John Dardis (Progressive Democrats)

One need only mention a newspaper, RTE or any other organ of the media for it to receive widespread interest and coverage. Nevertheless, it is important we acknowledge the fact that The Irish Times in its lead article and in Kevin Myers's "Irishman's Diary" column gave a comprehensive apology for the use of a word in that column. However, Kevin Myers confirms his detachment from reality when he states in the course of his column: "I deliberately used the word "bastard" because I genuinely feel that the word has no stigma attached to it." That is a cogent confirmation of Mr. Myers's detachment from reality. The final word on the matter might be best left to a correspondent to the letters page in The Irish Times who suggests that when Mr. Myers was looking for a word to describe the offspring of unmarried mothers he could have used the word "children".

I commend the national pensions reserve fund commission on securing a 9.3% return on the fund in 2004. Any fund manager or asset manager in any of the large brokerage houses in this country would look enviously at that figure. It is a very good performance by the fund which brings its value to almost €12 billion.