Research suggests that up to 20 per cent of adults experience some form of sleep disorder, including nightmares. Deirdre Cashion talks to sufferers and discovers how this condition can be managed.

It’s a familiar if not rare experience for many of us – waking with a sudden dart in the dead of night, heart pounding, pulse racing, brainwaves flooded with flashback images and an overwhelming sense of anxiety and confusion permeating our rousing consciousness.

While more common in children, adults can also suffer from persistent nightmares or night terrors from time to time. It’s a condition that can be very debilitating for those, whose sleep is regularly interrupted by spurious things that go bump in the night. Read more

Are women forced to choose between family life and public life?  Both can co-exist four female TDs tell Deirdre Cashion but it’s hardly child’s play.

A dramatic shift in the traditional role of women in Irish society is well underway and there are encouraging signs that our Constitution is about to catch up.

At the most recent plenary session of the Constitutional Convention, a body tasked with considering certain topics as possible future constitutional amendments, 88 per cent of delegates voted to change Article 41.2, which singles out for special mention, the role of women in the home.

Delegates also heard submissions on the broader question of female participation in public life – its universal relevance reflected by the popularity of the recent Danish political drama, ‘Borgen’, which revealed the spectacular failure of Prime Minister, Birgitte Nyborg to successfully juggle her family life with the affairs of state.

‘Borgen’ might be fiction but fiction has become reality for the Danes with the election of their first female Premier, Helle Thorning-Schmidt.  It’s difficult to envisage a similar development in Dáil Eireann any time soon, where just 15 per cent are women.

‘Weekend’ spoke to our young female TDs about motherhood, the challenges of public life, gender quotas and the prospect of a female Taoiseach ever taking leaders’ questions in the Dáil. Read more