Shortly after 10pm on the evening of Thursday, 22 May, Tom McGurk, asked his interviewee, the aged journalist, Mary Kenny, right at the beginning of the one hour programme, the following question: “Do you remember your first memory?”

The RTÉ formats remain the same, tired dreary, obsolete - The Late Late Show returns and the RTÉ One Radio schedule has not been livened up much. And a once bright talent, Ryan Tubridy has been encouraged to belittle his ability and his substance. By Maggie Kenneally

Brian Cowen has been ubiquitous during the election campaign. On Questions and Answers before the campaign, on Prime Time repeatedly and on The Week in Politics. Combative, clever, commanding but... There is an aggressiveness about him which is off-putting and which I think may have done damage to his party. That air of contempt for opposing views (occasionally oh-so-consciously repressed), that snarling, bullying, belligerent, demeanour. I know him slightly through El Señor de la Casa (ie the husband), who was at Blackhall Place with him in the 1980s.

The election campaign started ominously for RTÉ Radio. On the morning of Sunday, 29 April, Sean O'Rourke began the station's election coverage with a 8am start, but for over two hours, there was not a mention of the story of the day, Frank Connolly's exclusive in the Mail on Sunday, about Bertie's extraordinary financial arrangements. There was the usual brisk (breathless?) traverse through the issues, no illumination and not a word about the Mail on Sunday story.