SPEAKING to the Dáil last week, Housing Minister Michael Finneran announced that the housing budget for 2009 would be 4 per cent less than 2008, with spending on social housing to be cut by 1.7 per cent. When inflation is taken into account, these figures should read 9 per cent less for housing in general and 6.6 per cent less for social housing. Free article

The award winning film Hunger, about the last weeks in the life of Bobby Sands, had its premiere in Belfast last Thursday, 16 October. Unsurprisingly the film has become the focus of wide political debate, most particularly in the North where the anti-republican lobby has circled the wagons to defend the establishment discourse as to what the prison struggle and Hunger Strikes were about. Free article

HAS Margaret Ritchie, the Stormont Minister for Social Development, lost the run of herself? She was interviewed on BBC Radio Foyle on her decision to axe funding from the 'Good Morning Galliagh' community group, located in one of the most disadvantaged areas of the City. Free article

YOU might expect bilious Sunday Independent hack, Jim Cusack, to pen fairy stories about the IRA investing and losing €200 million in the US banking collapse. But the repetition of this nonsense by the Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern during the Dáil budget debate has to be some sort of record when it comes to cheap shots from a senior politician. It also shows how seriously cabinet members were taking criticisms of the budget that the third most senior government minister could indulge in such adolescent jibes. Free article

Tá sé in am dúinn, i ndiaidh cainaisnéis uafásach crua na seachtaine seo súil a chaitheamh ar an ré nua mar a déarfá. An ré nua de choinníollacha cúnga crua a raibh gach eolaí ag tuar le fada ach a bhuail muid mar an ghaoth aduaidh nuair a tháinig sí orainn go tobann. Giorrúcháin, méadú cánacha, seirbhísí sláinte a ghearradh, rudaí ar glacadh leo mar chearta anois ag titim faoi thua Brian Lenihan. Free article

An Phoblacht's famous weekly satirical column. Free article

THE RETURN of the execrable Compromise Rules between GAA footballers and proponents of Aussie Rules got off to a suitable note. Former Oz coach Kevin Sheedy (who was here in 2006) described Irish manager Sean Boylan as a "leprechaun" and accused him of having ranted and raved at the press conference following the last mess. Free article

BY the end of 1913, the campaign against Home Rule for Ireland organised by the Ulster Unionists and their allies in the Conservative and Unionist Party (the Tories) in Britain had reached a crescendo. The Ulster Volunteers had been established as well as a provisional government which threatened to seize power if Home Rule became law. Free article