The high profile liberation of lobsters from a tank in a Dublin restaurant has attracted considerable media attention.

The Gardaí and the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) are to be complimented for their latest clampdown on illegal deer hunting. Deer herds around the country have been ravaged by gangs of thugs using high powered lamps and dogs.

The Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (CACS) is alarmed at the news that hares are now extinct on Dublin Bay’s North Bull Island, one of Ireland’s most important nature reserves and coincidentally one that for generations had been almost synonymous with the Irish hare.

Suicide is seldom out of the news and for victims’ loved ones, the grief and unfathomable sense of loss endure long after after the event.

In County Clare, eight hunt hounds that savaged sheep to death were then shot by farmers. This is further shocking and incontestable evidence of the havoc hunting inflicts on the countryside.

People who believe they are entitled to kill anyone who dares to mock their religious beliefs need to get a life, as distinct from taking lives.

The greyhound industry has a serious PR problem, but it was never without its critics. Brendan Behan made reference to it in Confessions of an Irish Rebel: “Track racing is too dull and coursing is too cruel. 

The imposition of savage sentences on six young people in Iran for making a video of themselves singing and dancing is another example of the regime’s horrifying attitude to human rights and freedom of expression.

I applaud the symbolic attempt by TDs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace to inspect two Hercules C130 transport aircraft at Shannon airport.

The all encompassing crackdown on attempts to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre says something about the nature of the regime that still holds China in its grip.

A major milestone has been achieved in the campaign for animal protection with the election to the European Parliament of a candidate standing for Holland’s Party for the Animals (PvdD).

I’m delighted that Tara the cat’s heroism, in saving a toddler in California from an attacking dog, was caught on camera and viewed by millions worldwide. What a long-overdue PR boost for cats.

Landowners and ramblers are arguing again over whose rights should be uppermost.

There has been a huge outcry against the killing of a giraffe at Copenhagen zoo, and the feeding of its carcass to lions, while people watched.

While welcoming Minister Deenihan’s ban on the hunting of Kerry red deer and the curlew, I would urge him to go a step further, because this is the same minister who a few months ago issued a licence permitting the capture of thousands of hares for live coursing events.

MARY Raftery was a remarkable person. She shone a light into the hidden past of Ireland, exposing the horrors of the industrial schools and laying bare a crime against humanity for long covered up and denied.

YOUR festive picture of a St Stephen’s Day fox hunt calls to mind Oscar Wilde’s reference to this bloodsport as the “unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable”.

WHILE welcoming this week’s convictions in Co Meath for illegal hare coursing, I am somewhat bemused by the comments that have since appeared on websites and online forums from officials of legal coursing clubs, denouncing those who were caught.

OFFALY woman Teresa Treacy deserves an award instead of a prison term for her courage and tenacity in resisting the ESB’s move to cut down her beloved trees.

I NEVER cease to be amazed at the contradictions in our treatments of animals.

DESPITE the recent Arctic weather conditions, hare coursing continued over the festive season.

I AM bemused by the fact that all those Fianna Fáil TDs who objected so strongly to having to vote for a ban on stag hunting last summer didn’t undergo any crisis of conscience over punishing the blind, the disabled, family carers, low-paid workers and social welfare recipients in the budget.

THE furore over the Taoiseach’s radio interview should make us very grateful that the Green party is in government with Fianna Fáil.

THE Campaign for the Abolition of Cruel Sports (CACS), welcomes the historic decision by the parliament of Spain’s Catalonian region to ban bull fighting.

RTÉ’s Primetime last Tuesday turned the spotlight on conditions in some of our psychiatric hospitals.

I HOPE the Greens push hard in the Programme for Government negotiations for the abolition of both hare coursing and carted stag hunting.

WITH drugs ravaging a large section of our population, is it not about time that we had a hard-hitting State-sponsored TV and print media campaign against this creeping horror?

RECENT scandals and controversies affecting the gardaí should serve as stark reminders that our police are only human, like the rest of us.

LISTENING to, and reading about, the Morris Tribunal, you would get the impression that there is something intrinsically wrong with Donegal people in general; and Donegal gardaí in particular.

THE scourge of vandalism was visited on Callan, Co Kilkenny, a week ago when a children's playground was destroyed by thugs.

I WAS delighted with the major conservation plan that the Heritage Council has announced to preserve what remains of the old city wall of Kilkenny.

IT’S that time of year again. The season when tourist shooters — mainly French and Italian — descend on our countryside like a plague of locusts.

THE Circuit Court judge in a recent dog fighting case slammed the “savage and sadistic cruelty” of the practice before passing sentence on the fight organisers.

JOSEPH HELLER’S epic war novel, Catch 22, has one seemingly crazy scenario in which the Germans offer to pay the Americans to bomb a US airbase.

’TIS the season to be jolly... and to be cruel. Christmas cards again depict fox, hare and stag-hunting as relics of auld decency.

THE ruthless killers of the Blasket island seals have a powerful advantage in their efforts to evade justice — a conspiracy of silence.

THE green-eyed monster appears to be gobbling up a fair few book critics and newspaper columnists.

I WOULD like to thank all those who supplied me with valuable information on the characters who brightened up the homes, streets, pubs, theatres and sporting fields of County Kilkenny over the decades.

WHATEVER his other failings, Charles Haughey was a great friend of Ireland's seal population. Throughout his political career, he was passionately devoted to the protection and conservation of these enchanted sea creatures.