CHARLES HAUGHEY is rivalled only by Jack Lynch in evasiveness and managing to give the impression of saying one thing while actually saying another. Note how he has never actually said he supports Jack Lynch as leader of Fianna Fail or that he supports the Lynch line on the North as stated in the Tralee speech of September '69 or the US speech of November '70.

THE WORST budget performance in years was given by Fine Gael's new spokesman on Finance, Peter Barty. His reply to George Colley's statement was embarrassing as cliche rolled after platitude in monotonous succession.

THERE IS WAR today, right across Africa's desert regions, from the Western Sahara on the Atlantic to Somalia on the Indian Ocean. It is as if some subterranean fault was causing the continent to crack along its political seams. The wars in Western Sahara, where a liberation struggle is being fought against the Mauritian and Moroccan Governments, and in Chad, represent the resistance of nomads to political settlements which they resent. The wars there are being fought at a fairly primitive level. What is going on in Ethiopia is quite different.

HEALTH STUDIOS offer the opportunity to achieve physiical fitness in plush surroundings under expert guidance. Of course, the task of shedding those extra pounds and firming sagging muscles will still involve a certain amount of hard labour but with facilities like saunas, solariums and massage available on the premises; health gyms succeed to some extent in sugaring the pill.

Guinness, Irish Steel, the Sunday World and Tony O'Reilly, the IDA, and the stock exchange

Theatre, film, galleries and restaurants

BBC's program 'An Irish link with Terrorist International', the Coalisland Conference and Bruce Arnold's Novel

IT IS ALMOST five years now since Dr Dermot Ryan, newly installed as Archbishop of Dublin, decided that housing the homeless would be his primary social concern.

PORTMARNOCK Golf Club's executive has just passed through the traumatic exxperience of an election (almost unprecedented) to fill commmittee posts, although the same faces appear again on the Committee. It was not too democratic an experience as the club, built on the land of more than one hundred evicted fishermen at the turn of the century, has no women members Women cannot become members of Portmarnock. They cannot even enter the bar as guests of a member. Invited women can play on the fabled links on one week-day, but they must step aside and let members play past them if asked to do so.

NINE YEARS AGO, the National Council for the Apostolate of the Laity was set up by the Irish Hierrarchy in accordance with the wishes of Vatican II. The Council was to redefine the role of the laity within the Church, giving the flock genuine, not merely connsultative, power.