BRITISH STATE VISIT - The first State visit by an Irish President to Britain will take place in April, 2014. Previous Irish Presidents have several times visited Britain and met the queen, but none of their trips were accorded the status of a state visit - the highest ranking in the diplomatic league. The three-day visit follows on the April 2011 State Visit by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Ireland which was widely regarded as a diplomatic triumph.

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE - The Irish government has decided to accept the advice of the Constitutional Convention and put the issue of same-sex marriage to a nationwide referendum in May 2015. A number of other proposed constitutional changes including a reduction in the voting age to 17 will be put to the electorate at the same time. For more information visit thejournal.ie.

ABORTION CASE - Three Irish women are appealing to the United Nations because they were forced to travel from Ireland to Britain for abortions when told their babies would not survive outside the womb. The women allege that the fact they were forced to leave Ireland to terminate their pregnancies amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. They could not have the terminations carried out in Ireland as abortion was, and remains, illegal in all circumstances except where there is a real and substantial threat to the life of the mother.

EMIGRANT WOES - Irish emigrants who left Ireland in the last 15-20 years miss their Tayto crisps (potato chips) more than anything else, followed by Kerrygold butter, Cadbury's chocolate and Barry's Tea, according to a survey conducted by 'Checkout', an Irish shopper's magazine. Denny's rashers and sausages were also high on the list, with Guinness, Jacob's biscuits, Galtee sausages and Brennan's and McCambridge's bread also featuring. Irish emigrants also rated the products available in Ireland better when it comes to stout, rashers, butter, meat, sausages and milk.

GREEN IRELAND - More than two thirds of Ireland is covered by natural or agricultural grasslands, meaning Ireland is covered in the highest proportion of natural vegetation out of any country in Europe. Only 2% of Ireland is covered in 'built-up and artificial areas' which includes roofed constructions, such as buildings and greenhouses, non-built up areas, such as yards, car parks, cemeteries and linear features, such as roads and rail networks.

STUDENT FRIENDLY - Dublin is ranked among the world's top student-friendly cities in an international survey that places it 15th of 50 university towns. Paris tops the survey which uses university rankings, student mix, quality of living, employer activity and affordability when it assesses a university town and the benefits it bestows on students there. Dublin performed well in all categories except affordability. Only cities with at least two universities were ranked.

ALL-IRELAND CENSUS - The mapping of the combined 2011 census data from the Republic of Ireland and from Northern Ireland has resulted in an All-Ireland Census Map with an interactive mapping tool permitting comparisons. The figures reveal that 7.4% of the Republic's population is from a non-white ethnic background, while only 1.8% of Northern Ireland's population are non-white. Fewer than half (47.7%) of the population of Northern Ireland rate their health as 'very good' compared to almost 62% in the Republic, while the percentage of people who rate their health as 'very bad' was four times higher in the North.

POPULATION STATISTICS - Since 2005, Ireland has gone from having the highest net immigration levels in Europe to the highest net emigration levels. 35,000 more people left Ireland than arrived last year, although the 72,200 births and 28,800 deaths resulted in a natural growth of 43,400, which outweighed the 35,000 lost by outward migration. Overall, the population of the Republic of Ireland is now 4.591 million.

TERROR FORCE - Former members of the British Army's Military Reaction Force (MRF) have told a BBC-TV program that they operated under a sanctioned shoot-to-kill policy during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Three members of the unit say they killed un-armed IRA members and also killed at least two men who had no paramilitary connections while injuring more than 10 other civilians. The MRF was comprised of about 40 undercover British army soldiers who operated in west Belfast between 1971 and 1973. Amnesty International has called for an inquiry and the British ministry of defense says it will investigate.

STOP INVESTIGATING - Northern Ireland's Attorney General says that all police and state-funded investigations into killings committed before the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement should stop, arguing they are wasteful, undermine peacemaking goals and are mostly futile. Most of the 3,700 killings from Northern Ireland's Troubles remain unsolved and in the last 15 years few paramilitary figures had been convicted of pre-1998 crimes.

MAYO DNA - The Genographic Project Team, a National Geographic project , last June conducted a DNA study of residents of Co. Mayo. Besides confirming that many were descended from Niall of the Nine Hostages, an Irish High King who died in 405 AD, the project also found that hundreds of Co. Mayo residents have Viking DNA in their makeup. The maternal DNA results showed great genetic diversity, including lineages dating to some of Ireland's earliest settlers, and others that arrived more recently. The paternal DNA lineages were less diverse, likely a result of the dominance of a few male leaders like King Niall, as well as the historical influence of the Viking raids from across the North Sea.

POITÍN - Outlawed in Ireland from 1661 to 1997, Poitín (Irish moonshine, pronounced put-'cheen) is a highly alcoholic drink (60%-90% ABV) traditionally distilled in a small pot still from malted barley, grain, potatoes or whey. It is one of the strongest alcoholic beverages in the world, and is now for sale (legally) in shops and pubs around Ireland. Poitín is also one of the Irish drink products which have been granted Geographical Indicative Status by the EU, meaning that in the same way that champagne must come from a certain area of France, anything called Poitín must come from Ireland.

POET'S CORNER - One of Ireland's foremost writers and Christian thinkers, C.S. Lewis, was a noted philosopher, theologian, professor, novelist, children's writer, literary critic, and lecturer, but most people agree he was not a great poet despite being an admirer of William Butler Yeats. However, he will receive the honor of a memorial stone in Westminster Abbey's Poets' Corner, alongside figures like Chaucer, Shakespeare, the Brontë sisters, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and about 100 others. A native of Belfast, Lewis died on November 22, 1963, the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Over 100 million copies of his Narnia books have been sold in more than 40 languages.

SPEED LIMITS - Thousands of speed signs on country roads across Ireland will soon be replaced with a black and white sign that does not contain any numeral. The speed limit will remain 80 kmh (50 mph) but motorists will be expected to use their own judgment in relation to speed without exceeding the limit. The thinking is that, in too many cases, motorists treat a posted speed limit as a target rather than as a limit!

GHOST ESTATES - 2014 will see the start of the demolition of Ireland's worst "ghost estates" - unfinished housing developments where the developer ran out of money during the late-2000s economic recession. Some such estates have no completed houses in the development while some have partially built houses, but many could be returned to green field status relatively easily. The latest inventory of unfinished estates counts just under 1,300 altogether in Ireland.

SHANDON BELLS - The clock on St Anne's of Shandon in Cork City is affectionately known as the Four Faced Liar, as it is claimed that the four faces on each side of the tower tell different times. Looking out north, south, east and west across the city, each clock face measures 15 feet, 8 inches in diameter. The church is noted for its 8 bells due to the song "The Bells of Shandon", and the bells first rang out across the city for the wedding of Mr. Henry Harding and Miss Catherine Dorgan on the 7th December, 1752.

COAST PHOTOS - The beauty of the Irish coastline was highlighted in the entries submitted for the annual Clean Coasts Photography Program where amateur photographers submitted coastal, wildlife and heritage scenes from around Ireland's coast. The sponsoring organization presents awards for beaches which have excellent water quality, but which are also prized for their natural, unspoilt environment. The organization's goal is to encourage 'best practice' in the management of rural beaches on the island of Ireland.

CHILDREN'S DICTIONARY - After centuries in which the British tried to wipe out the Irish language, Oxford University, that bastion of British education and culture, has launched an Irish-English visual dictionary for children over the age of eight. In total, the book provides 1,500 vocabulary items in Irish and English.

EXPENSIVE PAINTING - A 1969 triptych by Francis Bacon was purchased at auction earlier this month for $142,405,000, the highest price ever paid for an artwork at auction. Seven bidders vied for the painting - "Three Studies of Lucian Freud" - that depicts Freud sitting on a wooden chair against an orange background. Bacon, whom Margaret Thatcher once described as "that man who paints those dreadful pictures", was born in Dublin in 1909 and died in Spain in 1992. His studio was later donated to Dublin's Hugh Lane Gallery, where it has been completely reconstructed. Even the dust was swept up and sprinkled over the reassembled clutter!

ALL-IRELAND TEAM - At the Joint Sports and Reconciliation Conference in Armagh recently, Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny suggested that a 32-county All-Ireland soccer team should play England every two years with the gate receipts going to children's hospitals and medical research in Northern Ireland and the Republic. Currently, the soccer bodies in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland each enter separate teams in international soccer competitions.

IRISH WHISKEY - Sales of Irish whiskey are booming, particularly in the US, Russia and Eastern Europe, and 20 new Irish whiskey distilleries are either in construction or at the planning stage. It takes three years and a day to make Irish whiskey. For example, Scotch is distilled twice while Irish is distilled three times, giving it a lighter and mellower flavor. The spelling of the word Whiskey (as opposed to Whisky) originated in the 19th century when Scotch whisky was of very low quality. When exporting to America, the Irish distillers wanted to differentiate their product from the poorer Scotch whisky, and added the 'e' to mark the crucial distinction.

HISTORIC PHOTOS - Google has teamed up with the National Library of Ireland to digitize historic photos taken in Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th century. Dubliners: The Photographs of JJ Clarke has photos capturing vivid scenes from James Joyce's Dublin, taken while Clarke was a medical student between 1897-1904. Another collaboration, A witness to War,  has photos taken by photographer WD Hogan during the Irish War of Independence between 1919 and 1922.

IRISH/BRITISH ISLES - Strictly speaking, it is incorrect to use the term "British Isles" to refer to the islands of Ireland and Britain as the term has no official status. In the Good Friday Agreement, signed in 1998 by representatives of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, the term "these islands" is used when needed and the term "British Isles" is never mentioned. So don't be surprised when many Irish people bristle when they hear the term being used. They believe that the Republic of Ireland ceased to be in any way British when it left the British Commonwealth in 1948.

BHOYS IN IRELAND - Glasgow Celtic are considering the possibility of playing Champions League qualifiers in Ireland next season. Due to the 2014 Commonwealth Games, which will be held in Glasgow between 23 July and 3 August, the Scottish Premiership champions may be required to play at least one and maybe two European games away from their home ground if, as expected, they qualify for Europe's elite club competition.

PEACE AWARD - An Irish priest who has spent more than 20 years in eastern Africa, was recently presented the 2013 International Caring Award at a ceremony in Washington DC. Fr. Patrick Devine, a native of Co Roscommon, has been doing conflict resolution and reconciliation work in Kenya through the Shalom Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation, which he established in 2009. Previous recipients of the award include the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa, and former US president, Jimmy Carter.

PEACE PRIEST - Fr. Alec Reid, a Redemptorist priest and native of Tipperary who became a key figure in theNorthern Ireland peace process, died in a Dublin hospital last week, aged 82. He was the person who in 1988, at the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, brought together SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams to hold secret talks at Belfast's Clonard Monastery that provided the groundwork for what was later to be the Belfast Agreement.

IRISH MAYOR 2 - Boston's new Mayor, Marty Walsh, a lifelong resident of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood, is the eldest son of immigrants from Connemara, an area in the west of Ireland mainly in Co. Galway. His parents were both born in a Gaeltacht (Irish-speaking) area and he learned to speak some Irish while growing up. After his election, the new Mayor spoke a few words of Gaelic to an Irish language radio station.

STARRY LUNCH - Film stars Johnny Depp and Cillian Murphy caused a  bit of a stir recently when they stopped for lunch at Weirs Pub and Restaurant in Multyfarnham, Co Westmeath. The Hollywood stars were accompanied by author JP Donleavy who lives nearby on the banks of Lough Owel. It is believed that Depp wants to bring to the big screen Dunleavy's novel The Ginger Man which is set in Dublin in post-war 1947. When first published in 1955, the book was banned in Ireland and the US for obscenity.

VENERABLE NANO - Nano Nagle, founder of the Presentation Sisters in Ireland, has been declared Venerable by Pope Francis. It means she has passed the second of four steps to canonization. Nagle was born at Ballygriffin, Co Cork, in 1718 to a land-owning Catholic family who lost most of their possessions because of their religion. She dedicated her life to working with the poorest and began in 1754 with a school in Cork. Soon this led to a network of schools across Ireland and abroad. She founded the Presentation Sisters in 1775 and died in 1784.

OGHAM WRITING - Ogham was an ancient script used in Ireland. Letters were made by marking marks on either side of a continuous base line. While it was used to record the earliest Old Irish texts dating from between the 3rd and the 6th centuries, Ogham was not generally used to write long messages and the majority of surviving examples are personal names, possibly to indicate land ownership. To see writing samples, visit ogham.

IRISH REBEL - The most celebrated Irish Confederate military figure was Co. Cork native, Patrick Ronayne Cleburne, the "Stonewall of the West". He was the highest-ranking Irish-born commander on either side in the US Civil war, and Robert E Lee said of him that he "shone like a meteor in a clouded sky". Cleburne was killed at the Battle of Franklin in 1864, not long after he had declared slavery to be "a continued embarrassment" and proposed recruiting slaves to fight in the Confederate army.

STAR-SPANGLED CELEBRATION - Born in Co. Down, Robert Ross was the British Army general who in August 1814 captured Washington, DC and burned the White House and the Capitol. Three weeks after his 24-hour occupation of Washington, Ross was killed by American militia fire during the failed British attack on Baltimore which inspired the writing of "The Star-Spangled Banner". Now Ross's home town of Rostrevor will next year mark the 200th anniversary of Ross's exploits with a "Star-Spangled Banner celebration"!