AS we look back on the bailout years from the vantage point of our exit, there will be further calls for a wide-ranging enquiry as to why our banks failed us so badly.

SAY what you like about Colm Keaveney, he has put an end to the Civil War. Ah, not that Civil War, silly. The real Civil War. The war between Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald.

In Ireland we are climate hypocrites, you see. How else can you explain the fact that the number of retro-fitting projects aimed at saving energy halved in the last three years? And the fact that Rabbitte has just pushed back new energy efficiency regulations for new buildings until far-off 2020?

The idea that the less well-off would have done better had the entire banking system been allowed to fail is nothing short of puerile.

THE youth guarantee scheme is looking more and more like a PR stunt. The EU-wide commitment to offer young people under 25 who exit education a quality job or training place within four months is a good one.

IF we did not deprive them of life, we deprived them of their identity. That is the hard truth about our relationship with “illegitimate” children which Stephen Frears’s film Philomena makes us face.

Savita Halappanavar has become an icon. Her death in Galway University Hospital a year ago has taken on mythic qualities.

DON’T call me a “Polyester Protestant”. There’s nothing flimsy about me. I’m an Irish Linen Protestant, woven with the blood, sweat and tears of my exiled Huguenot ancestors.

What are you doing? What the hell are you doing?

DOES our law understand the bond between a mother and her infant? I wondered about this when the High Court defended the right of the HSE to take a day-old baby away from his mother to “protect” him last week.