It feels just unbelievable, it's like as if the past 3½ months have been like a dream.
– Goal aid worker Sharon Commins on her release after spending 107 days in captivity with a colleague in Sudan.
No economic or social interest can be beyond the scope of the painful adjustments which are now required.
– Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
In these tough times, government needs to lead by example . . . I will start with the political system itself.
– Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny saying he would abolish the Seanad if elected to government.
It is my distinct impression that the reclassification of the Protestant schools was not driven by financial considerations. It was driven by what amounts to a very determined and doctrinaire effort within the Department of Education and Science to strike at a sector which some officials totally failed to understand.
– Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin John Neill.
Are we seriously to believe that the founding fathers and framers of our Constitution envisaged a situation where this Republic would become a hostile place for the children of the Protestant minority?
– Church of Ireland Bishop of Cork Paul Colton.
I’m prepared in ongoing discussions to look at all of the parameters and hopefully we can come to a satisfactory resolution.
– Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe.
I am not a Nazi and never have been.
– Nick Griffin, leader of the openly racist British National Party.
I have . . . stood at the crem[atorium] like a lemon, wondering why on earth I am present at the funeral of somebody led in by the tunes of Tina Turner, summed up in pithy platitudes of sentimental and secular poets and sent into the furnace with I Did It My Wayblaring out across the speakers. To be brutally honest, I can think of 100 better ways of spending my time as a priest on God's earth.
– Blog of the Rev Ed Tomlinson, a vicar in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, lamenting the growing popularity of secular funerals.