Caring for a loved one is difficult at the best of times, but reduced services, economic insecurity and an ageing population have made life tougher for people minding elderly or disabled relatives. ROSITA BOLAND looks at carers’ changing role

“The immediate response you get from people when you say you’re a carer is, ‘What company do you work for?’ ” says Pat O’Mahony. Since 1998, the 53-year-old has been caring full time for his wife, Margaret, who has post-polio syndrome. He is sitting around a table with seven other local men at the Carers Association’s Cork centre, talking about the assumptions they have faced over many years.

 THE SOCIAL NETWORK: It was something of a busman’s holiday for Kim Burrowes at the premiere of Snow White and the Huntsman at the Odeon Cinema in the Point Village on Wednesday evening.

 ANOTHER LIFE: IN THE GENTLE SPRING soundtrack that ushers me along the boreen these mornings (the better mornings, that is), one sound has been missing from the general blend of birdsong, sea breeze and disassembling surf from the shore. Norman MacCaig had a nice phrase for it – “a flint-on-flint ticking” – but the stonechat’s own name says it well enough.

Scientists are still trying to determine how birds, butterflies and bats migrate the planet on their annual long-haul flights, writes ANTHONY KING 

 A DAD'S LIFE: Climbing down off my high horse . . . in a huff, writes ADAM BROPHY