A short story I read a few months ago postulated the trains are still running to Auschwitz. Fantasy, of course, but does anyone believe that genocidal racism died with the Third Reich?

THE recent sickening cruelty to swans on the River Barrow in Co Carlow, where teenagers stoned the birds and inflicted horrific injuries, is part of a pattern of abuse extending across the whole country. Earlier last week, a dog was doused with petrol, set alight and tossed over a wall in Finglas in Dublin.

A MAN is beaten to death while in the ‘care of the State’. And we learn from media reports that our prison system is a hotbed of physical, sexual and emotional abuse.