MONDAY

"I'll never forget that day," says Rom Houben, "it was like a second birth." The 46-year-old goes public on how, for 23 years, he was locked inside his own body, in a coma after a near-fatal car accident but unable to tell family, doctors, nurses or therapists. Houben, once an engineering student and a martial-arts expert, was released from his personal prison by a Belgian neurologist, Steven Laureys, who re-examined coma patients using a highly sensitive scanning system. His terrifying story reopens the debate about withdrawal of life support from coma victims and demands that those in a vegetative state here are regularly re-examined for signs of mental activity using state-of-the-art scanning equipment... State-of-the-art pumping equipment is clearly lacking in most cities and towns affected by floods. Taoiseach Brian Cowen flies over the lakes that were once fields and sloshes through sodden towns and homes seeing the worst of the damage for himself. A cabinet meeting later in the week will decide the extent of government aid, or lack of it.

TUESDAY

They're off – over 250,000 public servants strike for the day because they can't afford a cut in pay, having already taken a hit with their 7% pension levy, leaving operations cancelled, 4,000 schools closed, college lectures postponed, welfare payments for about 100,000 a day late. But the exodus from work doesn't end on the picket line. All roads lead to Newry where retailers report hordes of southern shoppers snapping up bargains, including parents of children whose schools are closed. "Mischievous," says the INTO's spokesperson of the public-sector-bashing interviews, which suggest the shoppers were public sector workers taking advantage of the strike day. "If you add two and two you get four," says Mark Fielding of ISME, whose maths teacher must be proud. "There are 250,000 workers going on strike and six-mile tailbacks into Newry – you can connect the dots."

WEDNESDAY

Heavy rain batters the west overnight, with winds blowing at over 100km/h, adding to flood misery in Galway and Clare, and tearing the roof off an apartment block in Carrickmines Manor – a new development that remains half empty. Desolation and despair is everywhere. Waterways Ireland says the Shannon levels are now unmanageable... The M1 to Newry is almost empty as talks resume on cutting the public sector paybill by €1.3bn – but as fast as we save money it seems another blighted public body joins the detritus of the economic crash. This time it is the Dublin Docklands Development Authority where losses are €27m. Meanwhile Budget Travel and one of the country's oldest car dealers, EP Mooney, lose their fight for life. All the more relevant then that the Irish film hotly tipped for an Oscar animation nomination is Granny O'Grimm, the tale of a spooky old woman who terrifies her grandchildren with her own sinister take on bedtime classics.

THURSDAY

The Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation reports, and the reputations of those who, until the very recent past, were among the most powerful and influential in the land lie in shreds. Bishops, auxiliary bishops, archbishops and cardinals, political leaders and members of the highest ranks of the gardaí are castigated for their collusion in covering up the abuse of paedophile priests. Their sacrifice of young children to the predatory activities of their colleagues in order to maintain the fiction of an unblemished, scandal-free church is greeted with horror, but certainly not disbelief.

FRIDAY

Truckloads of fodder and hay begin arriving at collection points in Gort, Banagher and Ballinasloe as farmers and the IFA begin distributing emergency feed to stricken animals stranded in flood areas. The waters are still very high along the length of the Shannon, and as the night turns very cold, the reality that it will be weeks before some floods recede and many, many months before some families return to their homes begins to sink in... From the submerged to the "wonderfully ridiculous", Jedward join big kid Ryan Tubridy for the Late Late Toy Show. Advertisers get a shock strong enough to straighten hair into a big quiff – it's €17,000 for a 30-second slot on what RTé hopes will be its most-viewed programme in the build-up to the Christmas season. Jingle bells!