Do you believe in God?
“Is the Pope an ex-Hitler Youth member?” 

There were two great interviews – both with Bertie Ahern as it happens – done on the broadcast media during the election campaign and the immediate aftermath. One was conducted by Matt Cooper on The Last Word on Today FM. Matt Cooper is now maybe the best of current affairs radio broadcasters. He is articulate, coherent, fluent and oh-so informed. He took Bertie briskly through the issues, always with sufficient back up knowledge to challenge Bertie when the latter went into his detail mode, laced with incoherence.

Ex-Supreme Court judge Sean O'Leary's posthumous op-ed in the Irish Times last year criticised the judiciary for pandering to a populist sense of justice. Donncha O'Connell examines the veracity of his claims and asks why the Supreme Court stays silent in the face of media and public criticism

Favourite book:
Catch 22 - I read it when I was about 11, so I'm sure most of it flew straight over my head, but the sense of humour was a huge influence.

A republican Sinn Fein commemoration has been told that Adams and McGuinness were never republicans in the first place as they have settled for “equality of status” rather than the Wolfe Tone ideal of breaking the connection with England.

A car safety device, proven to save lives and widely available in Europe, is not being fitted as standard in cars for the Irish market or promoted by the Road Safety Authority or the government. Patrick Boyle investigates

Jesus of Nazareth, a new book on Jesus by the Pope, written in his personal capacity, has just been published in Italy. Benedict writes on how the message of Jesus was radically mediated by “Hellinisation” – the infusion of the message by Greek philosophy. By John Allen

Through his conversations with Patrick Kavanagh, Donegal weaver Charles McGlinchy gives us a glimpse of a forgotten Ireland when superstition ruled, the land was everything, and life was fuelled by words and stories. By Edward O'Hare

It takes a mind as devious as a master criminal to write an original crime novel, says Edward O'Hare. Irish novelist Declan Burke shows cunning, humour and skill in his second novel, The Big O

Another Tolkien work discovered as Vonnegut dies and Wagner returns