MARY O’Rourke should have no problem “amalgamating” with Fine Gael. I’m sure any members of Fianna Fáil who want to join other parties need only apply for membership in the normal manner and the applications will be duly considered.

WHY is all this talk about the possibility of Michael McDowell applying to join Fine Gael?

I AM surprised at the reaction to Leo Varadkar’s question to Mary Coughlan in relation to third party comments on her behaviour and performance of her duties when the personalised vulgar abuse commonly used as a modus operandi by some members of the government frontbench elicits no similar reaction from the media.

I HOLD no brief for John O’Donoghue but are we not witnessing “trial by media and mob justice” in the way he has been made resign?

THERE has been much talk lately about the desirability of forming a national government or having a new Tallaght Strategy.

I WAS surprised at Micheál Martin’s recent call for a “clear statement of intent” from the incoming US administration that it will end extraordinary rendition and close Guantanamo Bay. Surely as Minister for Foreign Affairs he should have known that Barack Obama and John McCain both stated they intended to do just that if either became president.

YOUR columnist Matt Cooper (March 8) declared that Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Brian Cowen “effortlessly demolished Enda Kenny’s attacks on him for propping up Ahern, flooring a visibly distressed Kenny with his comment ‘you are neither qualified nor able’ to judge Ahern”.

AM I alone in noticing a tendency lately among some political correspondents and various ‘guest’ commentators in print and on air to question the opposition’s ability to run the country because they have little or no experience of serving in government?

I CONGRATULATE Gerry Adams on his success in getting Sinn Féin to support the PSNI.

SURELY the letter signed by a John O’Donoghue (Irish Examiner, November 23) was a joke. Or was it a hoax perpetrated on a minister who could not possibly have got his ‘facts’ so wrong.

SO An Taoiseach and the Minister for Justice Equality And Law Reform are unhappy with the sentencing policy of our courts in cases of gun crime.

SOME slight semblance of normality returned to the Killakee estate in Firhouse yesterday as local people tried to make sense of the tragedy that has struck their neighbourhood over the past few days.

Gardaí were today awaiting the results of post-mortem examinations on two children found dead in their west Dublin home with their mother.

THE citizenship referendum is a nauseating proposition because I believe if we pass it we could be rendering stateless children born of non-nationals in Ireland as their parents’ country or countries of origin may also not accept them as citizens.

DURING the last general election Fine Gael were derided by the media and the Government for their proposal to compensate taxi drivers who suffered hardship as a result of the liberalisation of the licensing regime.