JUDGE Pat McCartan of Dublin Circuit Criminal Court fined Bus Éireann €2 million for breaches of the Health and Safety Act in relation to the accident in which five schoolgirls were killed in a bus accident in Navan in May 2005.

THE tribunal was back as the most popular show in Dublin this week. But this time it was not as a drama but as pure farce.

THINKING of the behaviour of the Cork train drivers this week brought Rudyard Kipling to mind. It was he who first coined the term “power without responsibility”.

The Irish were so despised that the American Party was founded against them in 1852.

FOR more than 50 years the Irish public had no right to see official documents. The civil servants were effectively our masters — not public servants.

WHEN Eric the Red landed in Greenland in the late 900s he established a farming settlement, with sheep and cattle feeding on grass.

THE Taoiseach was afforded a magnificent stage to wind up his political career with an address to a joint session of the US Congress on Wednesday. He became only the 102nd foreigner to address the two houses together.

THE US primaries are supposed to help parties select the best candidate for the Presidential election, but the Democrats could be on a hiding to nothing because they are deluding themselves.

There is the salary of the president and her staff, the cost of the upkeep of the Áras and its staff, providing the president with a car, a driver, and a police escort car, as well as extravagant pensions for former presidents, and ultimately the cost of their state funerals.

IN A sense, Irish politics has gone into suspended animation. Bertie Ahern has been replaced as leader of Fianna Fáil but he remains as Taoiseach for over three weeks. This kind of hiatus effectively happens just about every decade after an election in which the people decide to change government.