What a wonderfully creative country for self-exoneration with a perpetual penchant for self-forgiveness against all the odds and evidence. Wiping the slate clean is seemingly where it’s at — no need for any awkward dallying in the sanction or discipline zone. No thank you, sir.

Your letters, your views...

Your letters. your views...

Your letters, your views...

It would seem somehow that Michael Clifford (Irish Examiner, April 7) does not fully enjoy or endorse the paltry and pathetic Dáil pantomime (both intra- and extra-mural versions) currently running in Kildare Street. He is certainly not alone.

Jim Cosgrove (Irish Examiner, Letters, Saturday, March 19) is right to advocate a new national anthem. Like Michael Clifford, I, too, attended a flag-raising ceremony at my son’s school and the multi-coloured scholars sang the anthem as Gaeilge.

“Fianna Fáil...... has a core ideology and credo which has guided the party since its foundation, which includes a deep respect for the individual, a commitment to community responsibility and ...the party exists to make contributions for the advancement and welfare of all the Irish people” (Letters, February 23).

Your editorial (January 14) offers a veritable understatement of gargantuan proportion, given the shambles of the Irish Cancer Society’s last few days in the media-zone and the surge of public opprobrium ensuing.

Concern about the school administration of the Gardasil vaccination to the nations’ teenage girls, must surely warrant at least a pause in its continuance, if not an outright rescinding of the vaccination decision by the statutory health agencies involved?

“After all, Christians were fighting Christians in the North, and no doubt both sides confidently believed that God was on their side.”

Eamon Gilmore’s “brooding resentment”, as you name it, (Editorial, Nov2) precisely characterises the stunted arrogance of a careerist self-server. 

“All the evidence suggests that when this matter first arose the main focus was not the safety of residents, but the imperative to keep things under wraps because of the scandal “.

“...after all, if biology isn’t central to the experiences that have become known as mental illness, what special expertise do psychiatrists really possess ?”

“ I’m sorry, but sometimes you have to be blunt to get the message through.”

Catherine Weitbrecht (Letters, August 20 ) deserves full credit for her cautionary tale regarding the Gardasil cervical cancer vaccination. The possible side-effects of this unnecessary innoculation for pre-teenage girls are stark and disturbing.

To which type of “deeply rewarding” does Brendan Kelly (Irish Examiner, Letters, August 10) refer in his sturdy apologia for current response practices regarding life-distress issues?

“The only way we can make profits is by not doing the things we should do to make the railways better.”

TP O’Mahony’s article on ubiquitous celebritist vacuity just about covers it all!

Michael Clifford appears surprisingly ameliorative in his appraisal of Brian Cowen’s “performance” at the banking inquiry (Opinion, July 9.)

“It’s unlikely that his testimony has changed many minds that have long been made up about his role in these matters.”

“It is time a precedent was set and that the casual, nasty violence undermining our national games was stamped out”.

Imagine the chairman of a national bank not being able to recall his CEO suggesting that their bank is so dangerously off-kilter vis-a-vis its day-to-day liquidity that it is near to bankruptcy.

“All professions are a conspiracy against the laity” — George Bernard Shaw’s observation retains a frightening degree of validity, albeit at the rhetorical end of the social commentary ‘meter’. 

“In the carefully controlled media environment of the HSE, it’s rare for an employee to speak out”

“All the other evidence, much of it about strange and sometimes disturbing goings on in West Cork in the aftermath of the murder, was made redundant.”

“What is needed now is action and not just pious words.” Your concluding editorial comment on the urgency of response required for distressed citizens is right on the money (Irish Examiner, March 19). But what action?

“Knowing it all isn’t a crime, particularly if you have the personality to carry it off.”

“Clare Daly, in her attempt to introduce legislation to allow for termination of pregnancy in the case of fatal foetal abnormality, did the State some service”.

“A person’s faith is derided as quickly, and as poisonously, as another’s sexuality is demeaned.”

“Did he not have a constitutionally powerful tool at his disposal ? He also had the choice to resign rather than sign it.”

We all must condemn such unlawful aggression as we saw in Paris last week but we must also try to parse and probe what happened.

Dan McSweeney (Letters, Dec 24 ) writes with an elegant eloquence, though in a saddening vein.

CIA Director John Brennan must surely be in line for the euphemism award of the decade.

Letters page correspondent Maeve Halpin nails the neoliberal capitalist myth that open free-marketeering does something for ordinary people.