With solid recovery now firmly established in the Irish economy, one might have thought that we had left the dark days of the Great Recession behind us, but alas that is far from the case.

Following the general election in February and the subsequent formation of a Government, albeit after a protracted period of negotiation, a minister was appointed with responsibility for housing, located in the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government.

Following the presentation of Budget 2017 I had a very empty feeling and was quite critical of the latest fiscal offering.

One commentator wrote last week that Budget 2017 would be a weak budget presented by a weak Government.

Following the debacle of the 2015 growth revisions that accompanied the first quarter of 2016 growth numbers in July, the CSO’s second quarter growth numbers, released earlier this week, represented a pretty tame affair.

The passing of the Labour Day public holiday signals that the summer is over and that autumn is now descending on the US.

I lived in Co Kildare during the 1980s when the council introduced service charges.

A few weeks before I sat my Leaving Cert exams, Ireland took the bold step of joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System without the UK, thereby breaking a long-standing one-for-one link with sterling.

There are still many out there who either refuse to admit that a compelling recovery is under way in the economy or simply do not believe it. The fact is that the evidence is there for all to see and is being added to on a weekly basis.

It is now almost four years since Ireland entered the troika programme and is almost a year since the programme was exited.