Some years ago, I received a very unusual (but very beautiful) card from a gentle friend in West Australia. It pictured a mother kangaroo guarding her baby in a manger, capturing something of the essence of Christmas in an authentic Australian setting.

The Taoiseach’s call (Irish Examiner, January 23) to ‘return the Coalition for the sake of recovery’ defies common sense. Not for the first time, Irish people are being sold a pig in a poke.

The Roman Catholic Bishop of Waterford, Alphonsus Cullinan, wants the State to continue to enforce his church ideals by retaining the ban on pub opening on the day generally known as Good Friday (Letters, January 25).

When Mike Mahon tells us that Irish governments ‘sold out the sovereignty of our country to the European bankers’ he is not in accord with the facts (Letters, January 25).

Last Saturday I went to my local retail park. Thinking it being January, the Christmas crowds would be gone, this male would be able to shop in peace.