Minister for Communications, Energy and natural resources Alex White, legal editor of the Irish Independent Dearbhail McDonald and Sunday Times columnist Cormac Lucey joined Shane Coleman on the Sunday Show to look through the stories making headlines this weekend.
Nine days on from the attacks in Paris, the story still dominates the coverage, and the issue of the threat posed to Ireland was discussed by the panel after Conor Brady in The Sunday Times stated that while there have been reassurances from members of the government that everything is OK, we have no way of knowing if that is the case.
Having visited Paris in the wake of the attacks, Minister Alex White stated that the threat from ISIS does concern him as "you just can't protect every building and every place and every street, the complexity of this is obvious [...] it's an uncertain world now in all of our cities, in all of our countries; I think it's going to be with us for quite some time".
Dearbhail McDonald added to that, stating that even though Ireland is a neutral country and people believe we have nothing to worry about as a result, "if you look at the threat of ISIL, the threshold for their attacks is so low, you can be bombed or attacked just on the basis of perceived decadence".
Cormac Lucey highlighted that the coverage of the attacks in Paris to date has been focused on a security response and has been "overlooking the fact that there is clearly a measure of political support for what ISIL does even though it's a death cult, it is nihilistic, it is horrible. We need not just to address the symptoms of what ISIL represents in terms of its attacks, but we also need to think hard about what is causing this".
The Sunday Times leads with the story that the Banking Inquiry is doomed to fail. Speaking about the fact that the draft report that has been presented to date is 750 pages long, Lucey said that "strikes me as intellectual incontinence and an incapacity to be clearer in your thinking [...] and express yourself clearly", adding that it highlights a poor approach to the topic as a whole.
The Sunday Independent covers James Reilly calling for the repeal of the eighth amendment.
While many people have argued that simply repealing it is not enough and it would need to be replaced, White highlighted that "if the eighth amendment was repealed next week, we wouldn't be left in a vacuum, we would have the most draconian abortion law in the developed world. Don't forget, the 1861 act was essentially repeated in the law we brought in two years ago".
McDonald also added that "what the same sex marriage referendum showed is that you can trust the public to have difficult conversations".
You can listen to the full paper review below:
