The proposed amendment to the Constitution on the issue of Oireachtas inquiries carries with it an inherent menace. By Vincent Browne.

Pat Rabbitte has indicated that Denis O'Brien will be stopped in his tracks if he attempts to expand his media empire here, but INM already controls far too much of the Irish media. By Vincent Browne.

Pat Rabbitte has offered interesting insights into the present Government’s plans for new legislation on media ownership, expressing concern for the concentration of ownership across media sectors.

The claims of several of the current presidential candidates with regard to the role of the president ignore the constitutional limitations of the office. By Vincent Browne.

In March 1991, Mary Robinson, our then president, almost provoked a constitutional crisis in planning to defy the government and the taoiseach of the day, Charles Haughey, on a matter that related directly to government policy on international relations.

Despite all the assurances, it seems Nama is a bailout scheme for developers, who will escape paying back hundreds of millions because of it. We'll pick up the tab instead. By Vincent Browne.

Harry Crosbie, one of our more ebullient developers, was on the Saturday Night Show, hosted by Brendan O’Connor, on RTÉ at the weekend talking about the children’s hospital at the Mater, of which he is chairman.

All this talk about the president being the protector of the constitution is just the silly conceit of people who fantasise themselves in that role. By Vincent Browne.

While the world financial system teeters on the brink of a far worse crisis than that of 2008, we here in Ireland are distracting ourselves with the vacuities of the presidential campaign. By Vincent Browne.

A spokesperson for the German government in Berlin said a few hours ago (this is being written at lunchtime yesterday) that the German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, had told his cabinet colleagues there were “no plans” to enlarge the European Financial Stability Fund beyond €440 billion.

The presidential election campaign is likely to be about Martin McGuinness. Not the presidency, not any of the other candidatures, just McGuinness. That is unless something startling emerges about one of the other candidates or one of them makes a catastrophic faux pas.

One intention of Brendan Howlin's would-be Oireachtas inquiries would be to keep lawyers out, thereby leaving people at serious risk of having their reputations unfairly impugned, writes Vincent Browne.

At an event recently during the Dún Laoghaire Book Festival, the former British chancellor of the Exchequer, Alastair Darling, said that on the day before the Irish government gave the blanket guarantee to the banks, the then minister for finance, the late Brian Lenihan, assured him the Government would not give a blanket guarantee to the banks.

The key problem with Brendan Howlin's proposed Constitutional amendment is that Dáil is in no sense independent. By Vincent Browne.

Suicide rates have not decreased, despite improved treatments for mental illness, probably because those most at risk are not being identified and treated. In Ireland, Minister for State with responsibility for this area Kathleen Lynch may have the will to tackle the issue, but not the funding. By Vincent Browne.