IF Irish Ferries manages to jettison its workforce and replace it with cheaper labour, as it is so desperately trying to do, there will be widespread repercussions for workers in this country.

KOFI ANNAN must have had a feeling of déja vu in the UN building on Wednesday night when Taoiseach Bertie Ahern pledged to meet the target for overseas aid.

THE decision to avoid holding the murder trial of Christopher Newman in this country is puzzling, to say the least. It needs to be explained.

WHETHER or not the Groceries Order is responsible for the high cost of living here, the fact remains that Ireland is a leader in the rip-off stakes.

I DON’T know what the penalty is for travelling into this country on a false passport, but it must be considerably better than 17 years in a Colombian jail.

IT was probably a huge understatement when Northern Secretary Peter Hain said after his meeting on Wednesday with Ian Paisley that the DUP had put its views of recent developments in the North "extremely strongly and critically".

THERE comes a time in Disney films when you have to suspend disbelief. That moment arrived yesterday for Northern Ireland, and this island as a whole, with the declaration by the IRA that it has ended its armed campaign and all that it implies.

BERTIE AHERN’S promotion of his former partner Celia Larkin to the interim board of the new National Consumer Agency (NCA) is hardly a bad hair day for him.

Pat Brosnan

BERTIE AHERN, is, quite simply, a hypocrite.