

Landowners had for many years an understandable case for opposing passage through their land , on the basis that they were liable to have to pay damages if somebody got injured by walking into a hole or through some misadventure.

THIRTY people have been killed since Transport Minister Martin Cullen said there was urgent need for reform to improve road safety. A month has passed and nothing has happened about that urgent need.

THE Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (ILIR) held a major rally in the Bronx area of New York city last Friday to highlight the plight of undocumented Irish immigrants.

IT is hardly an exaggeration for the new president of the Irish Dental Association (IDA), Dr John Barry, to assert that a crisis looms in publicly funded dental services and schemes.

COMMON sense has prevailed with Bord Gáis and the ESB. The decision by the Energy Regulator to cut the proposed rise in electricity prices from 19.7% to 12.6% is good news for consumers.