THE controversy over the European Commission’s efforts to compel the 16 euro states to submit their draft budgets to Brussels before presenting them to their respective parliaments made somewhat confused reading this week. Surely this would be an incursion into Irish sovereignty.

FOLLOWING the publication of my book, Haughey’s Forty Years of Controversy, I was invited on the late Gerry Ryan’s radio programme. I assumed the interview would be for about 12 minutes. I had done a couple of other interviews with him previously about Éamon de Valera, but we were in separate studios for each of those and had never actually met before.

THE do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do style of leadership received a hammering this week. For the past couple of years the Government has been according politicians special privileges while calling on the public to demonstrate patriotism by accepting cuts.

IF Michael O’Leary of Ryanair could make money selling toilet paper on his planes, he would do it, and he has been quite candid about it.

WATCHING Vincent Browne’s news programme on Wednesday night I found myself thinking that young people should seriously consider emigrating because the prospects here seem so bleak. This is the third major recession I can remember and there are reasons for suspecting it could be the worst, notwithstanding the ERSI’s recent prediction that things will pick up in 2011.

LISTENING to some of the teachers and the union representatives moaning during the week one could be tempted to suggest that what we need is to bring back corporal punishment and flog those teachers.

THIS week’s controversy about whether Pope Benedict XVI should be compelled to testify about the Vatican’s role in relation to clerical sexual abuse of minors was an absurd publicity stunt. One might have expected it 50 years ago, but not in the 21st century. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the election of John F Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic President of the United States.

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen and his party certainly did not distinguish themselves with the cabinet reshuffle during the week, but the contortions of Leo Varadkar helped to take some of the spotlight off the Government.

WHY would the future Cardinal Seán Brady ask an eight-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy to swear on oath that they would not divulge that Fr Brendan Smyth had sexually abused them? The main aim was certainly not to protect other boys from that predator. Fr Brady was apparently more interested in protecting the Catholic Church as an institution from criticism.

WE are really in the midst of a revolution of sorts. All of the old certainties are being washed away. People are now questioning all the previously authoritative figures in society.