THERE is a chink of light and it is not an oncoming train. It is at least an irony and perhaps a pun that Ireland exited the bailout on Gaudete Sunday.

MYTHS are the stories that groups tell themselves: the beautiful lies that allow life go on. This is a week of great myth making. In the death and interment of Nelson Mandela we are witnessing modern myth being made in front of our eyes. But myths can be pernicious and evil — corroding life as well as enhancing it.

OURS is the first generation in the history of the State where the provision of social services is mainly non-denominationalal.

Advisers live in the half-light between the public mandate of the elected office holders they serve and the permanent government of the civil service who eschew and usually escape the strobe lights, relentlessly searching and bleaching the political process

THE soon-to-be-fulfilled promise of Ireland walking upright from the bailout, beyond the maw of the troika, needs a national song to be celebrated. Sunday, Dec 15 is the day of reckoning; when Ireland regains her sovereignty. Great moments — like good marching — need music, and marching and music are indispensable to civic pride.

The Government should adopt a system based on area of property. As the benefits and facilities available to residents in some local authority areas are far greater than in others, a zoning adjustment could be applied.

PUBLIC anger about Gerry Adams’s past, prompted by the RTÉ documentary The Disappeared, and his alleged inaction over his brother’s crimes of child sex abuse is probably trumped by public apathy.

YESTERDAY’S cabinet meeting committed the Government to holding a referendum on same-sex marriage.

PERFECT transparency, like a bird flying into a glass building, is the state of being able to see nothing.

It is a matter of taste, or maybe conviction. Either way the relics of St Anthony have prompted the devotion of thousands in all-weathers around the country.