THE Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has suggested that gardaí should serve in the North as a means of showing up the IRA.

CATHOLICS were not encouraged to read the bible in this country, apparently because the hierarchy could not trust them to interpret it properly. It was symptomatic of a rather cavalier attitude towards education.

AS Minister for Finance in the late 1960s, Charlie Haughey introduced a whole range of programmes that captured the public imagination.

WHEN there is nothing left to say, some fool will always say it. That was a message that used to hang in the newsroom of RTÉ.

FIANNA FÁIL is again shamelessly engaging in political prostitution. This time, the party is inviting people to pay €4,500 to join an exclusive club of party contributors.

“A CROWD of us was going along the Shepherds Bush Road when out of a lane came a chap with a donkey — just the sort of donkey and just the sort of cart they have at home,” Michael Collins explained, recalling his days in London.

IN fairness to US President George W Bush, he has shown more interest in Ireland than any of his predecessors with the sole exception of Bill Clinton.

LAST week there was trouble outside the Nigerian embassy in Dublin as people protested over difficulties in securing passports for which they have been grossly overcharged. Up to 70 people were protesting outside the embassy at Leeson Park.

A LOT of lip service is being paid to justice, while our courts have been trampling on true justice in the name of the law.

NOT content with President Mary McAleese’s apology for her recent gaffe, people are now looking for an apology to Jewish people for Eamon de Valera’s condolence gesture to the German minister following the death of Hitler.