The Irish are "flaunting a new, more impersonal prosperity" at the risk of driving visitors away, warned the Mayo News, which wants us all to learn to "smile for Ireland". "The quality and the warmth of the Irish welcome is not as it once was. The attitude to visitors in shops, pubs and other businesses can at best be described nowadays as brusque and matter of fact, at worst being surly and rude," it stated.
Smiling for Ireland will be the task of 60 Russians, who are being recruited by a Wicklow employment agency to work for 10 Wicklow hotels. Russian chefs, receptionists, waiters and bar people will be able to work in the Republic for one year, then go home with the equivalent of nine years' salary, stated the Wicklow People.
Emma Stone, of Jackson Stone, said that the Russians "will not be exploited and they are not being brought into the county because they are cheaper than Wicklow workers but because of a chronic shortage of hotel staff."
There was scant comfort for the Minister for Finance in the provincial newspapers. "Charlie finds support at home," declared the Leinster Leader. "Budget over-criticised" stated the Munster Express. "The Budget will be positive for the economy, but we feel that a lot of the criticism will be directed for political reasons and to undermine the forthcoming pay talks. The opposition are over-hyping it."
However, the Western People remarked that "in his headlong rush to play Santa Claus, the Minister for Finance walked on the biggest banana skin he has probably ever encountered in public life." It warned of dire consequences as a result of individualisation of tax allowances.
"There can be hardly any doubt that we as a society are disadvantaged to some considerable extent by the continuing loss of the stay-at-home mother as the central figure. There is a price to pay for that . . . and family and society pay one way or another," it declared.
Amidst the uproar over the Budget, history hardly got a look in. "Perhaps the most extraordinary thing that has been notable about the changes which have taken place on this island in the past week, and the change of relationship with our neighbouring island, has been how ordinary it all seemed. It was all so matter-of-fact on the television as a new power-sharing Executive was set up in part of this island which has been rent as a society by almost an unending state of near-war for a generation," stated the Connacht Tribune. It warned, however, that "we must not delude ourselves that sectarianism and tribalism just go away."
A student once destined to become King of Burundi told the Westmeath Independent: "If there is racism here, I haven't found it in Athlone." Sebastian Harushimana escaped death with the help of Catholic priests. He has been "adopted" by the Athlone Institute of Technology as he waits anxiously to hear if his parents are still alive in a refugee camp that was attacked by the Tutsi military earlier this month.
Sebastian shares a house with Father Shay Casey and four other students.
Alongside a picture of an enormous cruciferous vegetable on the Longford Leader's front page was the headline: "Pheasant droppings fuel giant cabbage!" Michael Kelly, from Clondra, started the cabbage from seed 15 months ago and it now measures five feet, five inches.