By Ronan Mullen

AN interesting point arose in a recent MRBI survey on people’s attitudes to the compensation deal struck between the State and religious orders, under which the orders agreed to contribute €128 million in property and cash to compensate victims of institutional child abuse.

ALTHOUGH it is not immediately obvious to me why the Irish Congress of Trade Unions should take up a position on the war in Iraq, I am glad that ICTU’s general secretary, David Begg, has done so.

SOME of the people who marched for peace last Saturday were probably relaxing in front of their televisions when RTÉ screened The Trials of Henry Kissinger on Sunday night.

AMONG the many bizarre moments in Michael Jackson's interview with Martin Bashir, broadcast on TV3 on Monday night, was the pop star's claim that the mother of his third child, Prince Michael II, 'can't handle' contact with her child.

THERE are eerie comparisons to be made between the planeloads of American soldiers passing through Shannon airport at the moment and the steady trickle of asylum seekers in and out of our country.

By Ronan Mullen

ALL politics is local, they say. And for me, the farmers’ protest of 2003 will always be about my mother breaking four ribs in the cause of Irish agriculture.

“To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war,” Winston Churchill once said, and last week’s meeting between victims of child sexual abuse and Cardinal Desmond Connell proved the point yet again.

The Ronan Mullen Column