Ireland is still a very rich society - the problem is not how poor we are but how badly we distribute those riches. By Vincent Browne.

The Labour Party is right. Had Fine Gael got an overall majority in the 2011 election, last week’s budget would be much more unfair. Social welfare rates would be cut again, having been cut in the first Fine Gael budget of last year; child benefit would no longer be a universal payment; there would be no mansion charge, the cuts in health and education would be deeper.

Our legislators are in deep denial about the significance of the constitutional framework on abortion that they want to protect. By Vincent Browne.

Nothing that the expert group on abortion has proposed on clarifying the law on when abortion is permissible here would have saved the life of Savita Halappanavar, if what we now understand were the circumstances of her death is correct.

This present government, which promised an end to politics as it had been, has continued in the rut of politics as it has been and continued to use blatant party affiliation as a basis of appointment to the judiciary. By Vincent Browne.

The unborn do not have an unqualified right to life: that qualification centres crucially on the pregnant woman and only she should decide. By Vincent Browne.

How anybody thought an investigation panel into the death of a person in a hospital controlled by the Health Service Executive could include medics from that hospital and a representative of the HSE itself would be beyond belief were it not devised by the hapless James Reilly.

So too is the absence of any clear legal basis for investigation, made worse by the absence of legal expertise on the panel.

There is a clear division between the two government parties on abortion, and also a clear necessity to bring clarity to the law. By Vincent Browne.

On Monday, 14 May 2007, during that year's general election campaign, I did an interview with Enda Kenny on behalf of Village magazine, which I then edited.

The great success of societies that are as spectacularly unequal as the US is the indoctrination of the populace into believing that in so far as they are excluded from the wealth of such societies it is because of their own inadequacies. By Vincent Browne.

There is an impulse to dismiss political rhetoric as just so much blather, harmless blather.

Enda Kenny has reflected the prevailing political consensus throughout his career. By Vincent Browne. 

On the day that yet another piece of bungling by this government was identified by the Supreme Court ("acted wrongfully. . . in a manner that was not fair, equal or impartial"), Enda Kenny was being feted in Berlin as the "European of the Year" - essentially because of the docility of the Irish people surrendering to the troika's austerity diktats.

John F. Kennedy brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust over the placement of missiles in Cuba which, he acknowledged privately, made no difference to American security. By Vincent Browne.

Today, I want to overlook the great issues of our time: the forthcoming austerity budget; the jailing of one of our foremost business icons; the bank debt that is not ours; the shame of Angela Merkel's commendation that our austerity makes Europe stronger.

The spectacle of our lavishly rewarded Government taking the 'tough' decisions to reduce the living standards of the less well off is a grotesque one. By Vincent Browne.

My depiction as anti-Semitic is a standard tactic devised by supporters of the state of Israel to silence or demonise critics of the state and of the state's policies and actions. By Vincent Browne.

On Tuesday 23 October on TV3's Tonight programme, while reviewing the debate on foreign policy between the two candidates for the US presidency, I remarked on how Barack Obama and Mitt Romney were vying with each other in their support for Israel.