PENSIONS should never be treated as an income as it serves the state when people help themselves.

IN trying to deter people from buying alcohol and cigarettes in the North, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan will merely force them to ease their post-budget blues in health-damaging ways.

IS our government so morally bankrupt and blind as it fumbles around the issue of O’Donoghue's resignation?

IF the savings recommended by An Bord Snip are enacted, where will these savings go and who will account for them to the people most seriously affected?

IF Fine Gael wants to prove that it differs from FF, then it should demand the total abolition, as opposed to a mere reduction, of junior ministers. FG has for too long started to sound like more of the same.

DELL workers need leadership, and not some half-baked ‘back-to-work’ taskforce.

SO the high earners are to pay a 3% levy and Revenue will have new powers in relation to rental incomes.

YET another report was released recently, only this time it addressed the erroneous removal of a kidney from a child in Our Lady’s Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin.

IT is remarkable that despite the plethora of advisers and researchers with whom politicians equip themselves that none of them could foresee the economic crises of the past year, not to mention the chaos currently in the financial markets.

HOW report-obsessed this country is.

FINE Gael health spokesperson Dr James O’Reilly said recently that HSE staff expenses will have to be cut.