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IVAN’S SHY COLLEAGUES

Date: November 27, 2025 -

IVAN YATES – pundit, broadcaster, spin doctor, political tutor, after-dinner speaker, former minister and ex-bookie, among other things – has received plaudits from members of the Oireachtas media committee. This was not so much for his performance last week but for at least showing up, unlike other personalities in the nether world of lobbyists and/or… Read more »

PROFILE: CIARÁN MAC GIOLLA BHÉIN

Date: November 27, 2025 -

There’s a radical wind beginning to rage through the Irish-language movement, with younger and more assertive activists coming to the fore demanding rights rather than begging for concessions. Foremost among this new generation is the current uachtarán of Conradh na Gaeilge (Gaelic League), Ciarán Mac Giolla Bhéin. He is a Belfast man, brought up in… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: JAMES O’CONNOR

Date: November 27, 2025 -

IF MICHEÁL Martin thought that a carefully scripted display of contrition would fend off his critics in Fianna Fáil, he underestimated the degree of anger that many deputies feel at his judgement and style of governance, as well as his failure to deliver resolutions to multiple economic crises. Foremost among those pushing to hold the… Read more »

CATHERINE HEANEY’S HEROES

Date: November 27, 2025 -

FORMER BLUESHIRT big wig Simon Coveney recently popped up in the Irish Examiner, where he was waxing lyrical about life after politics. He has certainly been keeping busy and the one-time tánaiste now “travels from Cobh to Copenhagen to Abu Dhabi as part of a number of new ventures he has jumped into”. These ventures… Read more »

MANOEUVRES AT MILLTOWN GOLF CLUB

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THERE ARE changes afoot in the exclusive Milltown Golf Club in south Co Dublin and it is not just the clubhouse that is being completely revamped – at a cost of around €10m. Membership structures are also getting a renovation, which will see a new category of membership introduced for 30-40 year olds (the most… Read more »

GRÁINNE SEOIGE AND JIM GAVIN

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THAT TAOISEACH Micheál Martin should choose to speak about last year’s disappointing general election campaign by Galway West Fianna Fáil candidate Gráinne Seoige from the G20 summit in South Africa says much about his political anxiety right now. The FF leader said it was sad that Gráinne regarded her Galway West electoral experience as the… Read more »

DALTON PHILIPS’S PAYDAY

Date: November 27, 2025 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO Dalton Philips, the CEO of food giant Greencore, who trousered a handsome €6.5m last year on foot of a good performance by the company. The scale of his remuneration could very well surprise those who remember Dalton’s disastrous exit from Dublin Airport and his eminently forgettable stint as boss of supermarket giants Morrisons…. Read more »

BONO’S EXPENSIVE BOOZE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

IT’S FULL speed ahead for the proposed Church of Oak whiskey distillery backed by Bono and Paddy McKillen Sr. A new chief executive is now in place but the millions are being gobbled up at quite a pace. The company that acquired the five-acre site and 200-year-old Ballykelly mill is called Jewelfield Ltd and Bono… Read more »

TONY SMURFIT’S FORM

Date: November 27, 2025 -

EARLIER THIS month, Tony Smurfit was out front at the giant Smurfit Westrock’s announcement of the group’s “first-of-its-kind” €40m dedicated clinical packaging facility near Dublin Airport, with Tony saying he was “immensely proud of this ground-breaking and beautifully designed new plant”. It has been a pretty good year for Monaco-based Tony, who was lauded by… Read more »

PAT KENNY ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

It’s not that long ago that Pat Kenny’s radio show was a bastion of climate scepticism. As recently as 15 years ago on RTÉ, the broadcaster was still platforming climate deniers and pouring cold water on the climate science consensus. In the intervening years, he has reigned in his contrarianism. But last week we got… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 23

Date: November 27, 2025 -

SHARON MCCABE’S MOVE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

NOT SURPRISINGLY, the judicial review proceedings lodged by 20 denizens of D6 against the €10bn MetroLink plan garnered plenty of headlines this week. Of most interest to Goldhawk is a company called Kalamunda Unlimited, owned by moneybags pharmacist-turned-investor Sharon McCabe. She cashed in her chips in the family-founded McCabe’s Pharmacy chain last year, offloading it… Read more »

MICHEÁL V BERTIE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

AN INTERESTING take on why Micheál Martin was so anxious to block Bertie Ahern from becoming Fianna Fáil’s presidential candidate was published, not in the southern media, but the north, following President Catherine Connolly’s inauguration. Retired Belfast academic and weekly Irish News columnist Patrick Murphy wrote that Bertie let all TDs in the Dáil know… Read more »

REPUBLICANS ATTACK NEW RIGHT

Date: November 27, 2025 -

Over recent years there has been a rapid decline in punishment beatings and kneecappings north of the border. But a recent statement by a group calling itself the Socialist Republican Front (SRF) outlined a number of attacks that are bucking that particular trend. The statement detailed attacks on activists associated with Clann Éireann (CÉ) –… Read more »

ALLEGATIONS AND SECRET RECORDINGS

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THE SETTLEMENT announced last week of the explosive High Court proceedings lodged by racehorse trainer Jim Gorman will have come as a relief for the hapless Monaco-based billionaire horse owner (and sometimes trainer) Luke Comer, who has generated more than his fair share of headlines in the sport of kings. The latest story, however, has… Read more »

BBC LIBERALS V TRUMP

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THE BBC recently apologised to Donald Trump for its editing of footage of him on the day of the January 6 riots in 2021. This development might persuade gullible viewers to buy the incessant propaganda from the right-wing UK press that the Beeb is a nest of pinkos and worse. Nothing could be further from… Read more »

GENERAL CLANCY’S FRONT LINE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

FORMER Chief of staff of the Irish Defence Forces, General Seán Clancy, now chair of the European Union Military Committee (EUMC), recently declared that Ukraine “represents the front line for Europe at this point in time”. In the same week and in the aftermath of Catherine Connolly’s presidential win, Taoiseach Micheál Martin would likely have… Read more »

‘MODERATE’ NATIONAL PARTY

Date: November 27, 2025 -

WHEN PROMINENT National Party (NP) member Keith Woods (pseudonym of Keith O’Brien from Roscommon) hosted Ryan Williams on his podcast, he demonstrated just how extreme NP politics remain, despite Justin Barrett being removed as leader. A leading member of the British fascist party Patriotic Alternative (PA), Williams is a self-proclaimed neo-Nazi and fascist. Many reports… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

Ireland’s loss is the world’s gain. Hildegard Naughton on Paschal Donohoe’s departure, Morning Ireland, RTÉ Radio One We will certainly miss him [Donohoe], but there’s always strong intellectual vigour in Fine Gael and that will persist. Wouldbe leader Jennifer Carroll MacNeill defends the quality of ministerial talent in her party, Irish Times “Paschal” as he… Read more »

MICK O’LEARY’S MOANING

Date: November 27, 2025 -

For a man of enormous wealth, Michael O’Leary does an impressive line in poor-mouth whinging about how his airline is being screwed by mean-spirited governments and “eco-lunacy”. Listeners to the Ryanair boss’s frequent radio interviews could be forgiven for thinking the airline’s very survival was threatened by the Dublin Airport passenger cap. The business pages… Read more »

COVID IGNORED THE BORDER

Date: November 27, 2025 -

Former Appeals court judge Baroness Hallett’s first major report on government performance during Covid castigated the UK’s cabinet and all the devolved administrations. Unsurprisingly, she excoriated Stormont and laid bare the dysfunctional nature of the executive. Divisions along party lines meant it was “deeply divided” and making decisions was “chaotic, and infected by political machinations”…. Read more »

HUTCH, MARY LOU, BERTIE AND PASCHAL

Date: November 27, 2025 -

PASCHAL DONOHOE’S ascension into World Bank heaven leaves behind an earthly constituency in Dublin Central (DC) where political reality is less than celestial and fallen angels litter the streets. How appropriate then that Dublin lord mayor Ray McAdam should be the favourite to take the Fine Gael nomination for the by-election here. The left alliance… Read more »

LAWLESS’S LOYAL LEADERSHIP LAMENT

Date: November 27, 2025 -

A SUB-PLOT in the political sitcom into which the Fianna Fáil leadership turmoil has degenerated is the fall-back position that Micheál Martin and his GHQ staff officers had hoped to organise when the dreadful day came that would see Meehole replaced. Until recently the over-promoted public expenditure minister and director of elections, Jack Chambers, had… Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN LOSES ‘MAIL’

Date: November 27, 2025 -

COMPARE AND CONTRAST, as teachers demand, the different lines on Micheál Martin and his designated successor as Fianna Fáil leader, Jack Chambers, by Mail on Sunday political editor John Lee since FF’s disastrous Jim Gavin/presidential farce began last summer. In July Lee gave the Cabinet members his marks out of 10, awarding the presumed dauphin,… Read more »

JOURNALIST AWARDS: LESS IS MORE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THERE WERE issues galore for the organisers of the 2025 NewsBrands Irish Journalism Awards to chew over following the annual €2,000-a-table Mansion House bash, hosted earlier this month by Matt Cooper, not least the continuing boycott of the whole set-up by Ireland’s largest news publisher. The Belgian owners of the Mediahuis group decided some time… Read more »

WHITE FEATHERS TO STARMER

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THE ADULTS in the room (Irish Times/RTÉ hacks) are worried about the elephant also in the room (Russians) preparing to invade western Europe after they take Kharkov – 10 miles from Russia – following nearly four years of war. But what really irks the war correspondents in Dublin 2 and 4 is the failure of… Read more »

SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Date: November 27, 2025 -

A RECENT investigation by the Guardian in the UK looked into the finer details of the workings of the tax credit scheme for film production across the Irish Sea. The conclusion in the case of assorted films that made cursory appearances, at best, on cinema screens, was that the British taxpayer was actually fully funding many… Read more »

PÁLÁS SEQUEL

Date: November 27, 2025 -

SO FAREWELL then Solas-Galway Picture Palace, the company that was incorporated in 2007 to develop the ‘Solas’ arthouse cinema for Galway, with Lelia Doolan in the chair. Last week, this company was officially dissolved, eight years after going into liquidation, while a new plan for the property looks set to emerge soon. A culture department… Read more »

SKELTON’S SQUAD DEPTH

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THE PURSUIT by Willie Mullins of a third straight UK National Hunt Trainers Championship is being met with stern opposition from Dan Skelton, whom he narrowly beat in the last two seasons. Last season Skelton led Mullins into the final day at Sandown in April, only to once again get pipped at the post. The… Read more »

BYRNES’S ‘PORSCHE’ GAMBLE

Date: November 27, 2025 -

CHARLES BYRNES is no stranger to making racing headlines and did so again when landing another sizeable gamble at Dundalk earlier this month. The David Fowler-owned Porsche Lad arrived late and fast under rider Sean Davis to land the spoils for the Byrnes team, after collaring Eoin Doyle’s Moondharrig close to home. The former horse… Read more »

LOBSTER SPLOT

Date: November 27, 2025 -

THE VENERABLE Lobster Pot restaurant in Ballsbridge has been celebrating a full 40 years in business but there were no congratulations from the Sunday Times, whose new critic Conor Stevens found nothing to celebrate in D4 earlier this month. Given the stretched finances in the restaurant business, the ST’s hatchet job will have left a… Read more »

FALCON OIL SHAREHOLDERS TO BENEFIT FROM STAYING IN THE GAME

Date: November 27, 2025 -

PHILIP O’QUIGLEY has been struggling for the last 13 years, since he was appointed CEO of Falcon Oil & Gas in May 2012, to keep this Irish exploration company alive and develop its ‘non-conventional’ oil and gas interests in (mainly) Australia, South Africa and Hungary. No doubt, he is delighted to have negotiated a £128m… Read more »

PRIMARK SPIN-OFF PLAN OFFERS INVESTORS AN OPPORTUNITY

Date: November 27, 2025 -

TODAY THE Primark/Penneys operation dominates its parent company, Associated British Foods (ABF), with sales of £9.5bn and operating profits of £1.1bn in the 12 months to September 13, 2025 – representing 49% of group turnover and, more significantly, 63% of group operating profits. Fans of Moneybags will be well aware that a potential spin-off of… Read more »

JOHN BRENNAN’S BLUES

Date: November 27, 2025 -

JOHN AND Francis Brennan made one of their habitual appearances in the Indo earlier this month, taking the opportunity over four pages in the Weekend Magazine to wax lyrical about hotels, presidential bids, their health, their private lives and other assorted minutiae. But there was a very important message embedded in there – the challenges… Read more »

GARRETT SIMONS’ PLOT TWIST

Date: November 27, 2025 -

ONE OF the longest-running and most intriguing film and TV plots Goldhawk has followed featured the (mostly unsuccessful) efforts of John Arkins’s Irish Film Workers Association (IFWA) to establish the rights and entitlements of film and television workers in high-profile production companies such as Element Pictures and Metropolitan Films International (MFI), who tend to categorise… Read more »

PIOTR’S ‘GRAVE CHARGES’

Date: November 27, 2025 -

PITY POOR old Piotr Skoczylas of Scotchstone Capital, who has been fighting a valiant multi-front legal battle against the state, seeking compensation on foot of its expensive bail-out of Permanent TSB (which is now in the process of being sold back into private ownership). Skoczylas has been representing himself at various levels of the legal… Read more »