It has been a hairshirt week for Leinster, a time to pause.

Or they could don the hairshirt and aim to sharply slow spending.

If I was a Flagellant now, I would don hairshirt and up flail.

She cannot even give us the pleasure of the hairshirt.

Chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne's hairshirt Brexit budget has not appeared for one thing.

It was hairshirt stuff - was it the shape of things to come next week?

It was a time of deep recession in Ireland and a tough hairshirt budget was in the offing.

We are in the hairshirt era.

But the hairshirt makes a body itch with the kind of prickling irritation that can drive you mad.

These were hairshirt' years, yet the Government of the day tackled the need for housing in the 1920s with imagination.

Again, both leaders were well-prepared but Haughey scored points in attacking the cuts being proposed in a hairshirt Fine Gael budget.

Take the cape and burn it, too, or sew it into a hairshirt and wear it under your fancy ball gowns.

But in what might be called an episode of hairshirt politics, Labor is attacking the Prime Minister for being able to afford expensive suits.

The gold florin, with the Florentine lily on one side and John the Baptist wearing a hairshirt on the other, became the coin of Europe.

There have also been a fair share of austere hairshirt budgets that happened during the recessions of the 1970s, 1980s and the 2010s.

In these days of hairshirts and tightened belts who can afford frivolous extras like research or originality?