IT is deeply troubling that the 2010 Annual Report of the National Board for Safeguarding Children reveals that the review of child safeguarding practices in each diocese, which the Hierarchy requested the board to commence in 2009, has been thwarted by them for over two years.

THE Government simply can’t permit Professor Morgan Kelly’s latest pessimistic prediction become reality.

YOUR correspondent Conor Ryan should get the award for the best researched and timely article so far this year.

THE reported wreath-laying ceremony by Queen Elizabeth at the Irish War Memorial Gardens at Islandbridge taking place on May 17, the 37th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bombings, is a further insult to those who lost their lives at the hands of loyalist murder gangs.

IT is important that Ireland has a productive relationship with our nearest neighbour — and the first state visit of Queen Elizabeth II to our country, can be seen in this context.

THE visits by Queen Elizabeth II and President Barack Obama as respective heads of state of Britain and the United States pose a challenge for peace activists to distinguish between genuine efforts to promote peace and justice.

AT the start of this school year, Anne Copplestone, nurse at the South Infirmary and volunteer at the HOPE Foundation, came in to my school to talk to my transition year about the opportunity to go out to Calcutta and visit the HOPE projects over there to see the work they were doing.

I AM disappointed at the very poor quality of the arguments used by the Cabinet in favour of the tax on private sector pension funds.

VARIOUS individuals have protested against the killing of Osama bin Laden while unarmed on the grounds that this was against the law.

WOULDN’T it make sense in these austere times to release some of the €100bn tied up in private sector pensions funds and avoid the high cost of the IMF bailout funds?