Auto-didacticism

As you may or may not know/care, I am now an Irish citizen.
I was recently talking to my flatmate (Cork-born and bred), about how I'd been reading up on Irish politics, since I felt I should know at least a little bit about it.

Predictably, he said he wasn't sure why I would, since most Irish people don't care too much about it either.
But the thing is, when someone says 'Labour' or 'Conservative', even a Briton who diligently avoids British politics will have some idea of what they are and has acculturated associations to go with those names. For a hypothetical American they might mean nothing, or they could be reasonably simplified as 'kinda Republican/Democrat'.

For me Fianna Fail/Fine Gael were just names, so I looked them up. Unfortunately, it turns out you can't just label them 'kinda Conservative/Labour', because Ireland doesn't work that way. One of them is even a direct descendant of the Blueshirts.
So I am going to have to keep working on this if I want to, as one might say in Newspeak, bellyfeel Irepol.

If anyone has any books to recommend, do tell.