THE Irish Bishops’ Drugs Initiative (IBDI) was established in 1997 as a Catholic Church response to the growing problem of drug and alcohol misuse in Ireland.

AS a proud Irishman (I fervently support the two greatest club sides in the world — Leinster and Munster), I would have to agree with the opinions expressed in the Lonely Planet guide book, regarding Ireland and the Irish.

I REFER to an recent article by Patsy McArdle in the Irish Examiner headed “Probe into claims beef ‘pirates’ are selling meat door-to-door” (Jan 9) which claims that “Department of Agriculture officials are believed to have already led a number of raids in the Donegal area in a bid to detect illegal slaughterhouses”.

REGARDING your article on baby “Blue Ivy’s Expensive Gifts” (Jan 12):

MINISTER Phil Hogan states “that this residential tax is to be introduced to make a contribution to local authority governance and services councils they provide”.

WE call on Minister Burton to publish the report which details her department’s study on the rental sector and shows where rent supplement is more than market rate.

THE famous economist, Adam Smith’s Canons of Taxation included the following: (i) Tax must be easy to collect.

TRIAL by media seems to be an increasingly successful method of fact-finding in this country.

I REFER to the Pensions Ombudsman’s RTÉ broadcast criticising the recent Revenue letters to pensioners where he claimed “not enough homework was done“, that “the matter could be handled more sensitively” and “the gun was jumped a bit”.

ALLOW me to make a very basic point of logic in relation to the article “Public decries closure of embassy to the Vatican” (Jan 16).