EVERY SATURDAY MORNING we take a look at all the best comments left on the site by our readers over the past seven days.

This week there was a lot of talk about the St Patrick’s Day violence, fatal foetal abnormalities, Ukraine and holidaying in Ireland.

So here are the standout comments from the week that was.

The 5 most popular comments this week

1. Following reports on Monday that John Gilligan fled the country after the death of a close associate, Darragh Donnelly got 2,898 green thumbs for this:

So it is true, St Patrick did run the snakes out of Ireland !

2. A total of 2,426 readers agreed with Gary Keegan when he suggested a different punishment – rather than jail time – for two men accused of assaulting a man on St Patrick’s Day.

William is right, hard labour is what’s needed not a cushy over night in the joy. A nice pink jump suit and community service. Clean the streets, clean off graffiti, clean out canals and river banks. Make them work off their crimes.

3. A hilarious anecdote from Martin McNally received 2,410 nods following a DailyEdge.ie article about a German man’s diary of his trip to Ireland in 1591.

To quote a German tourist on a boat on the Shannon a few years ago…

My mate: “How’s your holiday?”

Him: “It’s like standing in a cold shower in your good clothes, ripping up 50 euro notes!”

4. We were jubilant on Sunday about the Six Nations championship, sealed by Joe Schmidt’s boys in Paris a day earlier. 2,180 of you agreed with Nick Hill’s suggestion.

They should be leading the parade tomorrow with that trophy. Legends

5. Finally, Gizmo Mac got 1,788 green thumbs for a personal share on a story about a gym asking a lady to cover up her toned body. He said:

Same thing happened to me but it’s because I was too fat

The top 5 articles which received the most comments this week

1. Gardaí have identified those involved in St Patrick’s Day violence video (309 comments)

2. Irish laws ‘forcing us to go to Manchester for a termination this weekend’ (306 comments)

3. Poll: Should Europe accept that Crimea wants to rejoin Russia? (288 comments)

4. Crimea officially asks to rejoin Russia in Cold War-style stand-off (233 comments)

5. US and Russia impose sanctions on each other over the crisis in Crimea (191 comments)

Some of the best comments left on the site this week

Shane MacThomais surveying his beloved Glasnevin Cemetery in 2010. (Image: Niall Carson/PA Images archive.)

Tragic news yesterday as the death of Glasnevin Cemetery historian Shane MacThomais was announced. Sean Mac Gabhann left this touching comment:

The Chinese have a saying about this kind of person. When someone like this dies a library has been burnt down. RIP.

On Tuesday, TheJournal.ie spoke to a couple who were readying themselves for the devastating trip to England to terminate their unviable pregnancy. Bravely, Michelle Meehan shared her experience of receiving a fatal diagnosis of her unborn baby.

On the 4th of feb 2013 my partner and I was sadly in the same situation. Our baby had a condition called anencephaly where the top of the head hasn’t formed properly. Our little boy was born 31st July 2014 at 42 weeks and lived for 9.5 hours. Even though we choose to carry I still think that we should have had the option for having a termination in our own country. It is hard thing to handle at any age we where 28 both when we found out. My best wishes to the young couple in this situation I truly do understand what ur going through X

Rachel O’Meara was able to see two sides of the debate on who is the worse off – the caller or the call centre worker. She says:

I’ve been on both sides and sometimes it’s not easy! When I was working in a callcentre a few years ago I got a particularly abusive call in the first 30 seconds I was called a b*tch, a w*nker and a c*unt I was about to hang up after telling the caller about the three strike swearing policy the company had in relation to callers and this guy started shouting t*tw*nk over and over, as my finger hovered over the hang up button I realised he only started to get worked up when I told him he wasn’t allowed to swear, I had a look at the notes on his previous calls and every call read “customer very abusive had to hang up” so I asked was there a reason he felt the need to swear and he said yes I have turrets! The call took twenty minutes to get through (mostly because of the swearing) and killed my stats for the day but I didn’t care I helped him and solved his issue and he ended the call nearly crying with “thank you for not hanging up I’ve been trying to resolve this for weeks but because of my ticks people keep hanging up, I really appreciate it!” after that I didn’t give a fiddlers about stats anymore and concentrated on actually helping people sort their issues, my supervisor wasn’t happy but I pointed out that without customers we wouldn’t have jobs and that shut him up for awhile!

On another piece about how we can detect almost a trillion more smells than previously thought, Jack Bowden reminded us of the importance of the sense. He lost his sense of smell in a road traffic accident after fracturing his skull.

I lost my sense of smell 2 and half years ago and the world seems so so different to me. Sometimes, I’m starting to get phantom smells and strange chemical smells that don’t exist. Strange smells when I feel emotions. The sweet smell of success is not just a saying, I get a sweet smell when I feel I’ve achieved something. It’s mad. I really miss my sense of smell. Life seems a bit boring without it.

Joe Conway spotted a wee typo on the DailyEdge.ie‘s piece about AirBnB’s cool new Irish pad. Luckily, Emer took it very well.

Remember the priest who talked two armed robbers out of taking items from his home? He’s also really ahead of his time – as Helena Marie Ryan-Hasler explains on a story about live-streaming funerals.

My grandad died 9 years ago and the priest had the webcam on 12 months later for my nans funeral, we had family who couldn’t travel home. My aunt and her boys watched it together. So it’s nothing new, maybe we just had a very tech savvy priest it was the one who talked the burglar out of robbing him the other week.

Following an announcement by Duolingo that it would offer its translation service in Irish, two commenters got into a bit of a debate about the romance of English versus Irish. Dennis Collins intervened with:

I reckon you have a much better chance wooing someone on your holidays with a few sentences of Irish and a cheeky Celtic smile, rather than rattling off a Shakespearean sonnet.

He’s probably not wrong.

It turns out that Louth people are Ireland’s most prolific tweeters. Damien Kierans sheds the light on why.

Tweets hide our looooouuth accent. Hi.

Finally, the DailyEdge.ie wrote about how flying with Ryanair was a national experience – and you proved that true in the comment section underneath. I think we can all empathise with Jane Byrne:

I get so paranoid over the size of my hand luggage that I may as well be carrying a bag full of drugs.

And Mick O’Donoghue‘s first line makes us think we all went to some secret flight school.

Living stateside now I get nostalgic for trained Ryanair passengers. On Ryanair you tend to get passengers who know not to bring 20 items of hand luggage and bags too big for overhead compartments. It doesn’t take an hour to get seated cause a bunch of idiots are spending all day packing away shite in the overheads! Also… I loved the idea of finding a crazy cheap flight to a destination I’ve never been and just taking a random few days in a random country. I am a Ryanair advocate :)

Spot any good comments? Send them through to us by email at sinead@thejournal.ie.