JAMES T KIRK, of the Starship Enterprise, while learning how to become a Starfleet officer, took a test used to check out one’s character.

BISHOP BOYCE now “invites all survivors of clerical abuse to come to him for guidance”.

INNUMERACY is so obviously a Government-wide phenomenon.

WE elected this Government to sort out the mess caused by the previous lot.

WHILE there may be cause to celebrate better child protection practices now in place in the Catholic Church in Ireland, once more the bishops presenting the latest child abuse report try to downplay the seriousness of their inaction by careful choice of language.

CONTRARY to the belief “that we have all the time in the world” to deal with climate change, events suggest that time is running out.

YOUR editorial (Nov 29) incorrectly states that bilateral agreements for the purposes of inter country adoption with countries such as Ethiopia have collapsed in recent years and concludes that no country should allow children to be bought and sold.

AN abiding theme of recent letters to The Irish Examiner is the helplessness experienced by the Irish people to take effective action to redress the Government’s brazen funnelling of the nation’s wealth into the pockets of those who already have too much.

IN her column, Colette Browne (Opinion, Nov 30) writes that “perhaps members of the Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) who have been screaming bias at every available opportunity since the sorry episode first came to light, would like the entire board of RTÉ to commit hari-kari as a token of their sorrow”.

WHERE is the democracy we were promised?