SO much was spent on Mayo mania during the MayoMeath GAA saga that Mayo is "drained of cash" and suffering a "big slump in business", the Western People said. Shops and supermarkets are suffering most after Mayo supporters poured an estimated £2 million into Dublin.

They're still drinking though. Winter closing times, summer closing times, Sunday hours, Christmas closings - what's all the fuss about? Surely everybody knows by now that "closing time is a myth", said the Connaught Telegraph. Appealing for the authorities to call time on closing time, it said "those in the `know' will get a drink...

"Putting it in perspective with all the vicious crime and drug related incidents that are the norm today, it could only be described as trivial."

But the Connaught Telegraph seemed to contradict its own editorial with a front page report about a new campaign by residents in Castlebar to put an end to late night drink related disturbances. (Anyone wanting to join the campaign can meet in McCarthy's pub on Wednesday night.)

The Telegraph's rival, the Western People, supported the Castlebar campaign in its editorial, stating that "late night disturbances are manifest in rowdyism, vandalism and general disorder (and) are becoming more and more of a regular occurrence in our major towns, particularly Ballina, Castlebar and Westport. People out late at night, many of them suffering from the abuse of drink, seem to think they have a right to cause all kinds of mayhem."

New Ross UDC is considering establishing a drink free zone in the town, the New Ross Standard reported. If it does, it will be following Newcastle, Co Down and "certain parts of Cork", according to Sinead Cashin, the Fianna Fail councillor who proposed the by law.

Meanwhile, on the front page of the Connacht Tribune, a Circuit Court judge promised to "close down the joints serving drink after hours or to teenagers under the legal drinking age". Judge Harvey Kenny said in Loughrea Circuit Court that the serving of drink after hours was "one of the primary causes of late nightrows which occurred outside pubs and discos."

He made the remarks after hearing appeals from a number of young people who had been convicted in the District Court following a number of disturbances in the town earlier this In one case, "he heard how a 17 year old girl had been served drink in a pub and went on to follow another woman into the toilets of a nearby fast food outlet where another assault took place.

"Judge Kenny told the girl she was not a suitable person to be in a licensed premises and increased a three month prison sentence imposed on her to 12 months, before suspending it after he was told that she had a young child to look after," the newspaper said.

"The people of Loughrea are entitled to go out at night without meeting the likes of you," he told the girl.

The Sligo Champion said the "callous and cowardly" IRA bombing of Thiepval barracks was "the most calculated provocation, designed to bring this country, north and south, to the brink of an unimaginable nightmare. Against this horrifying background, where stand Mr Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein?"

The Derry Journal had more such questions. Chiefly, it wondered whether the IRA claim that the bombing was not intended to be provocative was "serious or cynical?"

Why could Sinn Fein provide not a single spokesperson to the television "inquests" on Thiepval? Has the IRA, "who bombed as a continuation of the belief that the British army and the British establishment can be bombed out of Northern Ireland, sueceeded only in virtually bombing Sinn Fein out of politics?" And will David Trimble's call for stronger security measures see "Catholic areas clobbered by a massive use of force"?

The question most editorials were asking was simply this: "What hope is there?"

The Fermanagh Herald saw none unless people turned to God rather than politics. "The shortening days of this autumn are the portents of a bleak winter for all those people who recovered their sense of human dignity in the respite that peace brought. ... There is nothing but worse things to look forward to. If there is any lesson to be drawn from what has happened over the past year, it is that pence must be founded on principle, not on deals and compromises that fudge issues of principle.

"The values of an achiever society and of economic progress are not enough, especially when large numbers of people in deprived areas are left behind.

"The North needs to find a public will to peace in God's name by resolving its political differences, not burying them in the shallow sands of hedonism and moral indifference."