Revenue is right

■ A-32-YEAR-OLD man whose case was rejected by the Tax Appeals Commission claimed that €477,000 gifted to him by his parents included his Communion and Confirmation money and was therefore tax free. I think I’d have to side with the Revenue: not only did my own son burn through all his Communion and Confirmation money on two frantic afternoons in Smyth’s, but any parent who managed to hide their children’s special day haul for that long would surely keep schtum about it, even as they punched the air all the way to the bank.

■ REPORTS at the weekend claimed that the military unrest in the Red Sea is likely to lead to shortages of coffee and flat-pack furniture in Ireland. I’d imagine we’ll survive: anyone who has successfully produced a three-dimensional piece of furniture from a two-dimensional box surely deserves more than a cup of coffee.

■ THE decision by Dublin City Council to close off Harbour Court, the laneway running down the side of the National Theatre that has become a magnet for antisocial behaviour, reminds me of an actor friend whose commute to work saw him run the bracing gamut of addicts demanding cash nightly on his way to the stage door, and who accordingly christened the lane’s threatening denizens ‘Friends of the Abbey’.

■ WHILE I defer to nobody in my love for both SuperValu and the GAA, the renaming of sporting stadia in order to clinch commercial funding has never sat easy with me. So on the basis that I still enjoy matches in Lansdowne Road, I won’t be shifting from calling it Páirc Uí Chaoimh – and just to pre-empt any similar move in GAA HQ, I won’t be going to Mr Price Stadium for an All-Ireland final any time soon.