Society

The chairman of the Morris tribunal is heading towards a fullscale clash with the main victims of the Garda corruption in Donegal that his inquiry was set up to investigate.

The tussle between the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance over the former's proposed abolition of stamp duty is only the opening skirmish in what promises to be a long war between the two. By Justine McCarthy

Labour 'think-in': The Labour party is hoping to shift the election debate from economic success to governmental mismanagement. And although Pat Rabbitte is not saying so, party insiders believe a deal could be done with Fianna Fáil after the election. Eoin Ó Murchú reports

Dawn arrives with light in the window. There is no curtain. Out, through the prison bars, I see a row of rooftops. The TV aerials sit sideways, as if blown drunk by the wind. Like all prison cells, it seems, there are birds outside the window, and moving shadows, and distant traffic, which sounds faintly like a river. I can hear movement in the corridor outside my cell. The ceiling is inches from my eyes. Jumping to the cold floor, one is immediately reminded of what it might mean to be incarcerated. No toilet. No sink.

A new online exhibition shows previously unpublished images of Dublin city centre, destroyed after the Easter Rising

For a week, friends and strangers alike searched for the body of Jonathan Herlihy who, with Peter O'Keeffe, drowned rescuing a couple from the seas of west Cork. Their generosity stands in stark contrast to the corporate indifference of Aer Lingus, who charged Johnny's soccer teammates €10,000 to return from the US to search for their friend. By Justine McCarthy

Not even the rats put off the hundreds of swimmers who turn out for the annual Liffey Swim. Roisin Finlay talks to participants in this year's event, which takes place on 9 September

Ireland has had its own 9/11 in which more people were massacred than were killed in the United States on 9 September 2001. Fewer than 3,000 were killed in the Twin Towers and Pentagon attacks five years ago – more than 3,650 were killed in the Irish 9/11.

In November 2004, Socialist Party councillor Mick Murphy visited a construction site at Balgaddy to talk to three carpenters who were staging an industrial protest on top of a 200-foot tower crane. As well as their own protest, one of the men, Daniel O'Connell Jnr, told of a "concentration camp" regime at the site involving Turkish employees, with wages of just ?2.50 an hour. Mick Barry investigated further and got help from an English-speaking Turkish man living in Carlow, Baki Uzunkaya.

Could this be Ireland in 2030? One of Ireland's leading young architecture firms, FKL (Fagan, Kelly and Lysaght), thinks so. FKL is curating the Irish entry in the Venice Architecture Biennale and has brought together a group of young Irish architects to predict how Irish cities, suburbs and the countryside might look in 30 years. Amongst the ideas they've come up with are floating cities, seaside holiday villages that are only visible when occupied and, most radically perhaps, a decent national railway infrastructure that would halve commuting times across the country.