IT IS EASY to understand why Fitzwilton should have attracted more attention than any of its imitators in Ireland. In the shell company pheenomenon in this country, Fitzwilton was by far the biggest. Its empire became so far-flung that the company is known well beyond these shores and, of course, it had the benefit of the golden aura of Tony O'Reilly to crown it all. But not that far behind Fitzwilton is another company, whose origin, structure and history is so similar as to make it almost an identiical twin. By James Prufrock

A new survey on male sexuality shows that men want sex more than once a day, still want to marry virgins, are prone to cheat, prefer sexually active women and react with disbelief on hearing of their wife's infedility.

As republican and loyalist violence diminishes in Northern Ireland, there is yet no hope of a political solution, writes Kevin Myers.

Janet Martin reports how women suffer strangulation attempts and attacks with razors, knives, broken bottles and clenched fists and how children in Irish homes suffer battering and sexual assaults.

The following are extracts from an interview with Garret FitzGerald on some of the key issues in Irish politics.

A French Member of Parliament visiting Ireland last year stated that Garret FitzGerald was the most formidable public figure in Europe. Certainly he is preeminent in Ireland where his enormous intellectual and administrative abilities are unmatched anywhere on the political scene. By Vincent Browne

NINE YEARS AGO, the National Council for the Apostolate of the Laity was set up by the Irish Hierrarchy in accordance with the wishes of Vatican II. The Council was to redefine the role of the laity within the Church, giving the flock genuine, not merely connsultative, power.

PORTMARNOCK Golf Club's executive has just passed through the traumatic exxperience of an election (almost unprecedented) to fill commmittee posts, although the same faces appear again on the Committee. It was not too democratic an experience as the club, built on the land of more than one hundred evicted fishermen at the turn of the century, has no women members Women cannot become members of Portmarnock. They cannot even enter the bar as guests of a member. Invited women can play on the fabled links on one week-day, but they must step aside and let members play past them if asked to do so.

IT IS ALMOST five years now since Dr Dermot Ryan, newly installed as Archbishop of Dublin, decided that housing the homeless would be his primary social concern.

Liam Cosgrave was the major casualty of 1977, having begun the year, as he began the election campaign, believing that he was invincible. The coalition failed to commission opinion polls to determine the state of public opinion before the election and when their first polls became available a few days after the campaign was begun, several ministers took themselves back to their constituencies to save their own hides. Cosgrave, however, either didn't believe the polls or didn't understand their significance and, right up to the election count, remained convinced that he was invulnerable.