Jonty Brown, one of the most senior CID (Criminal Investigations Department) detectives in the RUC until his retirement in 2001, is expecting his former police colleagues to smash in his front door this week.

The Government's new €34.4bn transport plan is visionary, but the public won't be holding its breath, given the number of such projects that have failed to materialise. By Eoin Ó Murchú

St Vincent de Paul make over 300,000 visits every year to people in need. They spent over €31m in 2003 fighting poverty. Calls for assistance to their national office are up by 300 per cent. The St Vincent de Paul are calling on the Government to share Ireland's economic success more equally by using the 2005 budget as the opportunity to break the cycle of disadvantage across the population, including older people and children.

One of Ireland's Nobel Peace Prize-winners has said the Government should be on trial over its role in the Iraq war, rather than the five activists currently on trial for damaging a US plane at Shannon.

Labour's spokesperson on Social and Family Affairs, Willie Penrose, says his party will "significantly increase the rates of social welfare payments", if they are in Government after the next election. In his policy document, to be published in the next fortnight, he also proposes a new child benefit supplement and the abolition of means testing as part of "10 steps to tackling poverty". He says that Labour in government would reverse the "savage 16" cutbacks made in the 2003 budget.

Hidden History told how a woman was burned to death for witchcraft in 1895. Present-day practices still terrify Dermot Bolger, namely the revamping of ordinary people's house in Desperate Houses and the so-called sport of International Rules

Aircraft used by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the transfer of "terrorist" suspects did not seek authorisation from the Irish government for landings at Shannon airport.

While it was the 'Molloy factor' that got Noel Grealish into national politics, he's hoping that the 'Grealish factor' will keep him there. As a Government backbencher, much of his time is spent working on local issues. By Mary Regan

A lonely Daire O'Brien talks sport; Mary T O'Connor gets a hard time for her exposé
of bad behaviour in the Garda; Frame Two looks at the brutal reign of Ceausescu
and An Bathadh Mór reminds us of a hurricane in the west of Ireland in 1927

Martin McDonagh's play is rich in comedy and Tarantino-like violence, as funny as it is repulsive – but it's still thin drama, writes Colin Murphy of The Lonesome West