It is morally reprehensible that the four religious orders have said that they will not pay a cent in compensation to the victims of their Magdalene Laundries.

The Personal Insolvency Bill is shortly to become law to deal with the mortgage arrears situation. This will give tremendous powers of repossessions to the banks.

I wish to respond to Ryle Dwyer’s review of my new monograph, Fianna Fáil, partition and Northern Ireland, 1926-1971, which was recently published by your paper (Jul 13).

Highlighting the reduction of the influenza vaccine payments to €15 for GPs does not consider the big picture in general-practice payments (Irish Examiner July, 15).

On Saturday, Jul 13, you published only part of a letter from me, and by omitting the final two sentences you misrepresented my position.

Regarding the recent verdict in the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case in the USA: Were the Florida prosecutors trained by the California prosecutors and the LAPD?

When Enda Kenny used the ‘crosier’ of the parliamentary party whip to bully Fine Gael TDs into supporting his abortion Bill, and he ‘excommunicated’ from the Fine Gael parliamentary party Deputies Lucinda Creighton, Terence Flanagan, Peter Mathews, Billy Timmins and Brian Walsh for honouring Fine Gael’s general election pledge not to introduce abortion legislation, there were very few criticisms of his actions by media commentators.

A constant whinge from senators is that the Seanad has wonderful and insightful debates that are never reported by the media, and thus the public never get to learn how brilliant and necessary the Seanad is for democracy.

Following deliberations by the Oireachtas Sub-committee on Finance last week on the subject of philanthropy, Minister Noonan has promptly declared that a proposition to extend the right of multimillionaire tax exiles to reside in Ireland for up to 244 days per year, without any further liability to Irish taxation, “attractive”, if they were to buy this right in the form of philanthropic payments of €15m to unspecified charities over a period of 10 years.

“Government of the people, by the people, for the people”, is seen as the hallmark of a representative, democratic society.