Culture, religion, language, welfare, sexuality and politics – the perfect ingredients for controversy, Irish-style. Catríona Crowe looks at a new book that focuses on five famous controversies at the birth of the State

Getting up early these mornings now that the builders are in. Have to take refuge in TV3's Ireland AM for company. Hangover television and if you haven't one, they make you feel as if you do. On Monday morning they were advertising a holiday competition and the question was: Killarney is based in which Irish county? Don't you just love it? Like Killarney was a movable feast of a multinational and the Kerry people might wake up one morning and it would be gone, lakes, Muckross and all, to Indonesia.

With a grim inevitability the statistics on road fatalities are rising again this year. After a brief honeymoon period ushered in by the penalty points system we have reverted to our appalling driving habits, our rudeness and our total disregard for all other road users.

He studied to be a priest, was kicked out of the Labour party for being too left-wing, and spent a month in Mountjoy jail. Ruairí McCann and Colin Murphy profile Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins

Colin Murphy sits in John Mortimer's study for a morning of white wine, witticisms and reflections on life and on writing

By the time you read this column I will be sunning myself on a Mediterranean island with my thoughts a billion light years away from the vagaries of Irish political life and social policy. I have done more than stick firmly to my 2005 resolution to implement a new work/life balance, I have excelled at it. I may even consider giving training workshops on the subject, but then again that would be too much like work and might tip the delicate but beautiful pivot between career and carousing I have created for myself.

Prime Time's Leas Cross story showed that it is practically impossible to legally suppress big news, but is the manner in which stories are gained based in any ethical structure? By Conor Brady

The DUP in local government in the North is increasingly dealing with nationalists, by offering a series of deals to the SDLP on local councils to stop Sinn Féin holding offices on the council. In Belfast the DUP, SDLP and Alliance Party put together a deal to elect the DUP's Wallace Browne as Lord Mayor, with an SDLP deputy, and an SDLP mayor to follow in two years.

For the last thirty years, numerous reports have attempted to provoke Government action on nursing homes, but to no avail. By Hilary Curley

If the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world, imagine what it could do to the Irish political scene at the next election if it decided to seek revenge on the Government for failing to deliver affordable childcare.