FC Barcelona is one of the most successful football clubs in the world and, although like most of the big football clubs around the world. Unlike almost all of the major Premiership clubs elsewhere in Europe, FC Barcelona is not owned by an oligarch or even by a cabal of oligarchs, is owned by its 175,000 members who each pay an annual membership fee of around €200. It is a not-for-profit organisation; nobody gets paid dividends, although the players are among the richest in the world. BY Vincent Browne.

The exchequer deficit in Ireland was €1.6 billion at the beginning of 2008. The exchequer deficit at the start of 2013 was €15 billion. Over the corresponding five years from 2008-2012 inclusive, the total 'savings' by way of public sector pay cutbacks, public spending cutbacks and tax increases amounts to €24.4 billion. By Dr. Tom O'Connor of Cork Institute of Technology

Laura Agustín is renowned for her ground-breaking research, writing and advocacy on migration, sex work and trafficking. Her writing is available on her blog The Naked Anthropologist and in her highly acclaimed book Sex at the Margins: Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry. Writing frequently about the sex workers she has worked with, she has attracted controversy from those who would rather see sex work and prostitution completely abolished.

Is a euro in a Cypriot bank, locked down by withdrawal limits and capital controls, the same as a euro in an Irish or French bank? Is a euro sitting in, say, a payroll account in Laiki with a balance of more than €100,000 (and subject to an unspecified “haircut” on Thursday) the same an “Irish euro”?

On Wednesday, March 20, UCD Women’s Studies hosts renowned sociologist, Prof. Hill Collins for a  public lecture entitled ‘Where do we go from here? Intersectionality and Social Justice’. Prof. Hill Collins specialises in critical race theory and feminist theory, and is perhaps best known for her work on intersectionality, that is, the notion that people are often subject to multiple and mutually reinforcing disadvantages based on gender, race, or class, for instance. Below, Prof.

The idea, now enshrined in our Constitution, that there is an equal right to life of the unborn child and of the mother is nonsense. By Vincent Browne.

A new person, a girl, has come into the lives of people I know. She has not yet been named but the attachment to her is very real. Her grandfather can hardly wait for a time to play with her and to make her laugh. But there is a problem at present.

She isn’t born yet and the thought of anything happening to her, at this vulnerable stage of her life, is awful to anybody close to the family.

The controversy over horse DNA found in beef burgers should be put it in its proper context - that of a society characterised by quite serious material inequality. By Alistair Fraser.

Micheál Martin is using events in the North as part of his strategy to revive Fianna Fáil’s electoral fortunes in the South. By Eoin Ó Broin.

The award for opportunist of the week must surely go to Micheál Martin. His opinion piece in last Wednesday’s Irish News was a timely reminder of Fianna Fáil’s cynical approach to both the peace process and to politics.

Why has Pat Rabbitte failed to act on the issue of concentration of media ownership? By Vincent Browne. 

Last year, the businessman Denis O'Brien addressed the proper role of the owner/controller of a media enterprise, saying that the owner/controller should act "at an appropriate distance from editorial matters" and should be aware of "the responsibility that rests with media owners not to interfere with editorial content”.

The Irish political establishment will no doubt use its presidency of the EU to paint a rosy picture of a ‘social' European Union. But such a picture will jar dramatically with the reality of an EU that is the driving force in the austerity destroying lives in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. By Paul Murphy and Kevin Henry.