There was mixed news from the Minister for Education recently about local schools for Luttrellstown and Tyrellstown. While preparations for the provision of two long-promised primary school buildings in Tyrellstown are progressing, plans for a permanent building for Luttrelstown Community College appear to have stalled.

The disclosure that the taxpayer is facing an additional potential bill of €11.5bn for bailing out Anglo Irish, in addition to the €22bn already committed, will come as a further shock to citizens who are already staggering under the weight of the financial millstone placed around their necks by the government’s rescue package for banks and developers.

Joan Burton TD welcomes the opening of the next phase of the M50 N3 upgrade.

Regular users of the N3 Navan Road have become accustomed to the road works that have been part of the M50 and Auburn Ave upgrade over the last two years will be delighted to hear

The publication this evening of the Nama business plan indicates that in the nine months since the draft business plan was published, the people in Nama have revised their estimate of Nama making a profit over its life of €4.8bn to a worse case scenario of losses of €0.8bn a turnaround in nine months of over €5bn. Clearly the first Nama draft plan was a fantasy. It is difficult to seriously believe the revised plan except in so far that it means more pain and no gain for Irish taxpayers.

Fianna Fáil has opted for a flood of bank inquiries, to distract attention from the fact that every single one of them is being carefully constructed to ignore the role played by Fianna Fáil Taoisigh and Ministers in Ireland’s banking collapse.

What Minister Brian Lenihan now proposes is no less than three separate inquiries: a sworn commission of investigation; a report from the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance; and an ‘external review’ of the Department of Finance.

During the Order of Business in the Dáil this week, Joan again raised the issue with Taoiseach Brian Cownen about the lack of any urgency been shown by the Government in bringing legislation on the regulation of Management Companies before the House.

Joan submitted at the committee stage of the Central Bank Reform Bill 2010 an amendment which would have seen the proposed Section 35 A & B deleted and replaced with an amendment which would have provided specifically that the Central Bank would be in a position to facilitate the voluntary merger of credit unions in the State in the interests of improving financial stability and management of the credit union sector.

460 more people signed on for the dole at the Blanchardstown Social Welfare office in June than in May 2010.

This staggering monthly spike, which equates to 22 people every working day for the month of June, can only be partly explained by season factors like the end of term for students and temporary employees in the education sector.

Speaking in the Dáil last night on a special adjornment debate, Deputy Joan Burton highlighted the plight of Mary Mother of Hope Senior National School in Dublin 15 which will have only one English language support teacher for its 400 pupils from next September, compared to the three teachers it had for the 300 pupils it had only two years ago.

Despite government bluster, it is clear from the latest live register and GNP figures, published today, that the real recession is far from over.