WHILE Ireland lags far behind other EU states when it comes to harnessing energy from renewable sources, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has reiterated his implacable opposition to nuclear power.

THE Government has taken the sensible, if easy way out of the stem cell dilemma by signing into Irish law EU regulations governing the quality and safety of this developing but controversial arm of medicine.

THE relentless political battle to restore devolved power-sharing government in the North has received a welcome boost in the latest report from the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) that depicts a highly encouraging picture of how the paramilitary landscape there is changing.

PAVING the way, perhaps, for a royal Irish visit by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, her husband, Prince Philip, arrives in Dublin today.

MIRACULOUSLY, no one was injured when barrels of concentrated sulphuric acid yesterday fell off the back of a lorry near the heart of Ireland’s chemical complex and just after the morning rush hour.

The crisis that has bedeviled the Government for more than a week is over and the coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats remains intact.

Justice Minister Michael McDowell was correct to admonish the National Irish Bank for paying a substantial ransom to an armed gang instead of alerting the gardaí at the time, as he did yesterday.

For the past three years Rape Crisis Network Ireland, the umbrella body for such centres in the country, has been operating under a severe financial burden which is threatening the vital services they provide for victims of rape and sexual assault.

DESPITE the fact that the Government insists that it is alert to the grave problem, and occurrence, of child sex abuse, it is dangerously lax in providing the resources to reduce the incidence of it.

THE legislation which Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney introduced in the Dáil in relation to hepatitis C, should help to make the lives of victims more bearable, not add to their distress as it appears to do.