Affairs of the Nation Archives

AFFAIRS OF THE NATION

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May 1, 2025
GIVEN KNEECAP’S recent troubles with British police and media, along with Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tory party leader Kemi Badenoch, it will be interesting... Read more »

RACING UNCERTAINTY

May 1, 2025

NOT SURPRISINGLY, there has been plenty of comment on the €300,000 winning bet placed with Ladbrokes by stable lad Dylan Phelan, for which... Read more »

VIRTUAL WAR BUT REAL MONEY

May 1, 2025

When VRAI Simulation recently launched its new office in Orlando, Florida, it hyped up the significance of the move with copious references to... Read more »

CENTRAL BANK GENOCIDE CHARGE?

April 17, 2025

THAT THE Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), of all European banks, might face criminal charges over its enabling of the multi-billion sale of... Read more »

BERTIE’S ÁRAS BID

April 17, 2025

BERTIE AHERN is fretting at vacillating Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin’s failure to make up his mind about whether the party... Read more »

EOIN McGEE’S ‘MATERIAL UNCERTAINTY’

April 17, 2025

CELEBRITY FINANCE expert Eoin McGee has been signed up by Mediahuis as a personal finance columnist and will apparently be writing for the... Read more »

BLINDNESS CHARITY BLINDSIDED

April 17, 2025

IT IS strange to see so little media coverage of the appointment by Charities Regulator Madeleine Delaney of inspectors to two blindness charities,... Read more »

ICY DEFROSTED

April 17, 2025

A STEWARDS inquiry may be in order for outspoken online racing pundit Gearoid Norris (aka Icy), who has just found himself ‘unplugged’ from... Read more »

BROPHY’S TIMES

April 17, 2025

THE IRISH TIMES has found it difficult to keep up with the chequered but successful CV of Karl Brophy, CEO of Red Flag... Read more »

NEW FACES ON CHI BOARD

April 17, 2025

THE TIMING wasn’t great for the two new directors who have just been appointed to the board of Children’s Health Ireland (CHI). They... Read more »

LUCINDA CREIGHTON’S PROFITS

April 17, 2025

IT WAS reported in March that a couple of Irish Blueshirt adversaries have been generating significant revenue in their consultancy (ie lobbying) businesses... Read more »

THE MOST RELIABLE FRED HOLROYD

April 17, 2025

It is becoming clear that the Operation Denton inquiry into the crimes of the UVF’s Glenanne gang will establish a modicum of collusion... Read more »

BRITISH/IRISH FAR RIGHT

April 17, 2025

THE DEEPENING relationship between loyalists, British fascists and right-wing activists from the south was very much in evidence at a recent anti-immigration protest... Read more »

TOO MANY TDs FOR MARTIN’S LIKING

April 3, 2025

THERE IS a particular irony in the resentment felt by many Fianna Fáil backbench TDs at the new Dáil speaking-time arithmetic, which has... Read more »

BOD’S BASELAYERS

April 3, 2025

THERE WERE plenty of column inches devoted to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CPPC) pinging Irish international rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll last... Read more »

JOHN MAGNIER’S NEXT RACE?

April 3, 2025

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR at last week’s annual general meeting of the beleaguered Irish Racehorse Trainers Association (IRTA), where there were more questions than answers.... Read more »

TOM LYONS’S SUBPOENA

April 3, 2025

WITH THE Web Summit run in the Four Goldmines coming to an early end, there was no need for Tom Lyons, chief executive... Read more »

MICRO-MANAGING JAMES BROWNE

April 3, 2025

HOUSING MINISTER James Browne provided Sinn Féin’s housing know-all, Eoin Ó Broin, with enough ammo to shoot him down no less than five... Read more »

PÁLÁS PLOT TWIST

April 3, 2025

WHILE IT appeared that a final ‘cut’ had been called on Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe’s bijou Pálás cinema in Galway, the desire... Read more »

AZURE’S AMAZONIAN BOSS

April 3, 2025

A RECENT Irish Times lecture about the shamefully inadequate state of Ireland’s security strategy referred to the “independent security think tank”, the Azure... Read more »

TACKLING NEIL FRANCIS

April 3, 2025

A RECEIVER has just been installed by one of the creditors of a company called KC Property Developments Ltd (KCP), where a 50%... Read more »

MURDERED HACK WAS DOUBLE AGENT

April 3, 2025

GOLDHAWK HAS for long been aware that the Sunday Times has excellent sources within British intelligence but never suspected that MI6’s top asset... Read more »

BANG FOR OUR BUCKS

April 3, 2025

Tánaiste Simon Harris recently speculated that Ireland’s military spending needed to expand rapidly and could soon reach €3bn annually. So it is worth... Read more »

COALITION LEADERS’ TENSIONS ALREADY

March 20, 2025

IT’S EARLY days but with Donald Trump creating a daily sense of geo-political crisis, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris are already... Read more »

RTÉ’S EMPTY CHAIRS

March 20, 2025

WITH WEB Summit co-founder Daire Hickey kicking off a possible nine-week battle in the Four Goldmines with former pal Paddy Cosgrave this week,... Read more »

ANNE O’LEARY’S META HEADACHES

March 20, 2025

IT HAS been a busy couple of weeks for the boss of Mark Zuckerberg’s sprawling Meta operation in Ireland (and also Ibec president),... Read more »

UNSUNG HERO DECLAN RYAN

March 20, 2025

RYANAIR MONEYBAGS Declan Ryan must be delighted with his latest investment – a publishing (or should that be vanity publishing) business called Irelandia... Read more »

MR AND MRS IRISH VIKING

March 20, 2025

BY QUITE some way, the most interesting of the Revenue settlements published last week related to Matthew Gilbert and his company, Matty Irish... Read more »

BREATHNACH’S BROADSIDE

March 20, 2025

THERE AREN’T many figures on the Galway arts scene as high profile as Páraic Breathnach. He co-founded both the Galway Arts Festival and... Read more »

PROPAGANDA PROBLEM

March 20, 2025

WITH RENEWAL of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza this week – several hundred killed and counting – the media should get a grip... Read more »

HEATHER TO SET THE PARTY BLAZING?

March 20, 2025

THE LIST of potential candidates for the Fine Gael nomination for a presidential contest includes former tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald; former European commissioner Mairead... Read more »

GANGING UP ON GLENANNE

March 20, 2025

Marie Anderson, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, has postponed the release of her Operation Newham report on the UVF’s Glenanne gang. The... Read more »

SUBVERSIVE IRISH LANGUAGE

March 20, 2025

FOLLOWING GERMANY’S general election, the electoral surge for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) received much Irish media coverage. The resurgence of the... Read more »

TRUMP V MARTIN

March 6, 2025

WHILE MANY columnists and ‘opinion formers’ have been generously dispensing advice to An Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, on how to evade a Zelenskyy-type thrashing... Read more »

DECLAN GANLEY’S RENEWED AMBITION

March 6, 2025

DESPITE RECENT setbacks for Hermann Kelly and his Irish Freedom Party (IFP), the success of the party’s weekly X Space has brought a... Read more »

MAKHLOUF’S ISRAEL WAR BONDS

March 6, 2025

FLYING UNDER the radar, thanks to a most responsible media, is the arresting issue of the Central Bank of Ireland’s (CBI) enabling the... Read more »