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.

The Taoiseach will be making a terrible blunder if he tries to exploit the innate decency and compassion that people feel for him by abusing those who did their job in exposing his wrongdoing.

THERE is a story doing the rounds about Alexander Tyler, a history professor at the University of Edinburgh in the 1780s who assessed the collapse of the Athenian Republic.

ON THE first St Patrick’s Day while at university in Texas in 1964, I was interviewed by the local daily newspaper as I was the only person from Ireland among more than 15,000 students.

CIVIL servants are often called the permanent government. They are the faceless men and women who implement policy and frequently formulate it, but political decorum requires that they keep a low profile rather than outshine their nominal masters.