A recent article (Irish Examiner, Feb 22) gives the impression that GPs are missing the opportunity to prevent suicides because the average suicide victim has seen their GP four times in the year before their death.

Describing the apology offered by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for Britain’s role in the Irish potato famine as a complete exercise in moral vacuousness suggests that BBC journalist/presenter Jeremy Paxman is ignorant of the difference between the failure of the potato crop and the Irish Famine.

Enda Kenny should have reminded the Chinese vice-president that it was Frank Aiken, acting on the advice of Conor Cruise O’Brien, who stubbornly insisted that all of the small nations in the UN should be free to discuss China’s representation in the General Assembly.

I refer to the letter writer (Feb 20) mauled and pulled to the ground twice by a huge Alsatian in an horrific attack lasting 10 minutes.

The closure threats to rural garda stations must alarm everyone in rural Ireland. Law and order in rural areas has now declined to the extent that robberies and attacks are so commonplace they do not even make the newspapers.

“I am not interested to know whether vivisection produces results that are profitable to the human race or doesn’t. The pain which it inflicts upon unconsenting animals is the basis of my enmity toward it, and it is to me sufficient justification of the enmity without looking further”.

While regurgitating old ideas, Matt Cooper (Opinion, Feb 17) at least raises an issue before an Irish public that is, for the most part, living in the stone age when it comes to illegal drugs in Ireland, and our present approach to solving the problems with our so-called “war on drugs.”

Enda Kenny, you will shortly be writing a cheque for €3.1bn to hand over to gamblers who should really have lost when their horse fell. Thanks to the Government, they didn’t lose; they’re getting their stake back, plus interest.

The headline over Richard Fitzpatrick’s preview (Arts, Feb 16) of a new film, The Enigma of Frank Ryan appears anomalous: “The ex-IRA man who died a Nazi collaborator”.

Why are we hiring more public servants under contract to do the work the Government is paid to do and at the same time sacking teachers, SNEs and nurses?