Dúirt Siad...

Last year three loyalists went on hunger strike in Maghaberry over the refusal of prison authorities to let them send out for Chinese food and watch late night repeats of the Vicar of Dibley on UK Gold. I had them down for three days in the office sweep, but they didn't last 24 hours. - Robin Livingstone, Daily Ireland, 30 June on the poor recoerd of loyalist hunger strikes.

Willie broke like a plate when his sainted old mother appeared with a fish supper. He explained that he didn't have it in him to say no to her. I don't mind admitting that I was touched. - Robin Livingstone Daily Ireland, 30 June on the hunger strike effort by Willie Frazer of the FAIR organisation.

The clamour for reform of Irish healthcare grows as an EU survey says our system is the sick old man of Europe. - Eoghan Rice, Sunday Tribune 2 July referring to the Euro Health Consumer Index.

History has been skewed by the upper-hand of revisionism. Extraordinarily, national plans to mark the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising provoke more soul-searching controversy than plans for the first State commemoration of the Battle of the Somme. - Justine McCarthy Irish Independent 3 July

To smear the Loach movie as Provo propaganda or "bad for England's Image" is the aggressor's classic denial of the truth. If Wapping's armchair propagandists want to embrace a fairytale version of reality, that's their neurosis. - Justine McCarthy Irish Independent 3 July

As a party which thrives on self-promotion, self congratulation and, above all, ego they have successfully used the media to ram their ideals down the throats of the people of this country on many occasions. - Barry Walsh Irish Independent, 3 July on the leadership struggle within the PDs.

Far from hating his country, as Ruth Dudley Edwards alleged in the Daily mail, he loves and celebrates the land of Milton, Blake and Shelley. And, in liberating a hidden but never completely lost idea of England, he is helping to remind us on this island of the story of how Ireland freed itself. - Declan Kiberd on Ken Loach, English identity and Loaches Tan war film The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Irish Times, 4 July.