AS there’s a shortage of bread (money) in Ireland at present we may as well enjoy whatever circuses are presented to us. Let’s be thankful therefore for having the GAA.

THE “joke” has become a bit tiresome but it is so widespread that it cannot be avoided.

YESTERDAY’S announcement by the Government of its rejection of the Ryanair offer to buy and take control of Aer Lingus has been based largely on the belief that the creation of a monopoly would be anti- competitive and bad for consumers.

THE spectre of the bogeyman has re-entered Irish politics. The bogeyman is the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with which we were threatened last during the 1980s. The IMF is the lender of last resort, the place where a country goes for money when it can’t get it anywhere else.

PRAISE for Tony O’Reilly is in short supply in Waterford these days but the workers at the city’s near-doomed crystal manufacturer should be inclined to offer a word or two of thanks to their former chairman for his efforts to save the company.

IN AN ideal world every new year should start on an optimistic note. The change in the calendar offers a psychological opportunity for change, for betterment, for renewal. Whatever went before is past and all can be started afresh.

NOBODY does more to undermine the authority of the Dáil than the politicians employed there.

FIANNA FÁIL has enough problems facing it without the distraction of fighting a byelection in Dublin South to retain the seat made vacant by the untimely and premature death of the excellent Seamus Brennan.

THE Government is so desperate for cash it’s hard to see how it can reject Ryanair’s offer of €188 million for the state’s remaining shareholding in Aer Lingus, even if it is half the price it dismissed two years ago.

FEARS of racial and xenophobic tensions in the event of an economic downturn have not been realised, thankfully. This is another sign of the maturity shown by the Irish people when faced with a speedy influx of foreign workers unprecedented in any European country.