TWO stories of major but diverse significance made repeated appearances in these pages throughout 2024, as they had done the previous year, both doing so for the first time on the same page in the issue of Saturday, January 20th.

Under the headline ‘Passport backlogs an ongoing concern’, Lesley Hunter-Nolan wrote ‘The issue of passport delays returned to the Oireachtas agenda recently with both Paul Kehoe TD and Michael Fitzmaurice TD raising questions on the matter.’