THE latest ESRI medium-term outlook for the Irish economy is both reassuring and worrying. 

WALK into almost any emergency department in a state hospital and you will be met by posters prominently declaring that assaults or abusive behaviour towards staff will not be tolerated. It is not a pleasant sight but a necessary one.

WE will know, early next week, if the fear and the disappointment that swept Donald Trump into the White House and that swept Britain — probably — out of the European Union were isolated game-changers or early warnings of a gathering storm.

THE integrity of our prison system, and the respect in which it was generally held, were dangerously undermined by the fleeting but expensive imprisonment of offenders who refused to pay court-imposed fines.

THERE are at least 2,515,322 private cars on our roads.

In the past, social services faced criticism for not moving fast enough to protect children from abuse or neglect, but figures for the babies taken from their family each year raise the question of whether the other extreme is now the case.

ANYONE who remembers the visit of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip to Ireland in May 2011 will recall not just the grandeur of events in Dublin Castle an Áras an Uachtaráin but also their trip to the Rock of Cashel, the National Stud in Kildare, and the Coolmore Stud in Co Tipperary.