FILM director Jim Sheridan and his wife, Fran, have been allowed by the High Court to specifically itemise alleged defects in the construction of their luxury seafront home at Dalkey, Co Dublin.

I’M SITTING with my back to a stone wall on Inis Meáin — on Ireland’s western seaboard — watching islander Padraic McDonagh hand threshing rye in the time honoured way.