This week they said

What they said around the world this week

When I was growing up in Portugal under dictatorship, what is now the European Union represented many of the things that the young aspire to: peace, freedom, economic and social progress, and the idea that working together across borders is possible. - The president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, urges a Yes vote in the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

Blaming a technical error in their booking system is not good enough. Aer Lingus formed a contract with the consumer at the stated fare and cannot simply walk away from its obligations. - Ann Fitzgerald, chief executive of the National Consumer Agency, says Aer Lingus is in breach of contract by refusing to honour bookings for flights to the US it mistakenly sold for €5.

Any tendency to treat religion as a private matter must be resisted. - Pope Benedict XVI, who is visiting the US.

Thank you, Your Holiness, awesome speech. - US president George Bush.

I didn't want paparazzi at the hospital. - Sex and the City star Cynthia Nixon explains why she wanted her recent battle with breast cancer to remain a private matter.

Every house in Sadr City probably has one of their sons in the Mahdi army. So it is hard to convince people to believe in the Iraqi army. - Maj Sattar, the commander of an Iraqi army company who abandoned their posts in Sadr City while American soldiers were engaging Shia militias.

It's a reference book . . . If I was writing a reference book to Shakespeare, I wouldn't list Shakespeare. - Steve Vander Ark, who is being taken to court by JK Rowling for publishing an unofficial Harry Potter encyclopaedia - in which he fails to credit Rowling as Potter's creator.

Just tell everybody not to worry. - Du Shaozhong, deputy director of Beijing's Environmental Protection Bureau, assures the world that pollution in the city will be under control in time for the Olympics.

The months and years ahead will be difficult and I am preparing a government ready to last five years. - Silvio Berlusconi, again elected Italian prime minister.

© 2008 The Irish Times

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times