WITH all the talk about a possible visit of Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland and the 3 Irish Open being played at Killarney this weekend, it is worth remembering that the queen’s great, great grandmother, Queen Victoria, was largely responsible for putting Killarney on the tourist map with her visit to the area in 1861.

WHAT word best describes Michael McDowell during his political career – arrogant, intolerant, self-serving, brilliant, courageous, or exciting? They all applied to him at different times. Whether one liked him or loathed him, he left his mark on Irish politics.

LAST Saturday I watched the senior football play-off game between Tipperary and Dublin. It was not a particularly great game, but it was much more interesting and exciting than any of the World Cup soccer matches. The Cork and Waterford Munster hurling final on Sunday also left the soccer in the shade.

THE French have a saying that the more things change the more they stay the same. This weekend thousands of young people will flock to the Oxegen music festival at Punchestown, but unlike some such gatherings elsewhere, it does not seem to have any real focus of protest.

AS the media were reporting here on the finding of the Saville Inquiry into the events in Derry on Bloody Sunday in January 1972, I was in the American Military Cemetery in Luxembourg, where 5,075 American soldiers and one American nurse were buried. All were victims of the Second World War.

PEOPLE have become so disillusioned with politics in this country that there are calls for scrapping the Seanad and a significant reduction in the number of Dáil deputies. It would not be the first time for the Seanad to be abolished.

THE present state of disillusionment with politics is the worst I have witnessed. In this week’s public opinion poll, the Government satisfaction rating was a mere 12%, which is the lowest I can remember in any democracy.

WITH the World Cup about to start, people will inevitably regret that Ireland are not there. “France are going to the World Cup,” as Roy Keane rather infamously said, “get over it!”

ALBERT Einstein’s defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” It is a fitting description of our drug strategy in this country.

THERE are currently three vacancies in the Dáil brought about by resignations. Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher stood down in 2009 after his election to the European Parliament. Earlier this year George Lee of Fine Gael resigned his South Dublin seat in a tizzy and Martin Cullen stepped down from his Waterford seat due to health reasons.