“UNTIL this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?”

THE MOST striking feature of Saturday’s protest march through the streets of Dublin wasn’t its size, huge though that was. It was its spontaneity, its individuality.

IT'S the best-kept secret in Ireland - 5,402,369,000. It's a big number.

By Fergus Finlay

By Fergus Finlay

HOW do you prove a negative? How do you satisfy the world that you no longer have weapons of mass destruction, that you haven't been developing a nuclear arsenal, that you aren't fully equipped with the means to pursue chemical and germ warfare?

WE didn’t elect our Government to generate a crisis, did we? And we certainly didn’t elect them to start a whole series of crises, surely.

HERE’S a piece of spin. It’s actually a piece of political guff, from a master of the genre. It mightn’t look like it on the surface, but it shows how devious and cunning its author is. And how much he deserves to be watched.

By Fergus Finlay