Calls for Frank Flannery to appear before the Public Accounts Committee intensified after his resignation as chairman of the Forum on Philanthropy to which Phil Hogan, Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government, had appointed him in 2011.

Well done to the Irish Examiner for making Professor Morgan Kelly’s latest warning its front-page lead (Irish Examiner, 10/3/14), the only national daily to do so.

A Leavy (Letters 10th March 2014) is partially correct when he says, “austerity is a result of decisions taken in this country during the years of the boom, which ended with national bankruptcy in 2010”.

Every March there is a tendency to refer to Éamon de Valera’s St Patrick’s Day speech of 80 odd years ago, and to misquote it as ‘the comely maidens dancing at the crossroads’ speech.

In your editorial of March 4 you refer to “New York’s (St Patrick’s Day) parade ban on gays”. It needs to be emphasised that there is absolutely no ban on anyone participating in the NY parade because of their sexual orientation per se. The ban is on carrying banners.

Iarnród Eireann announced it is to ban electronic cigarettes in all its stations and trains because, they claim, they have had feedback from customers. Apparently these complainers object to inhaling somebody else’s vapour.

I was delighted to see there is a committee established in Ballycotton to oversee the restoration of ex-lifeboat Mary Stanford.

The financial contribution from the Department of Justice towards the erection of a memorial headstone at Mount Jerome Cemetery in remembrance of those babies and children who died while in the care of the Bethany Home in Dublin is to be welcomed (Derek Leinster, Remembering Bethany, March 1).

I write in connection with Mr Ian Elliott’s sad experience as the chief executive for six years with the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, as recently reported in several newspapers.

As we go through a cold, wet and windy March, the mood of the elements seems a perfect match for the response and indifference of the artistic community to the imprisonment of one of their own, Margaretta D’Arcy.