Venorica O'Doherty wonders who will care for the carers.

Morality, like art, means drawing a line someplace. Oscar Wilde (1854 – 1900).

When cynicism becomes the norm in a workplace you know there is a problem unfolding before your eyes. In health care workers from all sectors in hospitals, in primary care and voluntary bodies and across all the health professions I see signs of serious stress and sometimes outright burn out.

Stress is the silent epidemic in our health care system that is being ignored. When good people lose the love and motivation for the job they trained for many years to do it should be a major concern for all of us in society.

Minister for Children needs to roll up her sleeves and fight for the needs of children, writes Evin Daly.

In a country of four and a half million there are few resources available for abused or Irish children in need. So said the Minister for Children today.

The Minister for Children, Frances Fitzgerald, managed to squeeze herself into the limelight yet again by attending the publishing of One in Four’s Annual Report. Why it was Fitzgerald who attended, as opposed to the Minister for Health or Justice, remains a mystery.

Minister Fitzgerald, in addition to getting a large photograph in the paper, added her two cents to the event – a two cents which amounted to little. She made no commitments, announced no new programmes, made no offer of funding and vaguely made mention of what we already know: much is needed for children and there is nothing available for them.

Empowering citizens, and recognising the right of the people to be the decision makers in the State is the only political objective worth pursuing, writes Diarmaid Ó Cadhla.

The news this past week has been grim: the crisis is deepening. We have ever increasing numbers unemployed, continuing emigration, more families facing mortgage crisis and more cutbacks in essential services. These problems in our society are causing untold destruction to the lives of individuals, families and whole communities. The domestic economy continues to contract and our future prospects are grim indeed. They say it’s about ‘balance’, ‘fairness’ and keeping within budgets. Government and opposition in Dáil Éireann are debating the ‘fairness’ of different cuts, discussing the situation in the same old Punch & Judy way; acting out a show.

We should not resign ourselves to the idea that those responsible for our national economic meltdown will not be held to account for their actions, writes Paul McElhinney.

There was a time when Irish people would have simply shrugged in resignation at the lack of progress in holding members of society’s elite to account for their transgressions.  “Ah sure, that’s the system: the little people always pick up the tab - the rich and well-heeled always get away with blue murder,” would have been the resigned refrain. If the Celtic Tiger period left anything positive in its wake, it is an attitude of greater self-confidence among people, now able to see the feet of clay of those in authority and less afraid of speaking truth to power. While this is undeniably true, what difference has it made?

In the North at present there are infrequent attacks by at least three armed Irish Republican insurgent guerrilla 'armies'. 'Dissident' Republicans were responsible for the April 2011 bomb attack in Killyclogher, near Omagh, which killed PSNI member, Ronan Kerr; the Antrim fatal shooting attacks at Massereene Barracks in 2009; a fatal shooting attack in North Armagh, and the Omagh bombing of 1999.

A sign hangs from the gates of Leinster House this week: "gone on holidays" it reads, and it's signed by our entire elected political establishment. As you walk the now silent halls of the Dáil you notice the signs of the hurried summer departure, like schoolchildren at the end of term - hallways empty, offices vacated. All of our newly elected officials, who promised us the world if elected, are gone. Surprised? You shouldn't be. Our apathy let them go.

Ian Palmer's film Knuckles presents Travellers in a prurient and stereotyped way, writes Rosaleen McDonagh.

The film Knuckles both frightened and disturbed me. It confirmed all my fears about voyeurism and creating entertainment from people living on the margins.

The power of the outside gaze in the case of 'Knuckles', directed by Ian Palmer, cannot be underestimated. The atmospheric phrases like 'the secret world of Travellers' had that tiresome drone of here-we-go-again: the mad, poor, would-be-dangerous-if-not stupid, archaic and savage Travellers. It used to be that this form of stereotyping was how the colonisers viewed the pig-in-the-parlour Irish: now it's the Travellers who are the 'strange other' within Irish culture.

Yesterday (26 July), singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse was laid to rest in her native London. For years, the public watched the troubled star battle with severe drug and alcohol addiction. Surprisingly, before her rise to stardom in the mid noughties, not only was Amy not a drug user, but she was avidly anti-drugs.

The story of the girl’s life changed and personal factors and relationships combined to send her down a slippery slope to drug addiction. Since then, it seems that for many people, even her own mother, Amy’s eventual demise was only a matter of time.

The loss of a much loved, well respected star to drug addiction, and all the attention given to it, is an opportunity for us to look at the way in which we deal with addiction in this country.