1983 was not a good year for most of us. Employment was down, prices were up. PRSI payments jumped and private savings plummetted. Workers lucky enough to have jobs found their unions hamstrung by tightfisted managements and themselves humbly accepting smaller pay rises. Home ownership, once the security of the working class, turned into a bad joke as Ireland's property market collapsed. St Vincent de Paul, once the helping hand to society's neediest, began receiving its first requests for help with home mortgages, from the very people who used to contribute to the charity.

Kerry Dougherty talks to the managing director of Atlantic Resources and considers the government's options.

Gerard Cowzer, a 23 year-old Dublin man who has been entangled in the Irish legal system for the past year and a half, is back in Mountjoy Prison, serving a five year sentence for the 1981 robbery of the Irish Permanent Building Society in Baggot Street.

Wanted: Friendly, Docile Politician for Public Relations Duties. Salary: £22,457.

The courts are plagued with erratic sentencing, which encourages the belief that the scales of justice are bent, if not broken
By Kerry Dougherty