Following the introduction of his first ‘austerity’ budget in 2009, Irish Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan incensed many Irish people by boasting while traveling abroad that there ‘would have been riots’ had similar cuts to pay, pensions and welfare been imposed in other countries.

I defy anyone to go to Erris, County Mayo and spend time with the local people there without finding that the place eventually gets into your soul.

These days in Ireland, people are mostly either a ’Yes’ or a ‘No’.  There are also, crucially, the ‘Dont Knows’.   This situation has come about because the disobedient citizens of Ireland defeated the European Union’s proposed Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in 2008.

In April 2006, life-long native of Erris, Co Mayo, Willie Corduff was honoured to go to California to accept the coveted Goldman Environmental Prize – awarded to him for his efforts to protect his community from environmental and other threats it faces from the proposed Shell/ Statoil/ Marathon Consortium’s Corrib Gas project.

The curious professional relationship between health minister Mary Harney and her husband, Brian Geoghegan, has raised quite a few eyebrows among friends, critics and colleagues over many years.  Their paths have crossed in many ways not least during Harney's most recent terms as Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and since 3003 as Minister for Health.

This analysis of our interview with Harry Browne is not a critique of his journalism but rather of the coercive effect on him of the professional, corporate media environment as it seemed evident during the interview. We contend all mainstream journalists are unavoidably affected by this phenomenon – even those who are conscious of it.

The American journalist Harry Browne has lived and worked in Ireland for 23 years.  A committed anti-war campaigner, his recently published book ‘Hammered by the Irish’  is an account of an anti-war action by five activists who have come to be known as ‘The Pitstop Ploughshares’ – and who together disabled an Iraq-bound US warplane at Shannon airport in  February 2003.

"The people who got us into this mess in the first place are not the people to get us out of it." [David McWilliams, Irish Independent, 19 November 2008] This is the most pertinent advice from any journalist since the simmering economic crisis boiled over. In general, however, a crushing absence of credibility infuses Ireland’s newsrooms. The proverbial elephant in the room remains unfathomably neglected.

Journalists are too often criticised for being pessimistic, lacking balance and failing to take due recognition of good news. One Irish Independent writer referred to this alleged phenomenon as the “doom and gloom blackout of the Irish Times”.