WHILE supping a nice pint of stout during the week, I was startled by the landlady who had been quietly reading the newspaper.

AS we head into a new year, we should ponder on the lesson learned in Leopardstown during the week. Rising to the occasion is all very well, once there is an occasion to rise to.

IF anybody is still writing to him they might, in desperation, begin the letter this year thus: “Dear Santa, please bring us a government...”

LIKE myself and the wider world, you may have been under the illusion that this country was democratically run by the Government on a cabinet basis.

PROBABLY puzzled at not having won the Employer of the Year Award, despite his incentive offer of a car to staff, Ivor Callely understandably came to believe his entire career was enveloped in conspiracy.

IN what has to be the understatement of the year, IBEC - the organisation that represents big business interests of this country - described the bizarre events in Irish Ferries as “not normal in Irish industrial relations.”

ACCORDING to the constitution, the number of TDs cannot be more than one per every 20,000 of the population, and cannot be less than one per every 30,000.

THE answer as to how the Government is going to deliver the €34.4 billion transport plan on deadline and within budget was suggested the next day in a headline which related to New Orleans.

WHAT an extraordinary week it was. First the media and then the Catholic Church were the subject of official and public odium for totally different reasons.

So, who’s living in the real Ireland where protocol of a kind deems a man should die rather than unravel red tape?