For the last three weeks Shell have been constructing a terminal in Ballinaboy Co. Mayo. Every morning upwards of 100 people gather outside the site to protest against the terminal and every morning a similar number of police arrive to forcibly remove them and allow the work to continue. As the protests have gained in intensity, coverage of them has slowly fallen off the media agenda. On 20 October, the Shell to Sea campaign organised a national day of action, and bussed in a couple of hundred supporters from around the country.

Paul McGrath's autobiography is a moving and often grim story which leaves you feeling a kind of awe that he had a career at all, never mind become one of Ireland's greatest football players, says Ken Early

Imagine him all those years ago, the dew still on him. Hauling himself down along O'Connell Street, Limerick. The slivers of the world being pulled towards him. He's a magnet for the drunks, the punks, the bowsies, the gurriers, the toffees, the tinsmiths, the auld ones, the chisellers. Coming down the street, shoulders swinging, big enough to tamp down the rain. Yes, he's chain lightening to everything around him. No rust on him. No way he's going to stop, nor rest, nor look behind. He'd break your heart with a gentle word and take your head off with the next. He didn't want immortality.

Justine McCarthy talks to Kevin Myers about his memories of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and discovers that the Irish Independent columnist is capable of touching kindness, in private

That fateful, frantic week in the literary calendar when all the speculation comes to an end and the rewards are finally given out has come and gone.

RTÉ's drama The Clinic provides welcome relief from the drudgery of Pat Kenny on The Late Late Show

When Farah Swaleh Noor's dismembered body was found last year, the media cried 'voodoo', despite a lack of evidence. By Colin Murphy

Michael Albert, founder of leftist Z magazine and ZNet website, tells Colin Murphy about spreading the message in the modern age and 'Parecon', his alternative to capitalism

Last week, according to the Irish Times, the High Court "rejected a claim by a father of four that neither the state nor courts are entitled to play any role – whether through family law or judicial separation proceedings – in regulating his Roman Catholic marriage". Judge Roderick Murphy, considering an application by the man's wife, found the man's claim "disclosed no reasonable cause of action" and was "untenable".

Colin Murphy speaks to Oscarwinning writer John Patrick Shanley, whose play Doubt: A Parable is currently running at the Abbey