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December 3 - December 16, 2021
Affairs of the Nation
SIMON COVENEY’S CONUNDRUM
HOW LONG more will Minister Simon Coveney’s floundering and dangerous foreign policy agenda in the African continent go unreported in the Irish media? Ireland has had a military presence in... Read more »
CIARA KELLY’S RUDE HEALTH
ONE OF the names on star agent Noel Kelly’s roster of ‘talent’ is doctor-turned broadcaster Ciara Kelly, who has just filed some revealing accounts. Kelly gets about a bit and... Read more »
THE ‘IT’ IN TRINNERS
IRISH TIMES editor Paul O’Neill was presumably somewhat relieved that a referendum carried out at Trinity College Dublin fell short of having the newspaper officially boycotted by the university. It... Read more »
ROBERT QUIRKE’S VENTILATORS
MORE THAN 20 months after Covid-19 impacted this country, one of the players who made a killing by importing ventilators is now living in a sunny paradise, where he has... Read more »
JOHN GOODWIN’S PENTHOUSE
IT WAS not quite the raffle result that John Goodwin expected when he put his expensive Grand Canal penthouse apartment up for grabs, courtesy of a UK-based outfit called Raffall.... Read more »
ISRAELI PROPAGANDA BLITZ
FORMER UCD president Hugh Brady is moving from the president’s chair at the University of Bristol to become president of Imperial College London. But Brady leaves behind him an unholy... Read more »
CHARLIE AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE
GARY MURPHY’S book Haughey may disappoint some long-standing Phoenix readers as the author barely addresses the Squire’s bruising entanglements with Her Majesty’s spooks. Murphy refers briefly to the book Operation... Read more »
IMMORAL IRISH
MANY READERS of The Phoenix will recognise the episodic campaigns for Ireland to formally join up with the incipient EU military machine being constructed and spend billions on serious hardware... Read more »
SQUIRE HOCKEY’S BEN DUNNE DOSH
IN THE biography Haughey, Gary Murphy writes that RTÉ’s Prime Time reported on April 17, 1997, that Ben Dunne had given CJ Haughey more than a £IRm over a period... Read more »
Pillars of Society
PROFILE: RODERIC O’GORMAN
RODERIC O’GORMAN is turning into the Green party’s answer to Fianna Fáil’s health minister Stephen Donnelly, with a series of apologies, contradictions and U-turns.... Read more »
The Young Bloods
YOUNG BLOOD: CATHAL CROWE
WITH FIANNA Fáil paralysed by its alliance with Fine Gael, and uncertainty as to its future, attention is turning to where the new TDs... Read more »
Fit to Print?
BROWNE BEGGED HAUGHEY FOR CASH
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT extracts from the biography, Haughey, by academic Gary Murphy, opened with a passage about how the founder of Magill magazine, Vincent Browne, had written to Squire hockey on... Read more »
SHATTER V MAIL ON SUNDAY
ALAN SHATTER has been pursuing the Mail on Sunday and its political writer John Drennan for some time after he delivered a line on the former justice minister that greatly... Read more »
TWEED NON-STORY AND THE ‘IRISH TIMES’
THE RECENT death of former Ireland rugby player Davy Tweed did not excite interest on the Irish Times news pages. A brief sports supplement report mentioned his four caps in 1995 plus... Read more »
Last Refuge
REGINA DOHERTY’S COMEBACK
THE COMEBACK campaign of former minister Regina Doherty, who lost her Meath East seat at the last general election, has been revving up to full throttle in recent months. But... Read more »
LABOUR’S PROSPECTS
HOW APPROPRIATE that ‘Austerity junkie’ Brendan Howlin, former public expenditure minister who damaged Labour’s credibility with its working-class base perhaps beyond repair, should have made it onto the Irish Independent’s... Read more »
NO DESSERT FOR BARRISTERS
FURTHER EVIDENCE that throwing money at government party Fine Gael is not only a waste of time but positively counterproductive comes with the latest appointments to the High Court. Goldhawk... Read more »
BIG PHIL AND VLAD TO MAKE UP?
THE PROPOSITION that Big Phil Hogan would be amenable to reconciliation with tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, if the latter would only call him for a chat, was... Read more »
Hush Hush
JUSTIN BARRETT IN TWO MINDS…
ON SATURDAY, November 27, almost a thousand people protested outside the GPO against Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine passports in probably the biggest gathering of citizens fighting governments’ restrictions in the... Read more »
Bog Cuttings
BOG CUTTINGS
‘I Am The King’ Letterkenny District Court heard the case of Antonio Meruddu (44), of the Headford Arms, Headford, Co Galway, who was charged with driving with no insurance, having... Read more »
Fowl Emissions
FOR PEAT’S SAKE, REGINA
FOR AT least the last decade, Fine Gael has made little secret of its disdain for climate and environmental issues. Lately, sensing a shift in the zeitgeist, the Blueshirts have... Read more »
The Hot Air Brigade
THE HOT AIR BRIGADE
I am also working on expanding the range with well-thought-through additions that make sense to the brand’s story and ethos. Aimee Connolly, ‘Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year’, on her plans... Read more »
High Society
HERITAGE TRUST REFRESH
THIS WEEK was the closing date for any tweedies interested in joining the board of the underfunded Irish Heritage Trust (IHT). The trust, where Anne O’Donoghue is in situ as... Read more »
AMANDA PRATT’S NEXT MOVE
LAST WEEK’S examination of the Avoca operation in the Irish Times was less than flattering for owner Aramark, who purchased the high-profile food and retail business from the Pratt family... Read more »
Behind the Scenes
NATIONAL GALLERY GLITCH
IT LOOKS like, surprise, surprise, there will be a bunch of empty seats at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) board meetings, as the terms of no less than six... Read more »
LARRY BASS’S GOOD NEWS
SCREEN IRELAND’S third quarter ‘loans’ for producers popped up online last week and one of the winners is Larry Bass, who exited the RTÉ board after concerns were raised by... Read more »
Sport of Kings
ROTHWELL’S REACTION
PHILIP ROTHWELL is certainly making an impression with his recent interviews on Racing TV. The Wicklow trainer delivered an emotional performance, after landing a minor race at Cheltenham’s November meeting,... Read more »
MCNALLY DOES IT AGAIN
CONTROVERSIAL TRAINER Ronan McNally got one over on the bookies once again when landing a well-executed gamble with All Class at Punchestown. The mare had also landed a sizable gamble... Read more »
AFTER THE RAID
AS THE dust settles on that raid on a premises near Monasterevin, Co Kildare, the IHRB confirmed that hair and blood tests carried out on horses present at the farm... Read more »
PAPERWORK PREVARICATION
IT APPEARS the IHRB has a significant backlog of cases on its books judging by a recent case that came before the referrals committee of Nick Wachman, Peter Reynolds and... Read more »
Books
LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN – RODDY DOYLE
IN THIS slim short fiction collection, Roddy Doyle has managed to get to market one of the very first fiction efforts to encapsulate (cash in on? – Ed) the pandemic.... Read more »
Reviews
HIDDEN ASSETS – RTÉ ONE
FOR WHAT it’s worth, the end credit on RTÉ’s latest ‘local’ drama series Hidden Assets, reads: “Produced by Saffron Moon, Potemkino, and Facet 4, (c) MMXX1 Saffron Moon Ltd/Potemkino Port... Read more »
Moneybags
REAPING THE PROFITS AT ORIGIN ENTERPRISES
TOM O’MAHONY hung up his CEO boots at Origin Enterprises in June 2020 and passed the baton on to Sean Coyle, who arrived at the company in September 2018 as... Read more »
FINEOS SHARES SKY HIGH DOWN UNDER
FINEOS IS one of the few Irish so-called unicorns and happens to be quoted on the Australian Stock Exchange. It was founded in 1993 by DCU graduate Mick Kelly and... Read more »
Brief Cases
TAXMAN TAKES A BEATING
GOLDHAWK regularly features the Revenue Commissioners in these pages, mostly when some slippery type has been caught bang to rights for evasion. It is rare to see the dreaded taxman... Read more »
BARNEY O’HARE BEATS THE ODDS
THE NAME of one of the few independent chains of bookies in the country, Bar One Racing (“where the customer is always No 1”), has been cropping up a lot... Read more »
SALLY O’BRIEN’S LAST PINT
THE NAME of Sally O’Brien will be familiar to readers of a certain age, especially Harp drinkers, given the way she might look at ye. It is unlikely, though, that... Read more »
CHRIS WHOLEY’S SIN BIN
WHILE FORMER rugby pundit with Mediahuis, Neil Francis, is still maintaining a low profile, the former international will presumably have noted a missed tackle by his business partner in the... Read more »
EAMONN ROTHWELL’S RICHES
ONE OF the wealthiest chief executives in this country has to be Eamonn Rothwell, the boss of Irish Continental Group (ICG), which is behind Irish Ferries – a business that... Read more »
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