The debased media culture that Rupert Murdoch did so much to create - one obsessed with trivia and matters of negligible public interest - has been imported here in spades. By Vincent Browne.

Fifteen years ago, executives of companies controlled by Tony O’Reilly, the then controlling shareholder in Independent News and Media (INM), had a meeting with officials working for the then taoiseach, John Bruton.

In the run up to the general election, both Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore made a number of promises they have had trouble keeping, writes Vincent Browne. 

Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore, the two most powerful public servants in the country, made promises on Roscommon hospital in the February election campaign, both guaranteeing to retain existing A&E services and more.

The Oireachtas should legislate on this issue as they did for other public servants – and that should be that. By Vincent Browne.

This government and the last government have made a thorough mess of the judicial pay issue. The judges have made a thundering mess of it too.

There was, and is, a simple resolution: the Oireachtas should pass an Act providing for a reduction in the pay of judges in precisely the same terms as enactments on the reduction in the pay of other public servants, and that should be that.

Profit maximisation is the primary aim of the media; serving the public interest and holding institutions of power to account is of only incidental concern. By Vincent Browne.

The hacking of the mobile phones of murdered British schoolgirls and their close relatives is not a bizarre occurrence of the modern media world. 

Everyone from Bertie Ahern to George Redmond stands to be reimbursed because of constitutional catch, writes Vincent Browne.

The scale of the national disaster that has befallen us since September 2008 has dwarfed most other issues formerly of central national importance.

A day or two after the count in the February election, the Irish Times produced a supplement giving all the constituency results, along with analysis and profiles of every one of the 166 TDs elected, in a creatively designed package, writes Vincent Browne.

It prompted me to e-mail Geraldine Kennedy, the then editor of the Times complimenting her on the publication.

Kennedy replied that it was the only compliment I had ever paid her in all the years we had known each other (about 35).

An exclusionary venture that values banks ahead of ordinary people – this is not what we signed up for. By Vincent Browne.

Just three years ago we were being bamboozled into voting for the Lisbon Treaty, the then latest stage in the creation of a wondrous European project that would consolidate peace on the continent and promote yet further wealth creation.

Ireland had the most spectacular collapse in personal incomes of all European counties since 2007 - no other country came close to that subsidence, writes Vincent Browne.

But, in spite of that, Ireland is still one of the richer countries in the EU, far richer than many of the recent accession states and many people here are in the super-rich club, whose wealth worldwide has continued to grow.

Rory McIlroy's inclusive approach to success recalls US thinker John Rawls on the quest for justice and fairness, writes Vincent Browne.

The joy over Rory McIlroy's victory in the US Open was not just that an Irishman had achieved so much or that so many of us were all delighted he had recovered so spectacularly from the psychological meltdown in the US Masters.

There was never any real prospect that a new government would be any more successful renegotiating the EU-IMF rescue deal than the outgoing Fianna Fail/Green government were in negotiating it, writes Vincent Browne.

Neither was there any prospect that the priorities which would inform the policies of the new government would be any different to that of the outgoing government: deference to markets and the financial powers, indifference to inequality, if not hostility to the idea of equality.