THIS month we made a big step towards abolishing the idea that children need care over the age of seven. On July 3 we did away with the notion that children over 16 need care if they were receiving a One Parent Family payment before April 27, 2011.

WHATEVER the new Cabinet dredges up to present as the buried treasure for which it is worth staying in Government, I hope it’s not a second year of free preschool education.

I’VE SPENT a day reading back over Joan Burton’s speeches and I feel like Ryan Tubridy, when he begged impressionist Mario Rosenstock to stop imitating Burton: "I don’t think I can take too much more of her."

THE man is out to ruin me. All I’m doing is sitting in my palatial home in leafy south Dublin, minding my own business and the steady rise in the value of my property. Which is quite a relief, as you can appreciate, given I paid at least a third more for it than it’s currently worth.

"IN the good old days when you couldn’t cope the nuns would take them in," said the middle-aged mother of an intellectually disabled teen. "Now if anyone says they can’t cope — good luck."

WHEN is a dead baby in an unmarked grave not a dead baby in an unmarked grave? When it’s a Protestant baby!

THE Government’s Green Paper on Energy Policy in Ireland, which is out to public consultation until the end of July, reads like a manuscript from the past discovered during an archaeological dig.

THE big question facing the Labour Party is when to stop telling lies. When to come out and tell the people that we are a small capitalist economy plugged into the international capitalist economy which gives us a high standard of living but sometimes forces us to keep commitments to international agencies, such as the EU, with whom we sometimes disagree.

I HAVE a friend who went to a posh Munster boarding school back in the 1970s. When the lights went out every night in the dorm the competition would always begin with the words: "My father has two Zetors."

CATHOLIC priests are no more likely to abuse minors than men of any other profession. They are no more likely to abuse minors than priests of any other denomination. They are slightly less likely to abuse minors than teachers.