ICELAND is a small country. It has a population of just over 300,000 and a landmass of a mere 103,000 square kilometres. It is on the periphery of Europe geographically, economically and politically. In October 2008, one of the country's largest banks, Icesave, collapsed. The bank held a large amount of British and Dutch deposits. Free article

Among those vulnerable sectors of Irish society targeted in recent budgets, lone parents are in a particularly bleak position. As Frances Byrne of OPEN, the national network of local lone-parent self-help groups in Ireland, points out, single parents are "the poorest of the poor. Free article

I WAS OUT with a few mates in the pub the first time I heard about a proposed musical based on the 1916 Rising. There was strong reaction amongst the company, I can tell you, and none of it good. One fella nearly choked on his pint. There was sniggering, grunting and a barely-concealed snarl from one quarter. A musical based on the Rising?!! An abomination - it has to be the Brits! Free article

€1.64 TRILLION is the total level of debt this January in the 26-County economy. Don't worry, though: €1 trillion of that is just the estimated liabilities of firms in Dublin's International Financial Services Centre. We only need to worry about the other €640 billion debt! These figures come on top of a year when unemployment rose 46% in 2009. Every day, 210 people were made redundant, with an average of 365 new people signing on every day in 2009. Free article

Tógadh céim eile níos cóngaraí d'fhoilsiú an nuachtáin seachtainiúil Gaeilge 'Gaelscéal' an tseachtain seo nuair a fógraíodh an nuacht go bhfuil Trevor Ó Clochartaigh ainmnithe mar Bhainisteoir Tionscadail ar an nuachtán nua. Bhuaigh plean 'Gaelscéal', - comhfhiontar idir An Curadh Chonnachtach agus Eo Teilifís, an conradh ag deireadh na bliana seo caite ó Fhoras na Gaeilge le nuachtán nua seachtainiúil Gaeilge a fhoilsiú agus ceadaíodh tréimhse ullmhúcháin idir críoch an chomórtais agus foilsiú an chéad eagrán. Tá an chomhfhiontar anois ar thóir Eagarthóir agus foireann oibre don nuachtán seachtainiúil a gheallann siad a bheith ar an nuachtán 'is nuálaí, is bríomhaire agus is tráthúla dá bhfuil ann'. Free article

A LOT of people were distracted by a minor scandal involving the Robinsons last week. But while the celebrity magazines and tabloid rags obsessed themselves with this, poring over the scandal in the most gratuitous fashion, those of us with a better understanding of politics kept our eye on the big story: the SDLP leadership contest. Last week, Dr Alasdair McDonnell made an outside-the-box move in the campaign by announcing that his party was a policy vacuum, united only by its hatred for Sinn Féin and its arrogant belief that Jesus Christ himself blessed them as the anointed leaders of Northern nationalism from now until the end of time. Free article

WHAT better way to start the New Year than with a broken arm! Having spent over a week carefully navigating my way through the Siberian wastes of Dublin, I came crashing to the ground opposite Trinity College early on Saturday morning. Several pints later, when reaching for my pocket, I realised that the hand that should have been extracting the money and which I could actually feel in that proximate location was in fact hanging, oblivious, about a foot away. Free article

Divisions within the IRA and Sinn Féin which had been deepening during the late 1960s, were widened to breaking point in the weeks and months that followed the events of August 1969 in the Six Counties. The lack of preparedness of the leadership of the IRA for those events proved to be the key factor in the split and was symptomatic of what Gerry Adams later described as "a lack of politics affecting all tendencies in the then disunited Republican Movement". Free article