JIM McDAID has character. Perhaps not every ingredient that goes into that elusive characteristic, but he has a lot.

FIVE euro. That’s what it costs to land a passenger in Dublin. To put it more precisely, that, on average, is what it costs an airline to land a passenger in Dublin.

IT’S 2005, maybe year 13 of the Celtic Tiger. Fantastic growth, incredible wealth, Ireland leaping up the economic league tables.

I WANT to get rich, famous and laid. Three modest (or immodest, depending on your point of view) enough ambitions, I suppose.

ROCK Hudson died in October 1985. His death convulsed the world not because a handsome if minor star had passed away, but because of how he died.

THERE is a mother in mourning in Ireland. Every day, she cries for the boy she has lost, and there is often no end to the tears.

LAST week friends of Olunkunle Eluhanla, a 16-year old boy deported by the Government, picketed outside the Dáil.

ON a Friday night a couple of weeks ago, three young boys slept in the same bed in a hostel.

YAMANOUCHI is a Japanese word that means “middle of the mountains”.

“WHATEVER exceptions may exist, it is an undoubted fact that the Bill will affect very many people who are old, or poor or disabled, mentally or physically, or in many cases, all of these. As already stated, persons so situated will almost certainly have had little or no capacity to understand their rights under the legislation or to protest at the unlawfulness of the charges. . .