Matt Cooper (Opinion, Oct 12) gives Enda Kenny the old “one-two” squarely on the chin by parsing his “achievements”, or, more accurately, the lack of them.

Matt Cooper asked if there was any difference between Enda Kenny and his predecessor Brian Cowen.

Halloween and bonfire season will be here later this month. I would like to ask people to carefully check their bonfires before they are lit as small animals like hedgehogs, slow worms, toads/frogs and mice may be living and hibernating in your wood pile and could be burnt alive.

It is ironic that the Examiner, on the first ever UN International Day of the Girl, 11 October, chose to publish an article saying that there is no longer a need for the National Women’s Council (NWCI).

Your columnist Victoria White ‘stands by her Irish men’ and queries the existence of the National Women’s Council (October 11 p12).

I write following the recent article ‘Smear test screening still out sourced to US’ and wish to emphasis a number of points.

I was very excited to note that the EU has recently been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Gerry Moore (letters Saturday Oct 13th), when making an assertion that “perhaps it’s time to restrict the number of children per family for whom benefit is paid, based on the needs of the society”, might set out exactly how this reconciles with his later assertion that resources must be centred on the children and not their parents.

In her letter of Oct 11, Cllr Fiona Kerins says that we in Ireland ‘scored much better than the big two’ — France and Germany — in some past ‘mathematical metric’ that assessed how each country was doing economically. The fact that Ireland is now bankrupt highlights the failings of that particular mathematical metric.

After witnessing, with my 11-year-old son, at last Friday night’s debacle, I have to get this off my chest.