OUR hit-and-miss, two-tier health system has been at the very centre of public debate and frustration for decades. 

THE delays around finalising the location of the national children’s hospital in Dublin may have set the benchmark for prevarication, political featherbedding, professional disagreement, inexplicable decisions and just plain, unacceptable time wasting in public projects in Ireland. The delivery of that facility is a snail-paced saga of a different colour.

IF there was any doubt about the consequences of the Government making concessions to gardaí and some teachers — barely 10% of public employees — outside the Lansdowne Road agreement, there can be none after yesterday’s contribution from the Impact trade union. 

THOUGH it’s nearly 40 years since Ireland’s anti-nuclear movement held a festival at Carnsore Point in Wexford — Ireland’s Woodstock, social historians assure us — to protest at plans to build a nuclear power plant there, we still import around 90% of our energy needs. 

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master — that’s all.”

WE are, once again, indulging the kind of public spleen fest that underlines the disconnect with reality that does so much to keep this society pegged in a strange, backward land of wishful thinking where delusion and envy are too often indulged. 

EVEN by his spectacular standards, standards that seem to fall each and every day, Donald Trump’s assertion that all the women who made allegations of sexual misconduct against him are politically motivated liars would be laughable if it were not so serious — and apparently believed by many who will vote for him. 

IMAGINE if, over lunch this weekend, your partner announced your relationship was over and that they wanted a divorce.