DO you know what the “conference rate” is? It’s one of the categories of travelling expenses paid to civil servants while they’re abroad.

SEPTEMBER 15. That’s the deadline the Taoiseach and the Minister for Finance have given all their colleagues.

DO you remember Dave? Dave was an ordinary guy, a good citizen. He was plucked from obscurity because of his uncanny resemblance to the president of the United States.

THE word on the street is that the Government has decided, without even really discussing the matter, that a referendum on children’s rights would be too controversial. After Lisbon, they are afraid of the risk involved.

I ONCE worked for Denis Larkin. The son of the great Jim Larkin, and brother of Young Jim, also regarded as a great trade union leader, Denis was the least highly rated of the three.

IN Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado, the Emperor of Japan managed to produce the most streamlined government in the world.

I HAVE never met Padraig Harrington. Well, that’s not entirely true. He once, last year, held a door open for me, and when I passed him without realising who it was, he said, “you’d think a better class of doorman would be worth acknowledging”.

I MET a man recently who has spent most of his career working on major capital projects. He’s been involved in building bridges, motorways, third-level colleges and housing estates. And he’s involved on the financial side of things, so he knows a fair bit about money and how it should be spent.

IF YOU want to see where the HSE gets its money from, it’s all there in the book of estimates. You can find it easily enough on the web — just click on www.finance.gov.ie, and look under ‘Financial and Economic Information’.

So why is it that so many other ESRI reports in recent times go largely ignored?