By the time you read this Mary Harney will have survived the no-confidence vote in the Dáil. But the already shredded credibility of the Fianna Fáil-Green-PD Government on health will have been put through the shredder yet again. Free article

The debates in the Six County Assembly on the draft Programme for Government, Investment Strategy and Budget raged over almost 11 hours on Monday and Tuesday this week. It was the platform for serious debate about the key issues for the power-sharing Executive. Sadly it was also a space for much political posturing by the SDLP and UUP who seem incapable of reconciling themselves to the fact that there is a new political landscape in the North. Free article

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has made a judgment in favour of the families of eight men who were murdered by unionist paramilitaries working in collusion with the RUC and the British Army's Ulster defence Regiment in the South Armagh area in the mid 1970's. Free article

THERE are times in public life when the social results of bad governance deliver a shudder, a jolt, or even an out-and-out purge of the body politic. Whether it be the case of child molester Fr Brendan Smyth, as reported to an unsuspecting public in 1994, or Charlie Haughey being ratted out by former Justice Minister Seán Doherty on Shay Healy's excellent Nighthawks two years earlier, RTE's Prime Time should also serve as a red letter day to local authorities throughout Ireland. Free article

The Health Services Executive (HSE) has reversed its decision to close the regional treatment unit at Navan Hospital for the month of December in a cost cutting exercise. Meath Sinn Féin County Councillor Joe Reilly has welcomed the HSE u-turn. Free article

NEWS emerged this week of outrageous work practices at the Reid Transport haulage firm in County Antrim. The Cloughmills company collapsed last week along with the loss of 200 jobs. Workers owed back-pay claim that some staff had been working up to 70 hours per week for a company estimated to be £3.3m in debt. Free article

The first meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement on 22 November was to be an historic occasion with four MPs from the Six Counties for the first time participating in such a Committee in Leinster House. Free article