A Cork soup kitchen is feeding 1,400 people a week — a 55% rise in demand in a year. Cork Penny Dinners, which was started by the Quakers during famine times, says 2013 has been its busiest ever.

I was truly horrified to read that a woman gave a graphic account of her abortion to a congregation that contained an estimated 100 children at a mass in Mitchelstown, Co Cork.