The chairman of the charity which acquired the car park is now developing it. He denies any conflict of interest. By Marese McDonagh.

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

RTÉ broadcast a false report about Beverley Flynn on 19 June 1998. Nevertheless, she lost a libel action taken against the station and is now on the verge of being declared bankrupt because RTÉ is pursuing her for its legal costs in the case.

Recommendations of previous reports of the Morris Tribunal have been ignored. The political establishment is in denial at the scale of corruption and indiscipline there is within the force. Michael McDowell has protected his flank by the publication of a new disciplinary code but he continues to deny the scale of the problem. By Vincent Browne

Thursday 3 August was the 90th anniversary of Roger Casement's execution. Profile by Vincent Browne

Right from the beginning, RTÉ and others appreciated this was akin to a 'domestic incident' involving a mentally ill man. But it was depicted as a major 'siege' in a way that much have worsened the mental condition of John Carthy and caused him to behave more irrationally. By Vincent Browne

The Abbeylara report by Robert Barr is superb. Repetitious in part, curiously avoiding any overall assessment of the complicity of the media (as we see it) in the tragic outcome, surprisingly supportive of the decision to involve the Garda Emergency Response Unit (ERU) in an incident concerning a mentally-ill man in a painful ordeal. But the report is rigorous in its assessment of Garda incompetence and negligence. Forthright in its findings that Garda witnesses would not be believed and that in a central issue there may have been a cover up.

Few seem to want to grapple with the reality that underlying the Middle East conflict is a terrible injustice in which the West was an accomplice to Zionist barbarism. Acknowledgement of this reality is obstructed by the inevitable retort that any questioning of the legitimacy of the state of Israel represents support for terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and/or anti-Semitism. The facts don't matter.

Vincent Browne on Peter Stringfellow, tax exiles, Mcdowell and An Garda Siochana, ebay, and this week's events.

Constituency boundaries would probably be declared unconstitutional if challenged, but only after publication of official census. By Vincent Browne