The Sindo reported yesterday that Congress has warned that Dublin airport could face "serious industrial relations difficulties" if lower landing charges proposed by the aviation regulator go through.

At the MacGill Summer School in Glenties, Co Donegal, the Taoiseach expressed irritability with those predicting an imminent economic crash, though he concedes there are echoes of the Celtic Tiger around. The last time a Taoiseach criticised the merchants of doom in Donegal...oh never mind.

On the issue of the spending habits of the current government, the Sunday Business Post led yesterday with news that it spent €58m on external consultants in five years (story continues here). The secretary general of DPER, Robert Watt, has questioned the independence of private consultants, and has called for officials to be given a greater role in delivering major infrastructure projects.

Elsewhere in the same paper it was reported that Ireland has forged a new social and economic partnership with Germany.

Writer Kevin Barry (who's been longlisted for this year's Booker prize), meanwhile, sounds an alert that the housing crisis is the cause of a cultural brain drain from Dublin and other Irish cities as artists are squeezed out.

Elsewhere, the Sundays dissected and examined Brexit for the millionth time, this time through a Boris filter and the increasing likelihood of a No Deal departure on 31st October and the fallout from same.

For your Zen this morning I present a track from Kate Tempest's latest album The Book of Traps and Lessons. I'm a huge fan (already have my tickets for her Vicar St show in November) and, despite what people say about Stormzy, I still think Tempest laps him on lyrical analysis of the state of their nation. The new album (produced by the legendary Rick Rubin) continues to chart Britain's very public nervous breakdown, but it's also an album about falling (hard) in love. Visceral, tender, moving, she tells it like it is.

This is the closing tune on the album, the lovely Peoples Faces. My world improves a little on every listen.

Have a good month, I'll be back to digest duties in September.

Niall