This Week They Said

This morning Robert doesn't need our prayers any more because we believe he is safely in the hands of God

This morning Robert doesn't need our prayers any more because we believe he is safely in the hands of God.
- Father Billy O'Donovan at a service for Robert Holohan, after the 11-year-old's body was discovered in east Cork

The country was where Robert lived, where children can ride their bicycles, run freely and be exuberant like children are allowed to be. That has changed.

- A neighbour of the Holohan family tries to come to terms with the murder

I felt like we'd find weapons of mass destruction - like many here in the US and many around the world.

READ MORE

- President Bush, after Charles Duelfer, his chief weapons inspector, concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime had no plans for WMD

Sinn Féin and the IRA are two sides of one coin . . . They have hijacked history. They have put a gun to the head of hope.

- The Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell

If the Taoiseach wanted to meet me he would meet me. If the Taoiseach wanted to make a call to me, he would make a call to me.

- Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams says his phone calls to the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, are going unanswered

This was a shameful act displaying insensitivity for the victims, not just for those soldiers of his own country who gave their lives to defeat Nazism but to the victims of the Holocaust.

- Rabbi Marvin Hier on photographs of Prince Harry wearing a Nazi uniform at a fancy dress party

Unfortunately our press officer was absent from the briefing and was actually on his way in as other people, including myself, were leaving to go to the "scene".

- Bus Éireann managing director, Bill Lilley, after a simulated bus crash is reported to the media as fact

It's a blot on the history of Ireland, but blots have to see the public light.

- Shimon Samuels, director for international affairs at the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Paris, says the vandalised statue of IRA leader Seán Russell should be left unrestored as a reminder of Ireland's neutrality during the second World War. Russell spent some time in Germany during the conflict and died aboard a U-boat in 1940

There can never be any excuse for the demonisation of any religion or its followers. I hope bridges can be built, but whether this prodigal daughter can ever return home remains to be seen.

- Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti, whose play, Behzti, was closed by the Birmingham Repertory after the theatre was stormed by Sikhs

I thank God. The tsunami took me away and then brought me back. If you think about it carefully, not only did it almost kill me, it also saved my life.

- Cassim Fahim, a shop-owner from the Maldives, who was swept out to sea by the first wave, and back to shore by the second

The only way to describe some of the villages is extinct.

- Scott Cohick, a helicopter pilot for the US military aid operation in Aceh