I am sick of the radio news announcing every hour our country’s desperate financial situation.

As an OAP who has paid the household charge, I am annoyed that Cllr Sean Martin declined to pay his contribution.

The furore around the recent ESRI paper that suggested that some 44% of workers would be better off on the dole, overlooked one thing: this report may in fact be nothing other than an attempt to validate the persistent attacks on those unfortunate enough to have to depend on welfare — most probably to justify further cuts in such supports, as opposed to taxing high end incomes to close the gap between revenue and spending, in the upcoming budget.

Now that we have had the household charge and water charges are coming, I predict that the next charge that the Government will impose that affects our daily lives will be a tax on sex.

Every two weeks or so there is a distraction.

Roy Keane is right.

The European Union (originally the European Coal and Steel Community) was created in the 1950s to prevent repeating the disastrous mistakes of the 1930s, and yet today, it seems as though nothing has been learned.

By granting an amnesty, a pardon and an apology to those Irish soldiers who abandoned their posts and their oath-pledged duty to Ireland during the Second World War and enlisted in the British army, Defence Minister Alan Shatter has held the Irish Defences Forces up to public ridicule and humiliation.

Our tradition and ritual from the Catholic Church is very much part of our identity and cultural heritage.

Minister Jan O’Sullivan has said that an internal review into planning ‘irregularities’ vindicated the decision of her predecessor, Minister Willie Penrose, not to ‘rush headlong into appointing seven external planning consultants to embark on costly, open-ended inquiries’.