MAYO Fine Gael deputy Michael Ring said he was “delighted” with the Nally case ruling, claiming the verdict was “not about Travellers” and that Pádraig Nally was a man “living in fear”.

IF Justice Minister, Michael McDowell, is really worried about the burden of stamp duty on first-time buyers, why does he not simply suggest it be a tax paid by the builder/speculator?

BARRY WALSH (Irish Examiner letters, July 12) is right to question Michael McDowell’s ability with statistics, when he disputes the minister’s recent statement that “anybody with any memory knows that Fine Gael and the Labour party together form a slump coalition”.

IN his attack on Finian McGrath TD, Barry Walsh (Irish Examiner letters, May 27) repeats the fallacy that is at the heart of all neo-conservative thinking.

LEST some of our Turkish friends think that young Conor Lenihan’s Dáil outburst was racist, it might be useful to point out that Conor’s late father famously made an equally insensitive remark about our own migrant labourers in the 1980s.

IN contrast to Garret FitzGerald in 1986, Bertie Ahern is not prepared to consider State intervention to save Bewley’s.

I WAS surprised to hear Michael McDowell holding forth on economics on Matt Cooper’s programme on Today FM. Readers with a memory for this sort of thing will remember his last major foray into that territory.