Last year you gave us the benefit of Mr Ken Ring’s dire outlook for the coming winter — lots of snow, temperatures plummeting to 10 degrees etc — none of which materialised.

I have great difficulty understanding government politicians’ insistence that we are in “recovery”. “Tough decisions now paying off” they trumpet. What rubbish!

It is some 25 years ago since Mr Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times wrote a strong editorial outlining a strong correlation between reductions in the marginal rate of income tax and the increase in the proportions of total income tax paid by high earners.

Desmond FitzGerald is missing a few things when give us his Irish history lesson (Letters, December 22).

As I sit in my cold house

By ignoring the Banking inquiry, it would appear the European Central Bank (ECB) is now treating the Irish Government in the same manner in which the people of Ireland have been treated by Irish politicians.

The recent letters debate regarding 1916 shows that the crumbs from the table brigade do not want the truth, or perhaps cannot handle the truth.

In a beautiful poem in Irish, Máire Mhac an tSaoi described the Irish tradition of people lighting a candle in their window on Christmas Eve, inviting the Christ-child to sleep in their home that night.

I can’t fathom Ray Kinsella’s thinking in his article (Irish Examiner, December 18) headlined ‘West has responsibility to engage Russia’. 

Minister Lynch, the HSE and HIQA all expressed shock at the treatment of residents at a Mayo nursing home.