Did you hear there was a revolution in Ireland a fortnight ago? Apparently it was live on television, but you may have missed it if you were watching snooker on the other channel.

The government has unveiled its post-Brexit immigration system, with the originally-proposed minimum salary threshold of £30,000 cut to £20,480 and no threshold for seasonal agricultural workers.

Although England has introduced a ban on polluting fuels used in wood burning stoves and open fires, it seems that these measures are unlikely to be extended to Northern Ireland.

SO eager were my fiancé and I to become man and wife that we picked the earliest date we could to plight our troth after our engagement.

A report published earlier this week, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and based on face-to-face interviews with 2000 people, suggests that just 29 per cent would vote for a united Ireland if a border poll was held tomorrow.

Before the restoration of Stormont, there was a widely-held recognition that vast sums of money would be needed to bring many of our public services up to the standard required.

Congratulations to Sinn Féin on their astounding election result in the Republic – they are now part of the establishment. 

There is an ominous sense of Stormont making the same mistake with Derry that was made half a century ago.

I had started writing this column on policing and the very real challenges with recruitment and normalisation.

Britain's proposed immigration policy is an indication of the hardline, uncompromising approach we can expect from Boris Johnson's government in the post-EU era.

Pope Francis recently published his decision on the Amazon Synod which discussed the possibility of ordaining married men as an answer to the acute shortage of priests in the Amazon region.

It’s rare that any secretary of state gets praise from across the political spectrum, let alone be described by the taoiseach as “one of Britain’s finest politicians of our time” Julian Smith’s sacking last week in the most brutal cabinet reshuffle since Harold Macmillan’s 1962 ‘night of the long knives’ briefly united most of the main parties who branded his dismissal a mistake.

Once again Charles de Gaulle, the greatest Frenchman of the twentieth century, is going to be proved correct in his judgment of the British, though he preferred to call them English.

Health minister Robin Swann, writing in this newspaper as part of a special report on mental health, has a three word mantra for every day he is in his post - suicide is preventable.

Regrets? I’ve had a few – but then again, too few to mention.

Every so often a pale political organism, not usually any kind of activist, more likely one of those commentator-types, will have a grizzle about the lack of ‘joined-up politics’ here.

The reform of local government in Northern Ireland in recent years was a long drawn out affair, subject to many delays but ultimately resulting in the reduction of 26 councils to just eleven.

Like Allison Morris (February 9), I also remember growing up in west Belfast. I was part of a police family. Life was totally normal, with good neighbours and friends. Religion was not an issue.

In generations to come, people will look back in amazement at the pace with which change came dropping during this remarkable period in Irish history.

The elections in the Republic have demonstrated that the public are simply fed up at being taken for granted.