With the arrival of the hurling championship it's time once more to dig out Denis Walsh's brilliant book, Hurling: The Revolution Years.

Three years ago in November 2003, 108 successful candidates were elected to the Legislative Assembly at Stormont. That Assembly has never met. On 15 May, these members will gather there, at the call of the British Secretary of State, Peter Hain. But the Assembly summoned together by Peter Hain is not the Assembly to which these MLAs were elected. It is not the Assembly contained in the Good Friday Agreement. Instead of convening that Assembly, Peter Hain recently introduced legislation at Westminster.

Government employees must rank as Irish newspapers' most avid readers, with the various departments spending over €650,000 on papers in 2005. According to the figures released, the Irish Times is by far the most popular daily for civil servants, with Government departments spending over €150,000 on this title alone in 2005.

Academic, feminist, political campaigner and now chairperson of Northern Ireland's Human Rights Commission, Monica McWilliams is used to being jeered by unionists and plugging away at the issues she cares most about. She talks to Fionola Meredith

Tony O'Reilly is set to add to his fortune a further €1.4 billion from the development of oil and gas prospects off the west coast of Ireland, a resource given to him for virtually nothing by the State and from which the Exchequer will gain almost nothing. By Frank Connolly

Edward O'Hare speaks to Mamo McDonald, organiser of Bealtaine, a festival celebrating creativity in older age.

Andy O'Mahony remains one of RTÉ's best broadcasters. Correction, one of radio's best broadcasters. A wonderfully mellifluous voice, great intelligence, coherence and fluency. His Off the Shelf programmes on Saturday evenings are one of the joys of radio. His programme of 6 May, was a particular delight. It was a discussion of Postwar: A History of Europe by Tony Judt and the participants were Alan Dukes and two historians, Judith Devlin and Michael Laffan.

On the 400th anniversary of the birth of Holland's most famous painter, Rembrant van Rijn, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam presents an exhibition of his paintings alongside those of his contemporary, Caravaggio. Kay Sheehy travels to the Dutch capital to meet the museum's curator, and to compare and contrast the work of these two great artists for RTÉ Radio 1's visual arts series, Eye Candy.
Above are two of the great works, Rembrandt's 'The Jewish Bride' and Caravaggio's 'The Coversion of the Magdalen'

Colin Murphy on two tales of Dublin, both political, but in very different ways

An intimate look at the life of a young poet through the eyes of her father in Home Movie Nights, the life of a soldier wronged by the hands of time in Two Civilisations and the lives of drugged-up teenagers expressed through dance in Joyride