Here’s a question: why is it that a significant percentage of Catholics who no longer attend Mass with any regularity are still happy to financially contribute to the running of a parish, the maintenance of a priest and the upkeep of a church? ...

By any sane assessment, an angry and unprepared Donald Trump lost heavily in the ABC News Presidential Debate on Tuesday night last, against a confident and joyful Kamala Harris.

Now the summer is over, the political world cranks back into full gear. And with a maximum of six months before an election, the talk is of the budget and what the government will do in it.

In the annals of Irish history, we've seen many weird bedfellows, but none as strange as the recent scene that unfolded on the streets of Belfast. We witnessed the most unlikely of alliances.

It was refreshing to see the lack of investment in infrastructure in the west of Ireland highlighted on RTÉ News last week. The more of a light that can be shone on this issue, the better.

First up was a trip to Castlebar to take in the Wolf Tones, before I travelled to Dublin to watch Coldplay and concluded my concert haul by attending a Christy Moore show in Sligo.

I remember a time when the wool from our Ox Mountain sheep was worth a few pound. It would be factored into the small income that came from a sheep flock.

From the window of our modest home on the outskirts of Castlebar, I can see Nephin shimmer in and out of mists, a visual metaphor for my son's now inconstant presence, expanding and decreasing in unpredictable measure.

From the very top of her game in banking, to coaching women to get into senior management roles in the corporate world, Tréasa Fitzgibbon gives whatever she is doing 100%.

So, the Office of Public Works (OPW) has been pilloried for spending €366,000 on an eighteen unit bicycle stand in Leinster House. Now a lot of people would not care if someone set a match to Leinster House and reduced it to rubble.