There's substantial coverage of pay talks developments in the Irish Times, Irish Examiner, RTÉ while The Irish Independent leads with news that "Unions will have to decide on a “take it or leave it” pay offer over the next 48 hours, as it will be withdrawn if they go ahead with nationwide strikes on Thursday."

The Irish Times, in a separate report, says that "in the absence of a breakthrough over the next couple of days, the 24-hour strike looks likely to proceed," and quotes Kevin Callinan's assessment of the talks process.

Your Zen this morning reports from the Abbey Theatre, where Blindboy Boatclub's short stories were recently dramatised in Animals, which concluded a successful run on Saturday night. A packed house was in thrall to this wickedly surreal production, despite a critical mauling in early reviews. It was brilliant, funny, sad and wild and while not every part of the experiment worked, most of it did. I've never had a night at the theatre quite like it.

Have a great week.

NS