THE extraordinary welcoming scenes in Limerick yesterday as the Munster team returned with the Heineken Cup were like a modern re-enactment of Moses parting the Red Sea.

It was somewhat disingenuous of Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to express surprise at the results of the latest public opinion poll, because they should be enough to shake the Government from any complacency it may labour under.

Today, Cardiff will be Munster’s province.

DEBATE on whether or not Ireland should go nuclear has been kick-started by one of the country’s leading educationalists, who yesterday made the surprising claim that, compared to other means of production, atomic energy is safe.

YESTERDAY’S disruption of services at the State training agency FÁS was a graphic illustration of the level of opposition within the civil and public service to the Government’s ill-conceived decentralisation scheme.

In the course of his phenomenally successful television series, Rip Off Republic, Eddie Hobbs advocated that people should send nappies to the Department of Enterprise as a means of encouraging the minister to repeal the Groceries Order.

Finance Minister Brian Cowen was certainly reflecting public opinion when he stated that the two-day unofficial rail strike gave the public service a bad name and should not be repeated.

In a reaction to the public outcry elicited by television exposure, the Health Service Executive (HSE) has set itself a deadline of next November to eliminate the need for trolleys and chairs in accident and emergency units through the country.

Regrettable though it is that six of the 35 hunger-striking Afghans in Dublin had to receive hospital treatment, it was an inevitable outcome of the course of action they embarked upon.

YESTERDAY’S disruption of rail services was an insult to the Irish people and a display of contempt for the travelling public without whom the management or staff of Iarnród Éireann would not have a job.