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All you need to know about bank holidays in Ireland

We love our bank holidays in Ireland, but where did they come from, who gets to decide when they are - and when's the next one?

Sleepy young woman drinking coffee, feeling tired, suffering from insomnia and sleeping disorder. Sad female sitting in modern kitchen interior, empty space

Why does putting back the clocks an hour disrupt us so much?

group of friends outdoors

Is there a specific age at which we are happiest?

Three male employees in a glass office building

Are 'quiet redundancies' happening in your workplace?

Work and careers

Scenes from Grafton Street, Dublin, circa June 1971 before the street was pedestrianised. To the front of the image is a bus, while a long row of cars are parked along the left side.

Driving through Dublin: How the car changed the city

Flora Kerrigan: Dream Maker (images reproduced with permission of the Irish Film Institute Irish Film Archive).

Could a box of 8mm amateur film reels change Irish film history?

A one kilogram gold bar and a five hundred gram gold bar at The Vaults Group gold dealers arranged in Barcelona, Spain, on Monday, April 28, 2025. Gold was steady after dropping Tuesday as President Donald Trump eased the impact of some auto tariffs and p

Is gold or bitcoin the better investment?

Conceptual image of a purple laptop with speech bubbles floating above to illustrate Artificial Intelligence digital chatbot. AI chatbot assistant concept

6 daily decisions you make (or don't) using AI

Artificial Intelligence

Boo!

How the Irish really invented Halloween

A general view of the start of the 2024 Irish Life Dublin Marathon.

Why you need a plan to prevent the post-marathon blues

Dublin Marathon

Dublin , Ireland - 29 October 2017; Siobhan Hanratty celebrates finishing the SSE Airtricity Dublin Marathon 2017 in Dublin City. 20,000 runners took to the Fitzwilliam Square start line to participate in the 38th running of the SSE Airtricity Dublin Mara

Why the benefits of running a marathon are undervalued

Dublin Marathon

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The winners (and losers) from Irish presidential elections

Presidential Election 2025

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Does poor sleep make your brain age faster?

Chainsaw Man official poster

Why have anime films become such big box office hits?

Empress Eugenie s diadem of pearls exhibited in the Apollo s Galery housing the royal collection of gems and diamonds from the French crown in Paris in France on May 20 of 2021. (Photo by Maeva Destombes / Hans Lucas via AFP)

Louvre heist: the turbulent history of the stolen royal jewels

More Brainstorm

Halloween

Jack o lantern candle standing on a rock

Is Halloween the new St Patrick's Day festival?

A Halloween barm brack with charms including a ring, coin, stick and pea. Photo: St. Connell's Museum & Heritage Centre, Glenties, Co Donegal https://www.facebook.com/www.Museum.ie

The strange meanings attached to charms in Halloween barm bracks

Boo: a selection of plastic Halloween masks from the 1980s. Photo: Reddit Irish History

Masks and black plastic bags: how we used to celebrate Halloween

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Does the road to hell begin in Cork?

I always feel like somebody's watching me: Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula and Frances Dade as Lucy in the 1931 film of Dracula based on the novel by Bram Stoker. Photo: Culture Club/Getty Images

Was Dracula Irish?

Boo!

How the Irish really invented Halloween

"Cleary was burned to death by her husband and family members, who claimed that they had done so to force fairies to return Cleary, whom the family believed had stolen and replaced with a changeling."

"Darkest Ireland" and the burning of Bridget Cleary

Audio

A ringfort in Co Tipperary: "looking down from a plane, you'll see these circles dotted across Ireland".

The superstitions and mysteries around Ireland's 'fairy forts'

Sketch excerpt from "An account of the measurement of the Lough Foyle base in Ireland". By Captain W. Yolland (1847). Original by Sir J.F.W. Herschel.

The story of the first all-Ireland mapping survey 200 years ago

Storm Éowyn takes aim at Bantry Bay in January 2025. Photo: Getty Images

Rain, floods & storms: why weather conditions are getting wetter

DUBLIN, IRELAND - MAY 14: People gather to stage a protest against Israeli attacks on Gaza and to commemorate 76th anniversary of Nakba Day in Dublin, Ireland on May 14, 2024. In Dublin, a commemorative protest was held at UCD to mark Nakba Day, organized

How slogans as Gaeilge have become part of Irish Gaza protests

A worker walks past stored wind turbine blades at the Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast in 2008. Photo: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

What can be done with 11,000 tons of used wind turbine blades?

More Audio

Work & Careers

'Paying attention to reminders of unfinished tasks can draw attentional resources that could be used elsewhere.'

Why your long list of unfinished work tasks takes up so much time

Three male employees in a glass office building

Are 'quiet redundancies' happening in your workplace?

Work and careers

'The amount, size and quality of your office furniture is often a sure sign of power and status.'

The importance of having a desk in the office to call your own

Work and careers

'Access to AI tools increased worker productivity by an average of 14%, but the benefits weren't distributed equally'. Photo: Getty Images

Good news: AI won't take your job. Bad news: you can't ignore it

Work and careers

'The more we earn, the less likely we are to take time off - and the reward for work turns out to be more work'

Why do we work?

Work and careers

A man in a waiting room

Putting a CV together? Why honesty may not be the best policy

Work and careers

Cheerful young woman relaxing on sofa uses laptop in hotel room. City of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, travel Asia concept

Are 'quiet holidays' influencing your workplace?

Work and careers

Nature

Many people find their mood gets a boost in the summer. Photo: Volodymyr Tverdokhlib/Shutterstock

Love summer, hate winter? Why your mood changes with the seasons

"We know pigeons use visual cues and can navigate based on landmarks along known travel routes"

How do pigeons find their way home?

Three European Gray Wolves, Canis lupus lupus

Why 40 wolves have shaken Danish politics

Striking old yew tree in the central courtyard of the ruins of the Muckross Abbey, founded in 1448 as a Franciscan friary. Killarney National Park, County Kerry, Ireland. Photo: Getty Images

What do trees have to do with Irish culture and identity?

Looking for love.... Photo: Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

5 ways humans have scuppered the love lives of animals

Editor's Choice

Chainsaw Man official poster

Why have anime films become such big box office hits?

How Basic Income for the Arts scheme is a win for all

'Our research found that female students reported much higher levels of maths anxiety than their male peers'. Photo: Getty Images

Do you have maths anxiety?

Paul Mescal, the Co Kildare minor lad who brought Gaelic football to audiences worldwide via Normal People

How the GAA has influenced Ireland's pop culture

Three people having a meeting in an office

Should you tell your employer about your chronic illness?

Work and careers

people talking and laughing in a restaurant

How words can have many meanings when we speak in Irish English