It's been a long time coming but it's finally here. The Volvo Ocean Race Fleet arrives in Galway this weekend, seven months after it left its starting port in Alicante, over a year since Galway was named as a stopover port and 36 years after it was first initiated. And, while there are those amongst us who would not have been able to tell our starboard from our port side this time last week, or this time in two weeks when the yachts pull anchor again, there are few people in the city who aren't revved up for this Formula 1 of yacht racing events.

Injecting new life into a tired old saga was not just the work of Star Trek director JJ Abrams last week, as former RTÉ economics editor George Lee beamed down from the safety of a permanent and pensionable job, decloaked as a blueshirt and re-energised national politics, leaving commentators and fellow politicians with their faces set to stun.

Fitting really that in the same week as there were calls for the H1N1 flu virus sweeping the world not to be referred to as the 'swine' flu, due to the offence caused to Muslims and Jews, Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern would move to introduce blasphemy laws. Minister Ahern announced last week that he would amend the Defamation Bill to create a crime of libellous blasphemy, with offenders facing a fine of up to €100,000.

In Brian Friel's acclaimed play, Philadelphia, Here I Come, the conflict between public and private is central to the play. Gar O'Donnell, the central personality, is a dual character. Gar Public is "the Gar that people see, talk to, talk about", while Gar Private is "the unseen man, the man within, the conscience". There is always conflict between public and private, and none more so than in the world of employment.

The ebb and flow of the economic tide may be forcing a reshaping of our financial structures but a reshaping of society as a whole, some of which precedes and some of which is being exacerbated by the economic tide going out, is gradually wearing away rural services to the point that living in the country may no longer be viable or desirable for some people.

Marriages, like budgets, are a tricky business. Move in haste and you can look forward to repenting at your leisure. So it was for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan last week as he squared up to the mistakes in his October shotgun budget with a renewal of his vows to get Ireland out of its financial quagmire. With the emergency budget down, the electorate examining their wounds and the Government raising their heads to survey the fallout, it's now time to get down to the next real business of politics: the race for the local and European elections.

So, did he do it? Did he, did he? Did he pull it off? Did he pull the rabbit out of the hat like in the magic trick, like Richard Bruton said he would? Can we open our eyes yet? Can we all go back the un-reality that we had become so very accustomed to and forget this sorry mess? Can we, can we?

‘I know nothing about art but I know what I like’, someone famously once said. Of course, what they should have said is ‘I know nothing about art but I know what I don’t like.’
As debate raged on the nude portraits of An Taoiseach Brian Cowen that surfaced in the National Gallery and the Royal Hibernian Gallery last week, people who knew nothing about art instantly knew that they didn’t like it, whatever it was.

After completing my Leaving Certificate in 1995, I left Ireland for the summer bound for Heidelberg, Germany where I would spend the next three to four months working as a 'putzfrau' or cleaning lady in a private hospital. I was 18 years of age.

As we celebrate all things Irish this week, we are reminded why it is great to be Irish. Only in Ireland could you turn a one-day event into a weeklong celebration, only the Irish could cause the entire world to stand still if not for a day, at least for a couple of hours. However, there is another side to the Irish psyche: the great Irish trait of complaining about everything and resolving nothing.