The present situation isn't sustainable, and we have a vision for the public service in the future. It will be a smaller service which will be one that has been outlined in various reports and we need to get on with that project

Taoiseach Brian Cowen speaking on Prime Time ahead of the Budget

The banks are going to have to look at situations where their own officials are not put into circumstances where there is available cash and they are put under duress

Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, speaking after the latest 'tiger' bank raid

We didn't stand up to the corporate capitalist monsters who brought us to the brink of economic collapse... and yet we will stand up to the guard, to the teacher, to the nurse and the worker who is now paying pension, health and income levies to fund our way out of this recession

Labour senator Michael McCarthy on Friday's national day of protest

The civil servants took it in very good part. They have been reading David McWilliams for a long time. He did advocate that we leave the euro and he also advocated we should let the banks collapse, so I don't think that they'd be very surprised at anything David McWilliams wrote

Finance minister Brian Lenihan reacting to claims in the economist's new book that Lenihan claimed his advisers didn't fully understand the seriousness of the current financial crisis

I think that most people in Ireland would consider it a practice and a tradition that sits more in the 19th century than it does in the 21st century

Sinead Heraty, chief executive of the Irish Ladies Golf Union, criticising last week's court ruling in favour of Portmarnock Golf Club continuing to deny women full membership.

It's easily made up if you're a science or physics graduate. You can buy the ingredients in a chemist or on the internet and there's been a few little factories lately that have been busted by the gardaí

Tony Geoghegan, director of Merchant's Quay drug treatment centre, following the hospitalisation of three people who took liquid ecstasy in Dublin last weekend

It's nip and tuck everywhere, to be honest, including walking around the Áras turning off lights

President Mary McAleese reveals that she will be making cost-saving cutbacks at Aras an Uachtaráin