Minister for Health, Dr James O’Reilly, is enduring criticism that might not be the justified.

Your report (Irish Examiner, Nov 19), that so many publicly-funded healthcare institutions are flagrantly breaching public pay policy with impunity, by making secret top-level remuneration payments in a manner that is not decipherable to taxpayers, conveys an impression that these institutions are operating at the behest of feudal aristocrats who are accountable to nobody.

Mary O’Regan reports (Nov 18) that President Higgins’ first UK state visit “is expected to build on the political, economic and cultural ties between both countries”.

The takeover of Newbridge Credit Union by PTSB is the beginning of the end for the ordinary people of Ireland.

The latest revelation, largely unreported, that hospital executives are raiding the car park and tuck shop funds to top up their rapacious salaries is of course ‘unacceptable and must be investigated’ — Howlin and Gilmore standard speak. (5c for a Mars, a penny apple).

Patrick O’Brien (Letters, Nov 15) defends Poppy-wearing as those who died in the Great War “saved Europe from Prussian militarism”.

I am disappointed in RTɒs scanty coverage of the Philippine Islands disaster, compared to BBC, ITV and Sky News, which covered it extensively.

Given the time that’s in it, perhaps the next time Enda Kenny jets off, cap in hand for his customary pat of approval from Angela Merkel, would it not be opportune to remind her, that over 60,000 Irish citizens were mercilessly slain in the killing fields of Flanders, the Somme, Ypres and the many other infamous locations at the hands of the German military in the two World Wars?

RTÉ’s programme, Witnesses to War, was overdue. Why did it take so long to be made?

The news this week that the popular Great Western Greenway in Mayo has been blocked by a landowner comes as no surprise; it was only a matter of time before this happened, and we can only be thankful that it didn’t occur at the height of the tourist season.