The key complicating factor in the ticket equation is the group to which I belong: the Munster exile living in Dublin. We’re taking many of the tickets allocated to Leinster fans for the simple reason that this is where it’s easier for us to get our hands on them. There are nowhere near as many Leinster-born people living in Munster to take the Munster tickets

In retrospect, Harney should have gone when McCreevy did. Ahern’s decision to move the government to a populist high spending position was one that must have been alien to her instincts. It also sowed the seeds of our economic destruction, as the government’s finances became overly reliant on the transitory construction boom

It would be extraordinary if busy gardaí decided to do something about the alleged “crimes” of incitement to hatred, indecency, and criminal damage, the reasons given for the questioning of Conor Casby, painter of the offending items

Can you imagine Cowen responding to Kenny or Gilmore with the dignity Kidney employed to dispense with Gatland’s barbs? Kidney refused to be riled and didn’t lose focus. Cowen regularly shouts and snarls when under pressure and fails to think clearly as a result

Fingleton’s pay package for 2008 totalled *2.34m. This was higher than his 2007 pay of *2.31m. He took the money although he must have known at that stage that the society’s profits for the year were collapsing and that the risks that much of the loans he had sanctioned will not be repaid.

SYMPATHY for the financial plight of others is something not easily found these days, even when it is deserved. Almost everyone seems to have their own worries.

THE old adage that there’s no such thing as bad publicity is being tested in U2’s case.

HAVING walked out on Sunderland, Roy Keane feels ready to return to football management. Some club, desperate for success and seduced by his status as a man associated with success, is likely to be foolish enough to grant him his wish. Foolish because Keane does not appear to have the maturity to replicate the type of success as a manager that he achieved as an outstanding player.

GIVEN the extraordinary lack of popular support from which the Government now suffers — and Labour’s surpassing of Fianna Fáil in the opinion polls for the first time ever — it is remarkable how little clamour there has been for a general election to be called. Such is the cynicism about politics and politicians there seems to be little appetite to demand change.

The report quoted statistics from the Revenue Commissioners that show half of all income tax — e6.5 billion — is paid by the top 6.5% of taxpayers and that one-third of all income tax is paid by the top 2.5% of taxpayers, numbering just 60,000 out of the total 2.4 million income earners.