WHAT happened yesterday at Pfizer in Cork, where hundreds of jobs were put at risk, is a stark reminder that not everything is rosy in the Irish economy.

WITH two totally unrelated strokes of a pen, the Government has managed to do what it has failed abjectly to do in the past decade, and that is to put domestic violence seriously on the political agenda.

IT is both ludicrous and hypocritical to hear Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern call on the British government to strengthen the powers of Police Ombudsman Nuala O’Loan in the wake of the appalling collusion she uncovered between the security forces in the North and loyalist paramilitaries.

IN all fairness, Bertie Ahern should organise a whip-around for his old buddy Joe Burke, who obliged when the Taoiseach hit a spot of bother himself a few years back.

TO win the looming general election, the Government is prepared to drive people to drink, literally.

THE Supreme Court — that august body which is the last court of appeal in the land — quite understandably never expected a judgment to be handed down from above.

THERE was nothing unusual in the way the year ended in this country. It was seen out with a bang — or was it a silencer?

CHARLIE HAUGHEY was living proof that Santa came more than once in a year.

I’m not quite sure what the official date of birth of the Celtic Tiger was, but in my own mind I perceived the really visible beginnings of economic growth around 1996. It was around that time that house prices began to lift off, albeit at a much slower rate than what we have seen in more recent years.

THE family of Anthony Campbell said it all. They do not expect the killers of the apprentice plumber to be brought to justice.