OUR health service could badly do with a 21st century Florence Nightingale.

FOREIGN Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern has admitted, in effect, that the target date for achieving the UN goal of giving 0.7% of GNP to overseas aid won’t be met.

I AM confused by the Government decision to scrap plans to install a toll on the M2 motorway which will run alongside the present N2 route in Co Meath and will be the main Monaghan road to Dublin.

ROAD improvement costs were estimated at €1.7 billion last year, but the income from motor taxation was more than twice that, at €3.8 billion.

THE number of medical cards issued in counties Cavan and Monaghan has decreased dramatically over the last seven years, despite population surges in both counties, and stagnant income levels.

IT’S time lenders gave some of their profits to support those experiencing financial hardship.

SINN Féin has indeed made a historic breakthrough in having two members elected to two members to the European Parliament last month.

EDUCATION is the guarantor of our future success as both a nation and an economy. To alleviate our deficit of infrastructure within education we must empower local communities to avail of local funding and building expertise to enable them to build their own schools or extensions/refurbishments.

I WAS saddened when I heard the news of the loss of 50 jobs in Wellmans of Mullagh, Co Cavan.

THE motor tax hike announced so sneakily after the budget is a stealth tax pure and simple.

RECENT statements by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern TD and Willie O’Dea TD that budget cuts are mere “increase moderations” are insulting the publics intelligence.

A 20-year-old man has died and five others are recovering in hospital after a road accident in Co Cavan today.