AS the Government prepares to refund €1 billion illegally deducted from pensioners in State nursing homes, the coalition is embroiled in a fresh controversy over wrongly clawing back money which elderly people had squirrelled away for a rainy day and left to their families.

IN yet another weekend of carnage on our roads, five people have died.

The formation of the Fianna Fáil backbench committee in an effort to force Bertie Ahern and his frontbench colleagues to heed the concerns of backbenchers is hauntingly reminiscent of the unease in the party during the summer of 1979.

Voluntary Health Insurance (VHI) premiums, which have more than doubled since 1999, are due to go up by a further 12.5% in September, after the company announced losses of €32 million for last year.

THE much-bandied phrase “cherishing all the children of the nation equally” comes from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic in Easter 1916.

WHETHER he is banning minors from pubs, changing the drinking laws, deporting Nigerian students, or smearing a Fine Gael spokesman as Dr Goebbels, Justice Michael McDowell is never far from controversy.

THE penalty points system is a shambles. That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from an analysis carried out by the Public Accounts Committee which found that nearly half the photographs taken by garda speed cameras last year were useless.

THE size of primary school classes is such an emotive issue that 200,000 angry parents signed the petition which yesterday landed on the desk of Education Minister Mary Hanafin.

THERE is a strong whiff of knee-jerk political reaction about the Government’s response to the crime crisis gripping the country.

HUMAN nature being what it is, some people will invariably try to cash in on the Ryder Cup when it opens at the K Club in Co Kildare this September.