The reason why we're here today is so this will never happen to another child again... this can't happen to another child

Jennifer Stewart, whose son had the wrong kidney removed in a botched operation in 2008, addresses a Medical Council hearing.

Older and sicker people would pay less than they would otherwise have paid because, if we didn't make these decisions, there's no doubt that the market would have segmented

Health minister Mary Harney on the government's decision to sell the state health insurer VHI

The message is clear from this operation. There is no hiding place in the sun or in foreign climes for anybody who wreaks misery and hurt on communities here in Ireland and abroad

Garda commissioner Fachtna Murphy responds to an internationally coordinated police operation against drug gangs, which led to the arrest of nine Irish people in Spain

I always felt we were going to qualify, but the way Ireland's luck has been going in the past few years you tend to be braced for disappointment

Niall Mooney, co-writer of Ireland's entry into the Eurovision Song Contest, after singer Niamh Kavanagh's performance landed Ireland's first appearance in the final for four years

Confusion is the order of the day – both within government and within the HSE – as has been described by members of your own Oireachtas party. It is now a dysfunctional Frankenstein

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny on the HSE

It begs the questions, who governs this country? The government or the HSE? The Taoiseach Brian Cowen, or Brendan Drumm? I am calling for an end to this monstrous bureaucratic experiment called the HSE

Independent TD for Wicklow Joe Behan on the deaths of children who died in HSE care

He [Taoiseach Jack Lynch] must come to realise that the only prospect of Irish unity lies in the seduction, not the rape of the North. The south will, I suspect, be a long-time a-wooing, if they ever start: the Irish tend to marry late, I believe

Top British diplomat Oliver Wright in a March 1970 letter to British home secretary James Callaghan, that was released last week

Where I was wrong was in believing that the oil companies had their act together

President Barack Obama on the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which had still not been resolved by last week