THE biggest surprise this week was that people were so surprised when the Belfast gathering to announce a breakthrough in the peace process turned into a fiasco.

THIS week Bertie Ahern essentially admitted that he misled the Dáil in relation to contacts with the so-called Real IRA.

DURING World War II the American military newspaper Stars and Stripes had a cartoon of two American soldiers in Northern Ireland.

DURING the week, Joe Duffy’s radio programme highlighted Justin O’Brien’s biographical sketch of Charles Haughey in the new Encyclopedia of Ireland.

LIAM LAWLOR has apparently exhausted the patience of the three judges of the Planning Tribunal. This week, they essentially decided to throw the book at him.

WE can be sure that Larry Goodman did not drop his multi-million euro lawsuit against the Government because he thought he had such a good case.

THERE was much discussion in recent weeks about the level of participation in science subjects for the Leaving Certificate.

THERE are so many loose cannons rolling around the deck of the State’s ship at the moment that we will be lucky if one of them does not do some real damage one of these days.

IF some of the owners of Ballybeggan Park have their way, today’s race meeting will be the last ever held at the track in Tralee, where there has been horse racing since the 1700s.

GROWING up in the 1950s one often heard rantings from the pulpit about slave labour camps in atheistic Russia.