The Irish Times - Opinion

An Irishman's Diary

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

JEAN COUTURE bends down in his vineyard and gently caresses his dew soaked malbec grapes. He cradles the fruit gently and lovingly in the palm of his hand. The plump black-skinned grapes ooze a sweet sticky juice at the slightest encouragement. They taste absolutely delicious, writesPETER MURTAGH.

Enjoyable account of Lenin's years in exile

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

CARLA KINGreviewsConspirator: Lenin in ExileBy Helen Rappaport Hutchinson, 373 pp, £20

November 9th, 1918: Relief as deaths from 1918 Spanish flu epidemic began to decline

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

BACK PAGES:The 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, estimated to have killed more than 50 million worldwide, affected Ireland as everywhere else. In November of that year, as the first World War came to a close, it was hoped that the worst was over, although the flu continued for another two years in some places. Today’s newspaper in that year was mainly preoccupied with the armistice arrangements for the war’s end in two days’ time, but this report showed the effects of the flu in Dublin.

HSE has achieved major successes over five years

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

OPINION:Our health service is moving in a sustainable direction from quality and financial viewpoints, writesBRENDAN DRUMM

Wealth was the real line of division in 1989 Berlin

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

Parallels between Dublin and East Berlin became clear when hacks taking us for Osties began to ask for interviews, writesANN MARIE HOURIHANE

West could follow Eastern bloc into oblivion

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

Many of the factors which led to the collapse of Eastern Europe have reappeared in the West, writesTONY KINSELLA

Did civil inequality merit triggering the Troubles?

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

OPINION:With the benefit of clear perspective, we must reflect on what started the terrible tragedy of Northern Ireland, writesHENRY KELLY

Shaping Europe's military order

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

ANALYSIS:The EU’s developing security policy works best when the interests of member states converge, writesDANIEL KEOHANE

Vulnerable children

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

TWO REPORTS, in as many days last week, make for depressing reading concerning the standards of childcare provided on behalf of Government. Last summer, the Ryan report into the abuse of children placed in the care of religious orders was to have marked a new beginning. But it seems little has changed. Rules and regulations are being ignored within the Health Service Executive (HSE) where the vetting of employees and foster care relatives are concerned; complacency is endemic and accountability unknown.

Europe after the fall of the wall

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:18:09 GMT

TWENTY YEARS on, 1989 stands out as one of the most significant and formative years in European and world history. The initial disintegration and then collapse of communist rule in Poland, Hungary and Germany cascaded on to Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states inside the Soviet Union, heralding its own disappearance in 1991. A year of revolutionary but mostly non-violent change in Europe also saw the Chinese regime ruthlessly suppress the Tiananmen democratic rebellion in fear of a similar fate. The major and tragic exception to peaceful change in Europe was in the Balkans when Yugoslavia fell apart in the early 1990s.

An Irishman's Diary

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:37 GMT

IN A roundabout way, Andy Irvine’s hope (Arts page, November 2nd) that the coming “winter of discontent” would see a revival of Woody Guthrie-style protest songs reminded me to go out and buy Bob Dylan’s new album:Christmas in the Heart.

A love of reconciliation

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:37 GMT

THINKING ANEW:ONE OF THE key tasks of the Christian church is to live and to preach reconciliation. William Barclay suggests that never once is God said to be reconciled to man; it is man who must be reconciled to God and that’s the difficult part. The tragedy is that the church which is called to be the model of reconciliation is often its contradiction because of a preoccupation with internal matters.

This Week They Said

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:37 GMT

I built my house in 1988. Like, why is that a trophy house? I don’t want this kind of crap coming at me. –Pat Kenny’s rebuke to Siptu leader Jack O’Connor, who quipped on Kenny’sFrontlineprogramme that Kenny lived in a “trophy home” which O’Connor suggested should be subject to a special tax.

Tehran faces winter of discontent

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:37 GMT

WORLD VIEW:Iran has to address widespread unrest over the elections and huge economic challenges, writesPATRICK SMYTH

Alleged 'visionaries' brought a parody of faith to Knock

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:37 GMT

Knock is a very special place. It should be full of despair; instead, it is full of a quiet dignity, writesBREDA O'BRIEN

Populist tax-cutting led to public finances shortfall

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:36 GMT

The exclusive focus on cuts rather than on increases in income tax is a serious mistake, writesGARRET FITZGERALD

Long way from Mike Murphy's morning patter

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:36 GMT

In 1984 ‘Morning Ireland’ began a current affairs revolution that changed the nature of Irish politics, writesNOEL WHELAN

Cowen must set aside tribal loyalties over EU post

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:35 GMT

INSIDE POLITICS:The State’s best candidate, rather than Fianna Fáil’s, should be put forward as the new EU commissioner, writesSTEPHEN COLLINS

How inertia became the iron law of Irish politics

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:35 GMT

Rotten and corrupt government is not the sole cause of Ireland’s repeated economic and political failures. Something else is at play, writesDAN O'BRIEN

Guns in the US

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:35 GMT

THE TRAGIC shootings in Fort Hood, Texas, have drawn attention again to the frightening availability of guns in the US – a staggering 97 guns for every 100 people. Although the killings took place on an army base, neither of the pistols used were army-issue. And the state of Texas, ranked 27th by a gun control lobby group in terms of the ease with which guns can be bought, has no requirement that handgun buyers obtain a licence or undergo any type of safety training. Police do not know how many guns are in the state or where they are.

Protests and sharing the pain

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:32:35 GMT

TENS OF thousands of workers took to the streets yesterday in an Irish Congress of Trade Unions-inspired “day of protest” against the Government’s budgetary strategy, particularly plans to cut the public sector pay and pensions bills by €1.3 billion in the December budget. The anger of the marchers was understandable. They are not responsible for the dire economic circumstances now facing the State. But the Government mismanaged the economy, is now broke and simply cannot afford to pay its bills. The level of borrowing for day-to-day spending is such that, should it continue unchecked, the prospects for an early economic recovery would be grim.

We should think of our own poor first this Christmas

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:03:28 GMT

While there is a nice glow to be had from helping a child in Africa, there are lots of needy people on our doorstep, ORNA MULCAHY

Confronting brutal facts key to return of prosperity

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:03:28 GMT

OPINION:Economic pain can be a catalyst for serious change in the way our society is organised, writes DONAL CASEY

Anxiety at lack of action on policing and justice

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:03:28 GMT

There are ominous signs that Northern Irerland politics are becoming mired once more in intransigence and destructive name calling, writes GERRY MORIARTY

An Irishman's Diary

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:42 GMT

IS IT POSSIBLE that Ennis could be in the process of becoming Ireland’s first “Urination Rage Town”? I only ask because, two weeks after a local music store owner electrified his doorway to prevent late-night drinkers relieving themselves there, a town councillor has also now proposed employing special street wardens – pee police – to combat the menace. A shock-and-awe strategy, you might say.

Irish gift of the gab leads the world and wins hearts of women

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:42 GMT

MAGPIE:THE COUNTRY may be broke and we may be ruled by the least competent bunch of shysters in the western world but hey, all is not lost.

November 6th, 1922: Ernie O'Malley arrested after D4 shoot-out November 6th, 1922

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:42 GMT

BACK PAGES:Ernie O’Malley was one of the most successful IRA commanders during the War of Independence and a dedicated opponent of the treaty, who went on to write the two best memoirs of those periods, On Another Man’s Wound and The Singing Flame. He was captured during the Civil War at the home in Ailesbury Road, Dublin, of Ellen Humphreys, a sister of The O’Rahilly and also a committed anti-treatyite. This contemporary report described his capture, making the most of the sketchy details available on the weekend of his arrest.

Engaging whistle-stop journey around the railways that changed the world

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:42 GMT

BOOK OF THE DAY:Blood, Iron Gold: How the Railways Transformed the WorldBy Christian Wolmar, Atlantic 398pp, £25

Mindset of the mob can sway citizen journalism

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:42 GMT

IT IS a conventional wisdom that citizen journalism, blogging, interactivity and other new forms of communication are changing our communications media, and by extension our democracies, in radical and, it is implied, positive ways. But I wonder whether those who eulogise these developments ever take a close look at the content of some of these allegedly shimmering new elements of the democratic discourse.

Abbas has enough

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:41 GMT

PROLONGED STALEMATE is not an option. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum and the failure of the parties to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to engage meaningfully was eventually going to push the process back into uncertainty and, probably, escalating violence. So, the announcement yesterday by president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, that he “has no intent of running” for re-election in a vote planned for January has a dreary inevitability to it.

Time to transfer policing powers

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:47:41 GMT

THIS IS a time of considerable anxiety in Northern Ireland as plans for the transfer of policing and justice powers from Westminster run into difficulties while threats from dissident republicans to the peace process reach a six-year high. It is a volatile situation that demands courageous political leadership. The gains made during the past five years in bringing about the normalisation of society should not be jeopardised.

Like being buttonholed in a pub by a likeable bloke celebrating his 43rd birthday

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

STEPHEN DIXONreviews My Favourite People and Me 1978-1988By Alan Davies, Michael Joseph 373pp, £18.99

Short cut needed to tackle our road deaths

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

OPINION:There are more practical ways of tackling drink-driving than just lowering the blood-alcohol limit, writes TONY ALLWRIGHT

Tax on speculative trading a great way to raise billions

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

The ‘Tobin tax’ first mooted decades ago is gathering support, both for the money it would yield and the effect it would have on markets, writes JOHN GIBBONS

Clerical conviction puts politicians to shame

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

Irish religious leaders have shown rare courage and integrity in their reaction to cuts in school and aid budgets, writes DAVID ADAMS

President's uphill battle just became steeper

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

ANALYSIS:Barack Obama’s first electoral setbacks are down to the economy and Republicans embracing pragmatism, writes LARA MARLOWE

Voters vacillate between gratitude and fear on EU

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:23:10 GMT

ANALYSIS:Why does the electorate say No to the EU when times are good and vice versa? The observations of the swing voters provide some answers, writes DAMIAN LOSCHER

An Irishman's Diary

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:32 GMT

MY PREDICTION earlier this year that 300 of Dublin’s free rental bikes would end up “at the bottom of the canal” in the scheme’s first week was of course an exaggeration.

Corrections & Clarifications

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:32 GMT

An article in last Monday’s edition concerning Catholic criticism of the Church’s attitude to measures aimed at preventing HIV, referred to the “Catholic Progressio group”. Progressio is an Irish Overseas Development organisation, partly funded by Irish Aid, which has Catholic lay roots.

November 5th, 1873: Parisian gossip and political intrigue

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:32 GMT

BACK PAGES:The Irish Timeskept a close eye on France in the early 1870s as the Franco-Prussian War was followed by the Paris Commune and the political machinations of monarchists, republicans and Bonapartists in the Third Republic, presided over by Marshal Patrice MacMahon, a descendant of Irish Jacobites.

Society needs people from both sides of great divide

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:32 GMT

IT COSTS $722 (€486) to fly from St Paul/Minneapolis to Bismarck, North Dakota, and you can fly from St Paul/ Minneapolis to Paris for $754. Life is unfair; we all know this. Big prizes go to mediocrities while you struggle on, unappreciated.

Setback for Democrats

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:31 GMT

IT IS a remarkable but true fact that the party which controls the White House has now lost nine consecutive gubernatorial elections in the commonwealth of Virginia. So, in electing Robert McDonnell on Tuesday, emphatically halting a decade of Democratic advances in the swing state, Republicans did not altogether surprise. Such off-year election successes are not seen as accurate predictors for next year’s mid-terms but they will have cast a pall on President Obama’s celebrations yesterday of his election anniversary.

Unpalatable medicine

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:11:31 GMT

NO GOVERNMENT in the State’s history has faced a greater or more daunting challenge than that presented by the December budget. And no government, in preparing for the many difficult decisions ahead, has received more advice on what to cut, and where, who to tax, and how heavily. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is the latest to diagnose the sick state of the Irish economy and to prescribe some unpalatable but essential medicine to assist recovery.

An Irishwoman's Diary

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:37 GMT

FRED LEBOW was responsible for a lot of happy pain on Sunday at the 40th New York City Marathon. Lebow founded the marathon in 1970 and the event started in Central Park with 55 people. It is now one of the biggest in the world, with more than 35,000 people participating each year.

A comic comet that will brighten your day

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:37 GMT

BOOK OF THE DAY:The Brightest Star in the Sky, by Marian Keyes Michael Joseph, 612pp, £18.99

Grass not always greener abroad, Dev warns emigrants

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:36 GMT

NOVEMBER 4TH, 1946:During the past century there have been occasional suggestions that emigrants were to blame for emigration – that, at best, they were deluded by false promises of a better life abroad or, at worst, deserting the country in its hours of need. The former undertone was present in a speech by then taoiseach Eamon de Valera reviewing the state of the nation at a Fianna Fáil meeting in Co Tipperary in 1946, more than a year after the end of The Emergency or the second World War.

Call it a counter-intuitively convincing chronological conundrum

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:36 GMT

NEWTON'S OPTIC:THE SMELL of onions hit me before I opened the front door. “Could you not chew garlic instead?” I asked Jack Beggar, head of the Irish Columnists’ Trade Union, as he barged past me into the house.

Tough budget needed to stave off grimmer future

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:36 GMT

ANALYSIS:IRELAND IS experiencing a horrendous recession. There has been a sharp decline in employment and output since 2007. Unemployment has grown rapidly, while many opt to exit the labour force or emigrate. Accordingly, decisions about economic policy have rarely been as important, writesPHILIP LANE

Denial of inequality has deadly results

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:36 GMT

THERE IS a wilful resistance to acknowledge the scale of inequality here in the debate on how to fix the fiscal hole. And a wilful denial of the lethal consequence of that inequality, writesVINCENT BROWNE

Lawful driving so rare it's treated as deviant

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:36 GMT

SOMETIMES YOU see yourself through other people’s eyes. I remember the time I was telling my friend Leo how I train tailgaters and, instead of seeing a noble queen fighting a just war, I saw an alarmingly unstable bint. “What do you mean ‘train’, Sarah?” he asked slowly, writesSARAH CAREY

Being female still handicap as judgment puts men first

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:35 GMT

TO SET in context yesterday’s Supreme Court judgment upholding the right of Portmarnock Golf Club to exclude women from full membership, you have to consider the situation in Irish golf a decade ago, writesCAROL COULTER

SVP submission

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:35 GMT

IT IS time for a reality check. The budget is less than a month away. And a plethora of competing submissions have been sent to the Minister for Finance by dominant vested interests. Lip-service has been paid to a correction of the public finances. But self-serving demands make a mockery of that notion. Before these powerful voices drown out all others, the Government should declare its commitment to a fair and equitable society.

Ratifying the Lisbon Treaty

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:18:35 GMT

FINALLY THE road ran out yesterday for the opponents of the Lisbon Treaty, notably the Czech Republic’s Eurosceptic president Vaclav Klaus who became the 27th head of state to sign off on it, however reluctantly. The unanimous rejection by the Czech constitutional court of the last potential legal impediment to ratification was quickly followed by the president’s assent, and the depositing in Rome of the instrument of ratification within days will see the treaty come into force probably in early December. But next week the European Council and commission president will separately be able to begin the immediate tasks of filling the new jobs of president of the council and high representative for foreign and security policy, and of allocating tasks to a new commission team.

Church's idealisation of sexuality may be root of abuse

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:29:43 GMT

RITE AND REASON:THE RECENT papal encyclical Caritas in Veritateis in many ways a wise and insightful reflection on the economic crisis. However, given the scandal created by the Ryan report, the people of Ireland may have good reasons for refusing to engage with a papal encyclical, even if it addresses a different scandal that has devastated so many of their lives.

We must take task of nation-building upon ourselves

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:29:43 GMT

ITAY TALGAM is a renowned orchestral conductor from Israel who believes that the orchestra is a metaphor for the workplace. The conductor has the opportunity and possibility to create an organised collective sound from the untidy noise of a diverse ensemble of individual musical instruments with the nuance of a single gesture, writes ELAINE BYRNE

Jedward are pure essence of an extinct culture

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:29:43 GMT

It’s no wonder the X Factortwins are so popular: they embody the Celtic Tiger era but do none of the harm, writes FINTAN O’TOOLE

Unions gird themselves for battle over pay cuts

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:29:43 GMT

ANALYSIS:FRIDAY WILL see the start of a campaign by the trade union movement to persuade the Government that there is a fairer and better alternative to its own plan for bringing the public finances back into order, writes MARTIN WALL

An Irishwoman's Diary

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

WITH characteristically mischievous humour, Frank McCourt insisted that when he died, there was to be much mourning and keening. So we were told by Frank’s’ friend, the writer Peter Quinn, who recently hosted an evening in New York called, simply, Remembering Frank McCourt. A throwaway comment, but also an ambivalent one about what Frank called the Poor Banished Children of Eve note in Irish culture, the note to which he was especially attuned, which stung him into becoming a writer.

How Irish jockeys saddled up and took a great leap forward to world-class level

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

BOOK OF THE DAY:Kings of the Saddle,By Brian O’Connor, Aurum 246pp, £18.99

Hidden tricks spoil treats on Halloween

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

NOVEMBER 3RD, 1987:The fears of Halloween are not all associated with ghosts, ghouls and the supernatural, as this column from California by Declan Kiberd in 1987 explained.

Echoes of Vietnam in Afghanistan's crisis

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

ANALYSIS:An unfair election, a leadership without popular support and a war without apparent end: the parallels between Vietnam and Afghanistan appear striking to a former soldier

Pension losses

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

AMONG THE world’s developed economies, no country performed worse than Ireland last year in an important area of investment: pensions. Irish pension funds lost one-third of their value when, on average, the industrialised world’s pension schemes fell by one-fifth. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimated last week that in 2008, $5,400 billion (€3,290 billion) was wiped off the value of pension funds in member countries. However in the first six months of this year, the recovery in equity markets has meant global pension schemes – including Ireland’s – have made positive returns.

One man, no vote in Afghanistan

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:39:09 GMT

AFGHANISTAN’S DECISION to abandon the second round of its presidential vote on November 7th had become inevitable, a recognition of the reality that a rerun would have been a pointless and potentially bloody charade. The withdrawal at the weekend of opposition candidate Abdullah Abdullah over the refusal of President Hamid Karzai to reform the Independent Election Commission (IEC) had opened up the prospect of a Soviet-style single-candidate ballot conducted in the likely face of rampant voter apathy, more of the widespread electoral fraud that characterised the June first round, and rising violence from Taliban insurgents.

An Irishman's Diary

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

IT’S 5.45am on a dark October morning and I am sitting on a bus bound for the Kilmainham Royal Hospital. I am to be an extra in a scene forThe Tudors. As a novice I am lucky to be sitting beside Gene, an old pro who is doing his best to initiate me into the hidden world of the extra. As the bus picks up more people, he remarks that there are no women on board.

Lively and wide-ranging distillation of 10,000 years of immigration into Ireland

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

BOOK OF THE DAY:The Irish (and Other Foreigners): From the First People to the PolesBy Shane Hegarty, Gill and Macmillan 227pp. €14.99

Unemployed march in Dublin for jobs and home assistance

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

NOVEMBER 2ND, 1932:“Hunger marches” were a regular form of protest in Britain by the autumn of 1932, three years after the Wall Street crash and in the depths of the Great Depression. The more common form of protest in Ireland at the lack of jobs and minimal social assistance was to seek work through local councils and improved welfare from local health boards, as this daily round-up of protests illustrated.

Big stories - and smaller ones - still demand accuracy

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

TWO STARTLINGLY approximate stories generated headlines last week: the inaccurate (and therefore misleading) reports of McDonald’s “pulling out” of Iceland, and the highly spun story of Tony Blair being on course to become the first “EU president”, writesTONY KINSELLA

Agassi's childhood misery the real shock

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

SPORTS MEMOIRS are the books making news these times.X Factoris not half as exciting as reading about the secret lives of sports heroes – or as much of their secret lives as they are prepared to sell you. Last week it was Dónal Óg Cusack talking about hurling and homosexuality. This week it is Andre Agassi talking about taking drugs and tennis, writesANN MARIE HOURIHANE

'Ireland is a disaster . . . leave now and enjoy your life'

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

On these pages last week, Shane Fitzgerald, a young graduate of University College Dublin, wrote about the Government’s failure to deliver on its promise of a bright future in Ireland for him and his generation. Rather than draw the dole here, he left recession Ireland behind him – departing “these bankrupt shores” for London. His experience rang true for many online readers, some of whom reacted with strong antipathy towards our politicians. Here is an edited selection of how they see Ireland and its politicians.

Benefits far outweigh risks linked to swine flu vaccine

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

ANALYSIS:IRELAND IS now experiencing a significant increase in the rate of pandemic (H1N1) infection. This is now a national public health emergency and today, a significant phase of our response formally commences with the official roll-out of our mass vaccination plan, beginning with those in the ‘‘at risk’’ groups, writesTONY HOLOHAN

Fair deal scheme

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

THE SO-CALLED “fair deal” scheme for nursing home care has finally been introduced, nearly two years behind schedule. However, rather than putting an end to the confusion and anxiety that affects older people when faced with the prospect of high nursing home charges, the manner of its implementation by the Health Service Executive (HSE) has perpetuated those concerns. And it is hard to distinguish the “fair, equitable, transparent and progressive system” promised by the Minister for Health, Mary Harney.

Strikes will solve nothing

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:26:00 GMT

AT LAST, Ministers have begun to speak in unambiguous terms about the financial crisis facing the State. Savings of € 4 billion are planned for the December Budget, with € 1.3 billion coming from the public pay and pensions bill. That is likely to involve pay cuts, although savings can be made in other ways. Brian Lenihan spoke of the “stark reality” that the Government is no longer able to fund the system, while John Gormley suggested the choice for public servants lay between pay cuts and bouncing cheques.

Cameron must end Tories' far-right fling

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:07:08 GMT

UK party must not be associated with eastern groups’ revisionist views on the Holocaust, writes DOVID KATZ

Presidential race wide open if front-runners drop out

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:07:08 GMT

INSIDE POLITICS:With negatives against all leading contenders for the EU presidency, John Bruton could come into consideration, writes STEPHEN COLLINS

Cynicism might reflect reality but altruism also has its place

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:07:08 GMT

A view of human nature as intrinsically self-centred is profoundly depressing, writes BREDA O'BRIEN