It is vital that ongoing negotiations on the formation of the next government deliver a clear, comprehensive agreement that will ensure the next administration is in a position to run its full term.

My unsolicited advice to the strategists and apparatchiks of the upper echelons of the Fine Gael party is simply this: the next time you do a good deed (at least ostensibly), make sure that you do not afterwards put an ulterior motive on the acceptance of your professed act of generosity as proof of the recipient’s venal nature or that person’s willingness to be ‘bought’.

Parents with children in care have a hell of a cheek to complain about HSE care of their children. Unfit parents in need of foster services are hardly in a position to criticise.

Instead of another general election let’s have a TV vote.

Latest headlines on the housing crisis:

Perhaps it is time for both Enda Kenny and Micheál Martin to accept that the majority of voters in the country do not want either of them to “lead” the government (as neither received a clear mandate from the electorate).