If we had a credible opposition, it would be setting the agenda for the next election. Instead it is a member of one of the Government parties, Michael McDowell, that is doing that, and doing it with vigour and ingenuity. On Friday 24 February in a speech to members of the Progressive Democrats in Waterford, he sought to define the issue in the forthcoming election as who will be the junior partner in the next government, because, he argued, it was always the junior partner that defined the ideological colouration of a government.

Bertie Ahern is allergic to decisions; the political system is conditioned to create jobs for the girls and the boys

On 9 February Minister for Justice Michael McDowell delivered a challenging lecture to the media in Ireland, which got surprisingly little media attention. It raised issues pressingly relevant to the media in general and to the role of the media in politics. Here we reproduce some of the key elements of the lecture, along with a commentary

Sinn Féin has abandoned its left-wing alternative to capitalist, market-driven forces in favour of a centrist drive for acceptability.

There is no absolute right to freedom of speech. There is no "right" to defame people or groups and our laws reflect this robustly in the libel laws and other laws. These laws protect an entitlement to respect, which we all recognise as an important (the most important?) ingredient in social relations. The contention that there is a "right" to blaspheme the sacred prophets of religions is a nonsense.

Although in politics for just 27 years years, Taoiseach for just over five years, Garret FitzGerald has been and remains involved in public affairs in Ireland for over 50 years, as a politician, a columnist and campaigner. He has had a very considerable influence on Irish politics, far more than that attaching to his period as Taoiseach, on Church-State relations, on Northern Ireland, on transport, on our involvement in the European Community, on foreign affairs.

Vincent Browne interviewed Garret on the occasion of this 80th birthday in 2006 for Village magazine. The interview is republished here from the Village archive, which is part of Politico's subscription magazine archive. Subscribe here.

George Bush's dreary address to Congress on Iran, Katrina and energy underscored the failure of his Presidency. But any alternative administration is unlikely to be better, writes Vincent Browne

One can understand the grief and upset of the Holohan family at the seeming imponderables in how the case against the killer of their son, Wayne O'Donoghue, was conducted and the apparently meagre four-year sentence that was applied. Majella Holohan, in her moving impact statement, expressed wonderment at why certain seemingly obvious evidential facts were not highlighted in the case. Her husband, Mark, expressed disdain at the sentence.

This is what passes for a newspaper: the Sunday Independent of 22 January 2006