The groans can still be heard, from coast to coast, in hamlet and city alike, the plain people of Ireland asking for it to stop.

After a brief ceremony in Tokyo today, Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, will become emperor and ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne.

On the 40th anniversary, Ryle Dwyer looks at the momentous events of the 1977 general election.

While publicly, the Government has to state it is preparing for all contingencies, and it is right and proper it do so, it is clear on a political level, things are not going our way, writes Daniel McConnell

Mary Davis first burst into the public consciousness in 2003 as the Irish woman who spearheaded the Special Olympics moving out of the US for the first time.

An early election would be a big risk for Fine Gael, but an even bigger one for Labour, writes Gerard Howlin

The franchising model of transport deregulation could cut the cost to taxpayers while ensuring service standards, writes Kyran FitzGerald.

Only 34% of IDA funding has gone to projects outside of Dublin and Cork (whereas the Government edict requires 50%). That means 66% was granted to Dublin and Cork, but how does that divide between them?

JUST as those people who live where public transport, decent broadband, a bank, a reassuring Garda presence, post offices, health services, and even schools are so easily accessible that they are taken for granted are bored by their country cousins’ constant complaints about the closure of what are, in 2015, basic social services, those people living in a hollowed-out, downgraded rural Ireland find the dismissive response from those lucky people insensitive, indifferent, and increasingly unacceptable.

Cork Airport has strengthened its management team ahead of its launch as a “standalone business unit” in the coming weeks.

The trial of four men accused of kidnapping a Securicor worker and his family and robbing €2.28m has heard that two of the accused were “lifelong friends” and members of a horse-owning syndicate.

ONE of Simon Coveney’s first ministerial board appointments saw a key election organiser for his Cabinet colleague Phil Hogan installed as the chairman of the Irish Greyhound Board in Apr 2011.

With temperatures still a little on the cool side, music lovers could do worse than head to Bray this coming weekend. With musicians from more than 30 international acts on its jazz trail, Bray Jazz Festival looks set to see the mercury rising.

Money may not buy you love, but Jonathan deBurca Butler shows how almost everything else seems to have a price

It will be a year tomorrow since Brian Lenihan died at the young age of 52 of pancreatic cancer.

IFA president John Bryan has called on the co-ops to hold May milk prices to protect dairy farmers, already hit by disastrous weather this month.

Welcome, positive statements were made on transport policy and infrastructure yesterday.

The Mahon Tribunal was unable to identify a mystery man who “made the Mafia look like monks” by demanding a €5m bribe from developer Tom Gilmartin in the ministerial corridors of Leinster House.

MICHEÁL MARTIN is forging a new way forward for his party, but embers of old still burn from a few short years ago when he and others rushed forward to attack the Mahon Tribunal for its enquiries into Bertie Ahern’s mysterious £215,000.

A ministerial Garda driver who has brought a High Court case over his removal from that duty has denied his wife’s claim that he put his official revolver to his mouth during a matrimonial dispute.

CORK AIRPORT should remain under the same ownership as Dublin, with Shannon Airport to be run as a separate, more business-orientated entity managed by local bodies.

A man accused of taking part in a €2.28m tiger raid five years ago paid €10,000 in cash for a car a month after the robbery, a court has heard.

EVENTS in Cardiff, Croke Park and Cheltenham may be uppermost in most minds this month but Irish sport claimed its most important victory of the year yesterday when it was retained at the cabinet table by the new Government.

THE late Seamus Brennan cautioned the Green party government negotiators that they were now playing All-Ireland senior hurling. Internal Fianna Fáil politics is much more brutal — it’s a genuine blood sport.

IT WAS said by Napoleon — Bonaparte, not Dynamite — that one should never watch a sausage or a law being made if “you want to keep your stomach about you”.

THE last vestige of credibility evaporated from the Progressive Democrats from the moment Michael McDowell hoist the petard that the PDs were exiting government — only to subsequently change their minds.

IT is hard to believe that anyone with any intelligence was surprised by the High Court ruling this week that the Donegal South-West by-election should be held without further delay. The existing delay, since the election of Pat ‘the Cope’ Gallagher to the European Parliament in June 2009, has been the longest in the history of the state.

“THEY gave me nothing and I owe them nothing” was how Jim McDaid summed up his relationship with Fianna Fáil back in 2007, just after he regained his seat on the party’s ticket in Donegal North East.

SINCE Dáil Éireann was established in 1919 there have been 125 by-elections. All but 11 of those were held within six months of the vacancy occurring. But the current Dáil has three vacancies, two of which are already more than six months old and the third well over a year and heading for a record delay.

In the past it was generally assumed that by-elections should be held within six months of a Dáil seat being vacated.

Former Minister Willie O’Dea has called on the Taoiseach to move the writs for byelections to fill the three vacant Dáil seats.

TIARNAN O’Mahoney’s decision to remain as chairman of the Irish Pensions Board is truly extraordinary.

The Labour leader Eamon Gilmore is demanding the Government set a date for the three outstanding by-elections.

DID you happen to see the Heineken Cup final (albeit on Sky)? There was a defining moment in the second half.

FEARS people nearing retirement age will be forced to work longer before claiming their pensions have been eased by Taoiseach Brian Cowen.

VOTERS could elect a replacement for George Lee as soon as June.

Journalist turned politician George Lee today announced he is to quit the Dáil less than nine months after being elected.

MORE lone parents should be allowed access to the Rental Accommodation Scheme, while Fás needs to drop its “stupid” start times for courses, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

FORMER Cork TD Barry Cogan has said the downturn in the economy scuppered any chance five retired politicians had of qualifying for its lucrative pension scheme.

FIVE former politicians experiencing “considerable hardship” have had pleas to allow them claim lucrative pension entitlements rejected by the Department of Finance.

I WISH to correct the numerous misleading claims made by the Paul O’Kane of the Dublin Airport Authority (DAA) in his letter (November 17) regarding the DAA and its white elephant, €1.3bn Terminal Two (T2).

THE mothballed National Sports Campus in Abbotstown is set for a badly-needed boost with news that up to €40million is being earmarked for the development in west Dublin.