HAVE the lunatics taken over the Assembly? The Northern elections have left us seeing through a glass darkly as regards the future shape of things on this island.

DEAR Minister Harney,

ANYBODY watching Questions and Answers on Monday night would be left in no doubt that the attitude of the public to abuse claims relating to orphanages and industrial schools is changing.

BEHIND the tragedy of Monday’s suicide bombings on the headquarters of the Red Cross in Baghdad, which killed 35 people and wounded 230 others, there lurks the potential for another disaster: the United States might pull out of Iraq too soon.

THERE are two Mother Teresas. The first is the Mother Teresa who appeals to fans of mushy Hollywood movies.

A RECENT Prime Time survey on the Church threw up an interesting but largely unreported statistic: compared to 90% of people who saw the role of doctors as very important, only 22% of people gave this rating to politicians, and journalists got a mere 20%.

IF the Catholic bishops feel discouraged by last week’s Prime Time survey, which shows that only 50% of the population now attends mass each week, they should remember that the Catholic church faces bigger challenges elsewhere.

PROFESSOR Niamh Brennan may feel vindicated. Her comment that she would be ‘reluctant’ to contact the gardaí if she was the victim of an assault, after news of her son’s mugging was leaked to The Star, has been followed within hours by another high-profile leak.

LAST night reality TV got real with the first of a four-part series called For Better or Worse. It’s all about divorce, and RTÉ publicists say it will ‘break one last taboo’ in Irish society by looking at the reality of marriage break-up through the eyes of some of the people directly involved.

IN THE early 1990s, a member of the Christian Brothers was watching television from his home in Western Canada. He tuned into live coverage of the Hughes Inquiry then underway in Newfoundland. The inquiry was investigating allegations of abuse by Christian Brothers in Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel Orphanage.