Affairs of the Nation Archives

AFFAIRS OF THE NATION

Ian Paisley Sean O’Riordan Margaret Sweeney Jay Bourke Ellie Kisyombe Francesca McDonagh Ted Cunningham National Space Centre An Irish Goodbye Oscar Robert Quirke Ciara Kelly Executive Women Gathering Doug Taylor Florian Haufe Robbie Henshaw Bill Shipsey Breaking the Silence L’Ecrivain Ronan McNally National Lottery Michael Roche Energy Action Balls.ie Newspapers VAT Abbey Theatre Patricia Madden Irish Banking Culture Board Randox Aoife Gallagher Book Dalai Lama Trinity Trevor White RTÉ Chairperson Shane Houlihan Noel Smyth IKC Bob Geldof Landlord Ireland Neutrality Ukraine

CLINTEL’S DECLARATION

August 25, 2022
WITH EVIDENCE of climate change impossible to avoid this summer a Dutch-based group Clintel, mainly funded by a real-estate millionaire, issued a statement that... Read more »

HEAVY GOING AT HRI

August 25, 2022
THE LONG overdue publication of the annual report of Brian Kavanagh’s Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) agency is due next month and there will be... Read more »

Dermot McCarthy Ireland Energy Independence

DERMOT McCARTHY’S REVIEW

August 25, 2022
WITH THE hapless Irish public facing a ‘perfect storm’ of power cuts, fuel rationing and soaring prices both this and next winter, the Government... Read more »

ALTADA SETS THE RECORD STRAIGHT

August 25, 2022
IT HAS been a hectic August for Allan Beechinor and Niamh Parker, the principals in the Altada artificial intelligence (AI) outfit tipped to be... Read more »

‘TANS’ WRITTEN OUT OF HISTORY

August 25, 2022
A DISAPPOINTED Charlie ‘BlackandTanAgain’ Flanagan and friends will not, as promised, be organising another effort to celebrate the contribution of the Royal Irish Constabulary... Read more »

KINCORA WHISTLE BLOWER DIES

August 25, 2022
CAPTAIN BRIAN GEMMELL, who ran loyalist agents for MI5 in the mid-1970s, has died. When Gemmell discovered that boys were being abused by a... Read more »

ZUZANA’S ZETBACK

August 25, 2022
GOLDHAWK SPOTTED that a judgment for a hefty $438,000 (€439,000) has been registered against Co Waterford developer Shane Houlihan and his American wife, Zuzana... Read more »

AN ENEMY OF THE CROWN

August 25, 2022
NEW INFORMATION about a decade-long MI6 smear campaign against Charles Haughey and even an operation to sully St John Hume is about to be... Read more »

DUBAI JUDGES: WHO KNEW AND WHEN?

August 11, 2022
SABINA HIGGINS’S public spat may have helped to obscure not so much the appointment of heavyweight Irish judges Frank Clarke and Peter Kelly to... Read more »

BISHOPS CENSORED!

August 11, 2022
THE NORTHERN Ireland Equality Commission is mulling over a request for “advice” from an unusual quarter – the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, Archbishop... Read more »

ALL ABOUT EVA

August 11, 2022
HEALTH GURU Eva Orsmond (previously of Operation Transformation fame) was back on RTÉ this week with the second series on her attempt to open... Read more »

FRANCES RUANE’S SHORT RUN

August 11, 2022
AS GOLDHAWK predicted (see The Phoenix 17/6/22), former economist Frances Ruane has been given just a two-year extension to her initial five-year term as... Read more »

FRANC’S UKRAINIAN BONUS

August 11, 2022
GOLDHAWK’S favourite wedding planner, Peter Kelly, aka ‘Franc’, has been doing rather better out of the State coffers this year than was the case... Read more »

MORGAN O’SULLIVAN’S CAST

August 11, 2022
THERE HAS been an immediate reaction from the Irish Film Workers Association (IFWA) to a piece in the Sunday Times on disputes at the... Read more »

CHECKING THE FACT CHECKERS

August 11, 2022
‘FACT CHECKING’ has become a virtuous activity of liberal and not-so-liberal agencies (in the West) fighting “misinformation” (in the East) and one of the... Read more »

GREAT GREEN GAS WARS CONTINUE

August 11, 2022
AS IRELAND struggles to decarbonise its energy system in line with ambitious 2030 targets and in light of the deteriorating international energy landscape, a... Read more »

MI6, BORIS AND THE LEBEDEVS

August 11, 2022
Once upon a time, Britain’s Independent newspaper was owned by Sir Tony O’Reilly, Thatcher’s favourite Irishman. Then it was a platform to question the... Read more »

RUSH TO ARMS

July 28, 2022
THREE POLLS on Irish neutrality since the Russian invasion of Ukraine have disappointed the dogs of war in government and the Defence Forces who... Read more »

Nóirín Hegarty Sunday Times Staff Cuts Jobs

MURDOCH’S DAYS OF CARNAGE

July 28, 2022
WHAT HACKS at Sunday Times Ireland and Times Ireland called ‘days of carnage’ came to an end last week with more than a dozen... Read more »

SIMON COVENEY’S MEDIA FUND

July 28, 2022
ONE HIGHLY publicised element of the report by Brian MacCraith’s Future of Media Commission was the rejection of the recommendation that the licence fee... Read more »

ENDA KENNY’S ENERGY SHARES

July 28, 2022
WHILE IT may be assumed by many that Enda Kenny is taking things easy these days, apart from hosting the odd sleepy RTÉ documentary... Read more »

COLM O’GORMAN’S LEGACY

July 28, 2022
GOLDHAWK’S favourite charity executive, Colm O’Gorman, is now settling in as a senior director at the Global Refugee Sponsorship Initiative. Given that it is... Read more »

HELEN MCENTEE’S CRITIC

July 28, 2022
JUSTICE MINISTER Helen McEntee came under fire this month when shutting down visa exemption rules for refugees travelling to Ireland from other European countries.... Read more »

GARRY O’SULLIVAN’S MAMMON

July 28, 2022
WHILE THE poor old print media has been under severe pressure in recent years as the digital giants like Google and Facebook hoover up... Read more »

AGRI-CATASTROPHE

July 28, 2022
Hysteria has this week been dialled up to 11 as the agri-industrial sector went into full scale panic mode in a last gasp effort... Read more »

SECRET DIPLOMAT’S KIDNAP FILES

July 28, 2022
FOREIGN AND Commonwealth Office (FCO) files have just been released which shed some light on the IRA kidnapping of Germany’s Consul in Belfast, Thomas... Read more »

NETFLIX’S NEW DRAMA

July 14, 2022
IT CAN be hard to escape the name of Ian Bailey these days after the gardaí reopened the infamous Sophie Toscan du Plantier case,... Read more »

SPOOKS DO FOR BORIS

July 14, 2022
HOW FASCINATING it is to note that two and more of the senior British civil servants that downed British PM, Boris Johnson, have links... Read more »

PETER FITZGERALD’S RANDOX TESTING BONANZA

July 14, 2022
LAST WEEK, the Advertising Standard Authority of Ireland (ASAI) issued its latest bulletin on complaints received over advertisements alleged to be misleading or offensive.... Read more »

NGI NEW BOARD

July 14, 2022
THE NATIONAL Gallery of Ireland (NGI) is looking for four new board members. Presumably, by the time they are in situ, we will know... Read more »

MARTIN SHANAHAN’S SURPRISE EXIT

July 14, 2022
THERE WAS plenty of praise for outgoing IDA Ireland boss Martin Shanahan, who surprised everyone by calling it a day at the state agency... Read more »

SOPHIE’S COLD CASE REVIEW

July 14, 2022
WHAT IS the real motivation behind the cold case review and reopening of the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier 26... Read more »

ISRAEL MONITORS THE IRISH

July 14, 2022
IN MARCH this year, Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, had a pop at Irish parliamentarians – during a UN... Read more »

IIEA NEW MANDARIN: DAVID O’SULLIVAN

July 14, 2022
THE NEW director general of the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), David O’Sullivan, has been quick to use the institute’s favourite platform,... Read more »

MUTINOUS NOISES

July 14, 2022
THE MOST interesting thing about that internal, unpublished government Defence Forces report on the state of relations between the Defence Forces and the defence... Read more »

MARY AIKEN’S PALS

June 30, 2022
WITHOUT DOUBT, the most interesting of the women conferred with the freedom of Dublin City last month is Mary Aiken (whose latest gig is... Read more »