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.

There are only 12 short weeks to the local and European elections and while our roads and streets haven't yet become paved with posters of politicians and wanna-be politicians inviting us to back their team, some are making their presence felt by kicking political footballs up against the gable. Galway City Mayor Padraig Conneely has called on the city's two leading fuel suppliers to make it their "civic duty" to ensure that the success of the Volvo Ocean Race stopover in Galway is not jeopardised.

Behind every good man is a good woman, so the saying goes. And behind every good leader, it would seem, is a good idol. Barack Obama has Abraham Lincoln and An Taoiseach Brian Cowen, it would now appear, has John Fitzgerald Kennedy. In his speech to the Fianna Fail Ard Fheis at the weekend, Mr Cowen quoted the 35th president of the United States of America on his visit to Ireland many years ago. Mr Cowen said Mr Kennedy had spoken some words in the Dail at the time that still ring true today.

It being Pancake Tuesday yesterday, it occurs to us that Lent is upon us again and not a thought given to what we will give up this year. Of course we would have been forewarned of its approach had we been keeping up with all things ecclesiastical, but ironically, attending mass was one of the first things to go, as we circled the wagons on our failing finances. Despite the prospect of our souls to heaven springing, the coin in the coffer has proven too much of a high risk bet in these straitened economic times.

The case of the Galway family who were tied up and held at gunpoint in a so-called 'tiger raid on their home in Lackagh-Turloughmore on Sunday night goes to demonstrate how vulnerable we all are as we go about our daily routines. So preoccupied have we all become with keeping our jobs, keeping our businesses afloat, keeping money in our pockets, house prices, bank shares, bank dealings with other banks.

Harvey Norman Chief Executive Gerry Harvey got into a spot of bother late last year for comparing Ireland's worsening economic situation to the famine. But with union chiefs warning that the 'employer's agenda' will pit worker against worker, one wonders if you could be justified in comparing the impending union revolt on the pension levy to the Irish Civil War?

With the economy shrinking, more people now signing on and subsequent increased demands on the health system, it was a matter of when rather than if restrictions in health services would be announced. And so we had it last week, with the HSE West Service Plan for 2009, which indicated that staffing levels, disabled services and acute inpatient beds for mental illness patients are to be hit by cutbacks in 2009 as part of budgetary measures.