Aoife Valentine

Boost for gym owners as get-fit resolutions set in As January sees a surge in gym membership sign-ups in the wake of Christmas excesses, the low-cost market is seeing the biggest benefits of the boom, writes Aoife Valentine.

‘I get the children laughing and I create happiness for that family’ Muireann Aherne is a nurse with Laura Lynn’s @Home team who give children with life-limiting conditions respite care in their own homes

If you had seven minutes to revolutionise teaching . . . Teachmeet Ireland allows teachers to share ideas and tips with peers in the style of Ted Talks. Here’s a sample of some of the best recent innovative teaching strategies

Irish comedians at the Fringe: Triumph, tragedy and chips Every year, a gang of homegrown gag-meisters take their shows to the world’s biggest arts festival in Edinburgh. Here are some quips from this year's crop

Alison Spittle Discovers Hawaii review | Tiger Dublin Fringe A slightly nervous performance that nonetheless is chock-full of killer one-liners

Review | Florence and the Machine: Power plays that are a little too familiar Florence Welch is industrious throughout but the odd bit of wildness shows the Machine’s more chaotic potential

Ed Sheeran leaves 80,000 swooning at Croke Park Singer is joined on stage by Kodaline as he encourages crowd to ‘dance like idiots’

How to keep clutter to a Kondo minimum Best-selling author Marie Kondo says getting rid of things that don’t ‘spark joy’ will transform your lifestyle, career and relationships

Tommy Steele: ‘Show business has been one big cuddle’ At 79, Steele has landed another dream role, as Glenn Miller. He looks back over his career and reveals his dark secret

Redrawing Roscommon A proposal to move one of Co Roscommon’s most prosperous districts into Co Westmeath has run into stiff opposition

Carpe Diem, okay? Fashion lessons from ‘Clueless’ The film is now 20 years old but its advice is timeless

Why do girls outperform boys in the Leaving Cert? ‘Girls read more. They spend more time on homework, and usually spend less time online and playing video games. Boys think they’re too cool for school’

Looking back on the Leaving Cert: How it affected my career The 2015 Leaving Cert results are out on Wednesday. Students who featured in The Irish Times on previous results days tell how their careers have gone since

Arthur's day: Ireland faces up to the dark side of the Guinness celebrations Founded five years ago by Guinness's parent company to mark the establishment of the famous brewery, pubgoers embraced Arthur's day wholeheartedly. And that's the problem. Now the backlash has begun

Generation Rent: ‘It’s totally out of your control’ Families are trapped by ‘extortionate’ Irish rents and restrictive house buying rules

Michael Ball: ‘The pretty cherub who sings nicely? He’s gone’ His career was almost derailed by depression, but Ball recovered to the point where he has his pick of parts and can focus on surprising audiences, as in Mack and Mabel

Writing panto is no joke – I swear on my hair Karl Broderick is Ireland’s longest-serving panto writer, but can he teach this novice (me) how to write a funny script?

The Happy Pear: ‘When we started, people looked at us with pity’ The Flynn twins behind the Happy Pear became vegetarians – each unbeknown to the other – on the same day 14 years ago. It was the start of something big

Property profiles 2006-2016: Stories of boom, bust and rebound after the crash Ten years ago house prices were approaching their peak. The subsequent falls changed some people’s lives profoundly. Six of them tell their stories of boom, bust and rebound

How to build a career on a reality lifestyle channel

Rising tide lifting all boats in Dublin docklands