Highlights

Sam Lynch, stroke, Neville Maxwell, Tony O Connor and Derek Holland, bow. Photograph: Cyril Byrne Coming fourth in the Olympics didn’t change this fearless quartet, time did

Neville Maxwell, Tony O’Connor, Derek Holland and Sam Lynch recall Atlanta 1996

The Green Party is demanding system change, to satisfy both the wider environmental movement and their own core membership 20 ways the Greens in government could change Irish life – and yours
Yes to equality: Panti Bliss (Rory O'Neill) in the courtyard at Dublin Castle on May 22nd, 2015. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times ‘Pure joy’: The day Ireland said yes to marriage equality
Lives lost: some of the people who have died of Covid-19 in Ireland and among the diaspora in recent weeks The opera lover, the Jesuit, the GAA star... 19 of the lives lost to Covid-19
Irish nursing home: St Mary’s Hospital, in the Phoenix Park in Dublin. Photograph: Crispin Rodwell The story of Rose Hegarty and how Ireland's nursing homes became coronavirus ground zero
8.57pm: medical staff in full PPE stand outside the entrance to the triage tent at the emergency department of St Vincent’s University Hospital. Photograph: Alan Betson Behind the scenes at an Irish Covid-19 hospital
We can do it: a mural by the artist Emmalene Blake on a gate in Dublin thanks healthcare workers on the frontline during the coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Lifting the lockdown: What are the plans?
Grief in a pandemic: ‘Not being able to see him in his final hours was heartbreaking’
Listen to podcasts through a smartphone app, or through the show’s website. Photograph: iStock 50 of the best podcasts to listen to right now
Set a challenge: how many insects can the kids find and identify? Photograph: FatCamera/E+/Getty Nature nearby: 10 ways to discover and explore, within 2km of home
An aerial view of the Phoenix Park where the original layout was for the Dublin Golf Club. Photograph: iStock Did you know there used to be a golf course in the Phoenix Park?
An Eritrean teenager in a dormitory for unaccompanied minors in Shagarab refugee camp, eastern Sudan, in 2017. Many Eritreans stop here before travelling on towards Libya. Photograph: Sally Hayden Inside the smuggler’s warehouse: Africa’s 21st-century slave trade
Matt Doherty celebrates scoring Wolves’ third goal during the Premier League game against Manchester City at Molineux. Photograph: Clive Mason/Getty Images Premier Class: The 10 best Irish players in this season’s top flight
The Government has taken over the facilities of 19 private hospitals. That has left many of those who are paying thousands of euro each year in private health insurance wondering what they are paying for Are you due a Covid-19 refund on health insurance, school fees, travel card or gym?
Grafton street Restarting Ireland: When and how will we ‘get back to normal’?
One of the greatest challenges identified by our research participants was how to identify what actions they can take to make a real difference to the environment. Photograph: iStock Aware, confused, leaderless: How Irish people feel about climate change now
Kevin Barry. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Irish writers on Covid-19: ‘We’re all having a shockin’ dose of the wombles’
A framed picture of Benjamin Robinson. Photograph: Kieran Dodds/The New York Times Karen Robinson Walton: I am looking at him. I say ‘Benjamin, what have we done?’
Ten-year-old Charlotte O’Brien visits her grandad Pat O’ Brien in Clontarf, Dublin. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times Fintan O’Toole: Coronavirus has made all familiar things strange
John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Photograph: AP Photo/Warner Bros Beyond Netflix: where to find Golden Age classic movies
Margaret Molloy Here’s to Ireland’s unofficial ambassadors flying flags around the world
Thousands of punters pack the grandstands at Cheltenham this week as the festival continued as normal – despite the public concern over coronavirus. Photograph: Tim Goode/PA Cheltenham's horsey set unmoved by some poxy little global pandemic
Coronavirus: a doctor in protective clothing at a hospital in Naples. Photograph: Marco Cantile/LightRocket via Getty Coronavirus: Italian doctors on how Ireland can avoid disaster
Why you should – or should not – buy an electric car now
Dermot Desmond: Everyone has a right to a home. Here is how it can be done
Cathal McNaughton at his home in Waterfoot near Cushendall. “The Indian authorities said I was excluded for breaking the terms of my visa by travelling to restricted areas in Kashmir, but through government back channels we discovered it was actually because I was highlighting what was going on there.” Photograph: Charles McQuillan The Irish photographer who won a Pulitzer, then quit ‘the best job in the world’
Testing for Covid-19 at UZ Leuven university hospital in Leuven, Belgium, on Friday. Photograph: Geert Vanden Wijngaert/Bloomberg Coronavirus: Everything you need to know about Covid-19
Wolf Hall trilogy: Hilary Mantel's final novel in the sequence closes the book on Thomas Cromwell. Photograph: Andrew Testa/New York Times Hilary Mantel: ‘Any nation that’s got warlords has got a Cromwell’
The MV Alta, a 77m Tanzanian registered cargo ship which had been abandoned and drifting in the Atlantic Ocean for 17 months, washed up on rocks near Ballycotton in east Cork last weekend. Photograph: Cathal Noonan/AFP via Getty Waste materials to be airlifted from MV Alta wreck
Quizzes, influencers, IRA memes: How Election 2020 was won online
Mary Lou McDonald with fellow Sinn Féin TDs at Leinster House on Thursday. Photograph: Niall Carson/PA Wire Fintan O’Toole: The enigma of Mary Lou McDonald
Election 2020 in commuterville: ‘They built the houses and left the people in a vacuum’
Tony Owens with Arthur. How do you get bereaved fathers to talk? Bring a football
How would Ireland cope with the loss of its corporation tax bonanza? That’s just one of the big questions that will challenge the next government. Photograph: Alan Betson Fintan O’Toole: Ten big questions for incoming politicians
Catherine Cleary: when I was 19, I lived on tinned tuna and pasta for days so I could spend a week’s salary on a black swing coat with a high collar that felt like a hug. Photograph: Tom Honan Could I go a whole year without buying any new clothes?
I’ve always told my firefighter Dad 'I love you' as he leaves for work, just in case
Young boys were being used by the older gang members to deal drugs on the streets as well as for storing drugs, burning out cars as a means of intimidating others and even forcing some families out of particular areas, one garda said. Photograph: David Sleator Teenage boys and organised crime gangs: A complicated dynamic
Harry McGee’s final seat prediction for Election 2020
Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs said early indications are voters see election as a choice between Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin. Photograph: Brian Lawless/PA Wire Election 2020: Will smaller parties be sidelined in Varadkar-Martin shootout?
Baby John’s grave, in St Cronan’s cemetery in Roscrea. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Ireland’s abandoned babies: ‘Stories of unimaginable fear’
The champion Irish gymnast Rhys McClenaghan. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho 50 people to watch in 2020: the best young talent in Ireland
Marian Finucane, in studio at RTÉ Radio One, in 1999. Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill Marian Finucane obituary: A brave and trusted broadcaster
Black & Tans guarding Dublin street after a shooting on Gloucester Road. Black and Tans: ‘Half-drunk, whole-mad’ and one-fifth Irish
Fintan O’Toole: 2019 was a bit like Game of Thrones – lots of action, no climax
Ireland’s Ciara Mageean celebrates qualifying for the final of the World Athletics Championship. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho Glittering Irish day in muddled murky sporting year of 2019
Charlize Theron plays Megyn Kelly (left) in a study of sexual harassment at Fox News, with Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie Film 2020: The 50 films to watch out for
Kirsty Spencer with her children outside their hub accommodation, in Drumcondra in Dublin. Photograph: Alan Betson It’s our fourth homeless Christmas, our third in a ‘family hub’
Balata is by far the most densely populated among the 19 West Bank camps In the West Bank, American funding cuts run deep
Prime minister Boris Johnson and his girlfriend Carrie Symonds arriving in Downing Street on Friday after the Conservative Party won an electoral landslide. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA Wire The inside story of how Boris Johnson won the UK election
People attend the inauguration of the Alan Kurdi rescue ship in Palma de Mallorca. File photograph: Jaime Reina/AFP via Getty Images Christmas on the Mediterranean – a month on a migrant rescue ship
Malcolm Gladwell. Photograph: Crispin Rodwell Malcolm Gladwell: ‘Once you put words into the world you lose control over them’
Vaping has been linked to deaths in the United States, but advocates say it can help people quit smoking. Photograph: Moment/Getty Is it time to quit vaping? What the science says
Christmas cheer: Micheál Martin, Finian McGrath, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Mary Lou McDonald, Róisín Shortall and Shane Ross at the Oireachtas Christmas tree lights switching-on ceremony at Leinster House. Photograph: Alan Betson The week that saw the beginning of the end for Varadkar’s Government and 32nd Dáil
Carol Connors holds a photograph of her daugher Anne Marie who died of a drug overdose in supported accommodation. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw Children spent night alone with mother’s body in homeless accommodation
Photograph: iStock/Getty ‘I blamed myself for not wanting it enough’ – Untold tales of miscarriage
China Cables: More than a million people detained against their will in Chinese province
Prince Cyrus of Oudh at his family home in New Delhi in 2016. Photograph: Andrea Bruce/The New York Times The amazing, epic tale of the Indian jungle prince
Direct provision: Pierrot Ngadi, one of the first people to go through the system. Photograph: Crispin Rodwell Direct provision: The controversial system turns 20
Ana Kriégel murder: What it taught us about bullying, porn and boys
A lorry at the Border town of Carrickcarnon has a slogan marked on it during a protest by anti-Brexit campaigners Borders Against Brexit. File photograph: Clodagh Kilcoyne/|Reuters Fintan O’Toole: What will EU demand for supporting us on Brexit?
Gay Byrne, the veteran RTÉ broadcaster, has died at the age of 85. Photograph: David Sleator Gay Byrne obituary: The maestro of Irish broadcasting
Ana Kriégel. Photograph courtesy of family. Ana Kriégel murder: What drove two teenage boys to murder a 14-year-old girl?
British Army troops with army Land Rovers and trucks on a side street in the predominantly Catholic Falls Road area of Belfast in May 1971. Photograph: Rolls Press/Popperfoto via Getty Images Who shot my 14-year-old brother Peter in 1973?
Cocaine use has reportedly returned to Celtic Tiger levels in Ireland. File photograph: Getty Images/iStockphoto Cocaine in Ireland: ‘The average consumer is a farmer or nurse... It’s universal’
Spanish dictator General Franco inaugurates a number of new rooms in an army museum, on March 11th, 1946. File photograph: Keystone/Getty Images Spain’s reckoning with its past shows Francoism is far from dead
Illustration: Fuchsia MacAree ‘Show us your boobs and you’ll get a tip’: An Irish waitress’s life
The Mardyke in Cork city, where homeless man Timmy Hourihane was killed last weekend. Photograph: Daragh Mc Sweeney/Provision Homeless in Cork: ‘Everybody can list friends who have died’
Katie de Gama: ‘I couldn’t have told you one fact about the Famine. I hadn’t ever heard of it.’ Photograph: Nick Bradshaw ‘You can be anything in Ireland now, except English’
Jean McConville, Ivor Bell and Gerry Adams. Irish Times photomontage Jean McConville’s murder, the Boston tapes, Gerry Adams and the Ivor Bell trial
David Reilly and Derek O’Driscoll have used an insidious brand of intimidation and control, all underpinned by lengthy criminal records and reputations for ultra violence, to rule Ballyfermot Crime kingpins of Ballyfermot: The men behind the Dublin City Council protection racket
‘The shame and stigma surrounding baby loss is still rampant’ I thought I knew something about miscarriage. But I hadn’t a clue
The Defence Forces’ Ordnance Corps at Casement Aerodrome in Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Inside the bomb squad: Combating terrorist attacks and gangland devices
The Border on the M1/A1 Dublin to Belfast road as viewed from the northern side. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Brexit: A day in the life of an Irish Border crossing
Colin Healy, Richie Sadlier and Roy Keane at Ireland training in 2002. Photo: Tom Honan Richie Sadlier memoir: ‘The abnormal, especially when it came to sex, was normal'
Children of the Troubles: Desmond Guiney, Charles Love, Lesley Gordon, Julie Livingstone and Siobhan McCabe (top row); John Dougal, Dessie Healey, Brian Stewart, Peter Watterson and Patrick Rooney (middle row); and Michael McIlveen, Paula Strong, Clare Hughes, Angela Gallagher and Philip Rafferty (bottom row) Children of the Troubles: They took a child off the road, put a hood over his head and killed him
Fintan O’Toole: Greta Thunberg is a prophet, preacher, rulebreaker, avenging angel
Oughterard campaign leaders say the help of the far-right is not welcome. Photograph: Joe O’Shaughnessy How the far-right is exploiting immigration concerns in Oughterard
Michael O’Regan. Photograph: Bryan O’Brien Michael O’Regan: I have learned to talk about cancer
Stephen Cluxton lifts the Sam Maguire as Dublin celebrate beating Kerry in the All-Ireland senior football final replay, at Croke Park. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times Dublin put in a champion performance to make Irish sporting history
The closed Shamrock bar on the Killarney road in Newcastle West, Limerick. Photograph Liam Burke/Press 22 Irish pub closures: The slow death of the local bar
Earn more than you think while working less
John Gormley outside his home in Oak Grove, Derrinturn, Co Kildare. Photograph: Enda O’Dowd How Ireland’s weak building regulations create dangers for buyers
Joe Schmidt: “I think the great days have been the ones where the players have done something a little bit special, and you’ve seen players grow.” Joe Schmidt at the Aviva Stadium: The pleasure, the privilege was ours
The family of ‘Ms P’ is suing the HSE over her death and over the horrific ordeal of being left in legal ‘limbo’ for weeks 'I didn’t just lose my daughter, I lost her baby and my grandchildren'
‘Whatever happens with Brexit in the end is likely to be bad news for Ireland, assuming of course there isn’t a second referendum and the UK decides to stay in.’ No-deal Brexit capable of derailing economy and reigniting Troubles
Dublin goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton saves a shot from Kerry’s Paul Murphy. Photograph: Morgan Treacy/Inpho Dublin’s drive for five just about stays alive as Kerry rise to the occasion
Dún Laoghaire rooftop view Dún Laoghaire’s continuing failure to reinvent itself
Circa 1955: taoiseach Éamon de Valera (1882 - 1975) with Frank Aiken (1898 - 1983). Photograph: Sean Sexton/Getty Images United Ireland: De Valera’s secret plan for unification
By 2031 more than a quarter of a million inhabitants in the State will be aged over 80 years, a departmental review found. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA Wire The old country: Get ready for an ageing Ireland
Edna O'Brien. Photograph: Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Getty Edna O’Brien: ‘I have a ferocity in me, but I’m also fearful’
Portrait of Daniel O’Connell. Photograph: Getty Images Daniel O’Connell, the greatest of all politicians
Playing a blinder: Cillian Murphy as Tommy Shelby. Photograph: BBC Cillian Murphy: ‘We all have contradictions within us’
Dublin Airport: Sean Mackessy, airfield electrical supervisor. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Do bras set off the scanners? The secret life of Dublin Airport
Patients attend the Remote Area Medical Clinic which treats the poorest in America, those squeezed out by ‘the punishing health system’. Photograph: Suzanne Lynch Meet America’s uninsured: Tales from a divided healthcare system
Boris Johnson: his Brexit campaign statement that the UK sends “£350 million a week to the EU” is the subject of a prospective court case. Photograph: Steve Back/Getty Images Fintan O’Toole: Ireland can stop a no-deal Brexit. Here’s how
Lyra McKee's investigation into children who went missing during the Troubles – was due to have been published in 2020. Photograph: Jess Lowe/EPA Lyra McKee and her investigation into the mysterious murder of a unionist MP in 1981
Aisling Bea in This Way Up. Photograph: Adam Lawrence/Channel 4 Plan Bea: Aisling Bea on searching for laughter in sad places
It was the late 1970s before the Liffey Swim welcomed women, and women were finally put on an equal footing in 1991. Photograph: Joey Cleary The Liffey Swim: Dublin’s hardy annual has its 100th outing
Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg leaves the Merrion Hotel after meeting the Oireachtas Communications Committee. Photograph: Tom Honan/The Irish Times. Ireland’s love affair with multinationals is set to change - but how can we adapt?
Paddy McKillen Jnr: Creating and gathering up Dublin’s hotspots. Paddy McKillen jnr, the mystery man of Dublin nightlife
The point was not to get to the moon but to return from its great desolation, to come back to this astonishing Earth. Photograph: SSPL/Getty Images Fintan O’Toole: They went to the moon; we discovered the Earth
France and me: The most rewarding relationship of my life