Last Refuge Archives - The Phoenix Magazine

Last Refuge

Ó RÍORDÁIN’S DOUBLE STRIKE

June 12, 2019
AODHÁN Ó RÍORDÁIN recently made a most paradoxical call for Labour leader Brendan Howlin to lead the party into the next general election and... Read more »

DRUMCONDRA MAFIA RIP

June 12, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL’S local election success in north Dublin was not replicated by voters in the rare auld North Inner City (NIC) area, where its... Read more »

RATHDOWN: BRENNAN OR BUCKLEY FOR FF?

June 12, 2019
THE FAILURE of former Fianna Fáil press officer Olivia Buckley to take a council seat in Dundrum has not deterred party HQ from its... Read more »

DUBLIN — FIANNA FÁIL AT THE GATE

June 12, 2019
SUDDENLY DUBLIN, for long a desert for the party, has become Fianna Fáil’s oyster. While the local election swing from FF to Fine Gael... Read more »

MARIA BAILEY: NOT THE REAL TARGET

May 29, 2019
THE FURORE created by Michael McDowell’s attack on Dún Laoghaire TD Maria Bailey and her compo case over that fall from a hotel swing... Read more »

OLIVIA BUCKLEY VS SHANE ROSS

May 29, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL’S local election results in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown will have given Micheál Martin much to consider as it has put a question mark over... Read more »

MARIA WALSH’S MILITARISM

May 29, 2019
IT WAS a close-run thing in the end for Fine Gael EU candidate Maria Walsh in Midlands North West and her gung-ho military-style soundbytes... Read more »

THE NEXT GOVERNMENT

May 29, 2019
NOW FOR the real election. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (along with desperate pleas from Labour leader Brendan Howlin) posit the prospects of... Read more »

CASEY STILL BENT ON DÁIL

May 16, 2019
RIVALS OF Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy have harped on his intention to run for a Cavan-Monaghan seat in the Dáil, regardless of whether... Read more »

FG’S TEENAGE PROHIBITION

May 16, 2019
FINE GAEL senator Catherine Noone had to back-pedal rapidly last week following her demand that the legal age limit for alcohol be raised from... Read more »

POSTER GIRL ANNE RABBITTE

May 16, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL’S Midlands North West (MNW) EU candidate, Anne Rabbitte TD, continues to blunder in her election campaign, with the most recent boo-boo coming... Read more »

ELECTRIFYING DEIRDRE CLUNE MEP

May 16, 2019
ANOTHER MANUFACTURED row – similar to the spat between amazons Mairead McGuinness and Maria ‘Rose’ Walsh – broke out last week in the South... Read more »

VARADKAR’S LEGAL PRECEDENT

May 2, 2019
WHAT AN interesting sequence of events has taken place since the New Year surrounding Shane Ross’s judicial appointments bill. Fine Gael and, in particular,... Read more »

RABBITTE’S TUAM BABIES BLUNDER

May 2, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL has landed itself in la merde over the Tuam babies with a most disingenuous statement from TD Anne Rabbitte, expressing concern about... Read more »

AK47 LIMBERS UP

May 2, 2019
ELECTORAL CATASTROPHE could be facing the Labour Party in the local elections if two recent polls are anything to go by. Labour had an... Read more »

FG PEMBROKE BLUE BLOODS

May 2, 2019
WHAT A stellar trio of candidates Fine Gael has assembled in the local election barony of Pembroke – formerly Pembroke-South Dock – which has... Read more »

21/07/2014 Aidan Eames of Eames Solicitors, reading a statement from Angela Kearns to the media outside the Four Courts yesterday(Mon) after a High Court hearing.Pic: Collins Courts

AIDAN EAMES’S CLIENTS

April 18, 2019
THE MOST influential man in the room at the recent Oireachtas Committee on Sport hearing was not Football Association of Ireland (FAI) demoted executive... Read more »

RABBITTE FEELS UNLOVED

April 18, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL’S two-candidate strategy in the Midlands-North-West (MNW) EU constituency – the, er, ‘dream ticket’ of Brendan Smith and Anne Rabbitte – is already... Read more »

McDOWELL’S FREE MEDIA PLATFORMS

April 18, 2019
DUBLIN BAY South TDs Jim O’Callaghan and Kate O’Connell must have been chewing their carpets at the flattering exposure granted to former minister and... Read more »

GEMMA’S THEORIES

April 18, 2019
ADDING PUNGENCY to the EU elections is the candidacy of ‘investigative journalist’ Gemma O’Doherty in Dublin. If there is one live debate that Goldhawk... Read more »

HIGGINS’S LABOUR DEFECTORS

April 18, 2019
PRESIDENT HIGGINS’S new appointments to the Council of State do not include any party political members – not even from Labour, the political booster... Read more »

GOODBYE MUIRSHEEN DURKAN?

April 4, 2019
FINE GAEL’S supposed coup in recruiting former SDLP leader, Mark ‘Muirsheen’ Durkan, as their Dublin Euro candidate looks like bombing, despite Leo Varadkar’s initial... Read more »

KEEPING UP WITH NOEL ROCK

April 4, 2019
IT’S NOT often that a backbench TD makes three of his own party’s government ministers, including the Taoiseach, look foolish and out of touch,... Read more »

LEFT, LEFT AND LEFT AGAIN

April 4, 2019
THREE OF the four Dublin EU seats are predictable with Fine Gael’s Frances Fitzgerald, Fianna Fail’s Barry Andrews and Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan widely... Read more »

RUN RABBITTE RUN FOR DÁIL AND EU

April 4, 2019
RUNNING TWO candidates in the Midlands-North-West (MNW) European constituency in 2014 split the Fianna Fail vote (between Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher and Thomas Byrne),... Read more »

DALY AND WALLACE FOR EUROPE?

March 21, 2019
THE FOURTH seat in the Dublin Euro constituency is seen as hard to call, with the first three going to Frances Fitzgerald (Fine Gael),... Read more »

RUTH COPPINGER’S BORDER LINE

March 21, 2019
THE CURIOUS fascination of the ‘bourgeois media’ with the attacks on TD Paul Murphy’s Socialist Party (SP) from its comrades on the Committee for... Read more »

PASCHAL, SIMON AND VLAD

March 21, 2019
SOMEBODY IS stirring it for Simon Coveney, with the Sunday Times followed by the Irish Times both suggesting that Paschal Donohoe is now the... Read more »

MARTIN LET DURKAN SLIP TO FG – TWICE

March 21, 2019
FINE GAEL’S acquisition of former SDLP leader Mark Durkan to its Euro election ticket in Dublin has been characterised as a brilliant coup by... Read more »

JIM O’CALLAGHAN UNDER THREAT

March 7, 2019
THERE WAS a time when Fianna Fáil’s justice spokesperson, Jim O’Callaghan, was Micheál Martin’s right-hand man in the parliamentary party and a member of... Read more »

EXPELLING VICTOR ORBÁN

March 7, 2019
FINE GAEL’S four MEPs are keeping their heads down as a serious split breaks out over the proposed expulsion from the European People’s Party... Read more »

TROT SEATS AT RISK

March 7, 2019
THE Sunday Business Post’s story last weekend about the Socialist Party’s international and internecine factionalism is surprising, but nevertheless indicates a malaise in the... Read more »

WHO FEARS TO SPEAK OF UNITED IRELAND?

March 7, 2019
FIANNA FÁIL senator Mark Daly stuck it to the government in a Sunday Independent interview last weekend over its lamentable failure to prepare for... Read more »

SINN FÉIN GOES BACK TO BASICS

February 21, 2019
SINN FÉIN is still struggling in the polls following its disastrous presidential campaign and appears to have reverted to harder, more Republican and leftist... Read more »

FRANK O’ROURKE TD: SIMPLY THE BEST

February 21, 2019
“IF A cow calved in Ardclough, Frank would claim to be its father” is how Kildare Independent councillor Bernard Caldwell described Kildare North Fianna... Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S STRATEGY

February 21, 2019
SIGNS OF establishment anxiety about the government’s durability were visible last weekend and they were not eased with a poll that showed Fine Gael... Read more »