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HOW LONG CAN MARTIN HOLD ON?

Date: October 30, 2025 -

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S leadership currently survives because of the sullen toleration of most of his TDs and the reluctance of leader-in-waiting Jim O’Callaghan to unsheathe his sword. We have listed the numbers of TDs regarded as now willing to vote against Martin’s continuing leadership (see p10) but not all of these are willing to do so… Read more »

PROFILE: BEN COLLINS

Date: October 30, 2025 -

IRELAND’S FUTURE, the main proponents of the growing call for a border poll on Irish unity, is sometimes accused of not engaging with unionists. Such critics will be a little non-plussed at the publication of not one but two books in three years by Ben Collins – Irish Unity: Time to Prepare and his recently… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ASHLEY MCDONNELL

Date: October 30, 2025 -

You have to hand it to Ashley McDonnell – she certainly knows how to put a positive spin on things. Having spent the past five years bigging up her role in PUIG, a group that owns and operates luxury fashion and beauty brands, the Galway woman has now parted ways with the Spanish company. With… Read more »

KEVIN KIELY V PAUL DURCAN

Date: October 30, 2025 -

THE IRISH ‘poetic community’ is a small one so it is not too surprising that there has been plenty of chatter about the bad taste exposed in an article penned by controversial biographer, critic and poet Kevin Kiely in The Village magazine last month. Titled “Reading in the Durc”, the piece dismisses the work of… Read more »

PRINCE ANDREW’S PR

Date: October 30, 2025 -

VIRGINIA ROBERTS GIUFFRE, who was abused by Prince Andrew, died by suicide last April after completing her book, Nobody’s Girl, which has just gone on sale. By amazing coincidence, a wave of about 20 books on Giuffre have suddenly flooded Amazon, all of which are “independently published”. One is a mere 82 pages long. Anyone… Read more »

MATT COOPER FIBS ABOUT BEN DUNNE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

THERE ARE not many editors and authors who would admit to telling a “deliberate mistruth” about a national corruption story on the front page of their newspaper and one has to congratulate Matt Cooper, author of Dynasty, his recently published book on the Dunnes Stores family, for coming clean on his deception back in 1996…. Read more »

DERMOT DESMOND V BRENDAN RODGERS

Date: October 30, 2025 -

MOST OBSERVERS will have been surprised by Dermot Desmond’s uncharacteristic tactic of lunging two-footed at outgoing Glasgow Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers. This has not been Der Kaiser’s style and, despite being easily the biggest shareholder in the club, he generally prefers to keep as far behind the scenes as possible (hence Peter Lawwel’s role as… Read more »

IAN LAWLOR’S SHEKELS

Date: October 30, 2025 -

IAN LAWLOR, of private equity development funder Round Tower Capital, has been very vocal lately about the housing crisis, most recently discussing the imminent (?) revision of the Housing For All plan (“Another season, another national housing plan”) in newspapers and on the telly, where he has appeared on the likes of Virgin Media’s The… Read more »

GLENCREE’S BAIL-OUT

Date: October 30, 2025 -

GOOD NEWS for all the worthies in the Glencree Centre For Peace And Reconciliation. Despite the level of dysfunction exposed in the organisation in the recent past, its main funder, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), has decided to release over €¼m “on an exceptional basis”. When Goldhawk last looked at the carry-on in Enniskerry… Read more »

DESPERATE TIMES FOR DAN MACDONNELL

Date: October 30, 2025 -

EARLIER THIS month a creditors’ meeting was called for event marketing operation Neon Agency, founded by 100% shareholder Dan MacDonnell. This followed an attempt by brand consultancy creditor Image Now to have it wound up by the High Court and also after a Scarp rescue attempt had failed in September. On top of this, a… Read more »

ALAN CLANCY EXITS ONE CENTRAL PLAZA

Date: October 30, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK WAS surprised to see that bar and club supremo Alan Clancy has resigned as a director of the company behind his much-vaunted new venue – the soon-to-open Díon on the top two floors of the old Central Bank building on Dame Street (now called One Central Plaza). Maybe he just has too much on… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 22

Date: October 30, 2025 -

SOLDIER F GOES FREE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

SOLDIER F, recently acquitted of murder and attempted murder on Bloody Sunday, has returned to his comfortable life in England. He became a rich man in the 1990s after being awarded a series of lucrative construction contracts from the British government. In what is beyond irony – and the self-serving concept of British justice –… Read more »

BACIK’S RIGHT CHOICE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

FIANNA FÁIL’S latest poll rating of 17% has intensified Micheál Martin’s leadership crisis but another stat in the same poll is also linked to leadership tensions inside the Labour Party. While Labour was on a low, static rating of 4% in the same Business Post poll, its arch rival, the Social Democrats, was soaring to… Read more »

DONOHOE CROSSES THE RUBICON

Date: October 30, 2025 -

PRESIDENT-ELECT Catherine Connolly was accused by Fine Gael of insulting our allies in Europe by referring, accurately, to the military industrial complex in states such as Germany, so Goldhawk was relieved to see finance minister and Eurogroup president Paschal Donohoe using harmless – not to say meaningless – terms to describe the latest EU militarist-minded… Read more »

‘SPOIL THE VOTE’ PLAYERS

Date: October 30, 2025 -

RTÉ was quick to publish an article online before the election count was completed. While 213,738 spoiled votes certainly warranted analysis, RTÉ’S online article, “Who was behind the ‘Spoil The Vote’ campaign?”, did not examine the political agenda of several leading figures in the campaign. The RTÉ report outlines that Elaine Mullally’s posts online “often… Read more »

DENTON WHITEWASH FOR BRITS AND MI5

Date: October 30, 2025 -

A leak from the upcoming Operation Denton report on the 1974 Dublin-Monaghan bombings indicates that the inquiry will exonerate the British Army and MI5, something long predicted by this magazine. The formal report is expected in a few weeks. According to the leak, the army is portrayed as honourable and trustworthy, so much so that… Read more »

TALE OF TWO RIOTS 

Date: October 30, 2025 -

FOLLOWING THE riots at Citywest, a series of articles contrasted the Garda response in Saggart to the Dublin riots in November 2023. These honed in on more usable riot shields, having a water canon ready to be deployed and a graduated Garda response plan. All this misses the point. After the 2023 riots, then justice… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

“I would have walked” the presidential election, said Bob Geldof. “I think I’d have walked the f…ing thing,” Geldof added. “I think I would have won.” Bob Geldof, The Journal In the process, he transformed the thin blue line into the Maginot Line. Paul Williams opts for a surprising metaphor in his glowing account of… Read more »

CONNOLLY’S CLIMATE CURVE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

Directly after the final TV debate of the presidential campaign, Prime Time presenters Sarah McInerney and Miriam O’Callaghan took part in a live RTÉ podcast, Behind The News. McInerney said a big challenge had been “trying to figure out what are we going to ask them that they haven’t been asked five million times already”…. Read more »

JOHN FITZGERALD’S EMISSIONS

Date: October 30, 2025 -

“I’m utterly gobsmacked at how much this article misrepresents our research and our position. This follows personal communication which should have clarified any of these misinterpretations.” This was UCC climate academic Hannah Daly’s reaction on social media to an Irish Times opinion piece last week. DCU climate scientist Paul Price claimed the article was “a… Read more »

NAOMI LONG UNDER THREAT

Date: October 30, 2025 -

In a BBC podcast on October 15, Alliance party leader Naomi Long said: “I think it would be helpful for the secretary of state to set out what the conditions for a border poll would be. What I think is toxic at the moment is, by not setting out the conditions, every single election becomes… Read more »

HOW LONG CAN MARTIN HOLD ON?

Date: October 30, 2025 -

The alienation of Fine Gael hard man Big Phil Hogan in 2020 was a source of some regret to then taoiseach Leo Varadkar as the ousted EU commissioner – post Golfgate – went on to subvert the standing of Vlad in FG, contributing greatly to the taoiseach’s exit from politics in 2024. Bertie is the… Read more »

SPECTRE OF CATHERINE AND MARY LOU

Date: October 30, 2025 -

THERE IS considerable trepidation among right-thinking people at the very large vote that left-alliance presidential candidate Catherine Connolly pulled last week. A distraught media put it down to Connolly being a much better candidate than Heather Humphreys and revulsion at the smear campaign against Connolly. There was also much diversionary emphasis laid on the high… Read more »

WHY SEÁN KELLY WAS BLOCKED

Date: October 30, 2025 -

FINE GAEL approached the presidential contest with quiet confidence last summer, with super EU technocrat Mairead McGuinness the clear favourite until she was forced to withdraw on medical advice. But the back story to why the FG leadership rushed to appoint Heather Humphreys as the party nominee and shunted a more suitable and capable candidate,… Read more »

‘SINDO’ V CONNOLLY

Date: October 30, 2025 -

JOURNALISTS WHO noted the Fine Gael smear campaign against president-elect Catherine Connolly in the run up to the election should not throw stones given that the defence given by political parties – slight as it may be – is that all’s fair in love and political war. But the media claims to have higher standards… Read more »

MAURA McGRATH MAKES WAY

Date: October 30, 2025 -

AS FANS of Goldhawk are aware, there has been plenty going on at the National Concert Hall (NCH) in recent months and now a new chairman is in situ, albeit only on an interim basis and a lot later in the day than would have been anticipated by the culture department mandarins. At the end… Read more »

RICHARD FAHEY’S SHOCK GLORY

Date: October 30, 2025 -

YORKSHIRE-BASED Richard Fahey caused the biggest shock in European Group 1 history when his 200/1 outsider, Powerful Glory, powered home under Jamie Spencer to land the Qipco British Champions Sprint Stakes on Ascot’s Champions Day. Fahey is a relieved man for sure. The win was a most welcome one for Clougherhead native Fahey, who had… Read more »

STUMPTOWN’S BIG CZECH

Date: October 30, 2025 -

STUMPTOWN SURVIVED quite the blunder to land the Czech Republic’s most prestigious race, the four-and-a-half-mile Velka Pardubicka cross-country run at Pardubice. Trained by Gavin Cromwell, the nag almost jettisoned his jockey (Keith Donoghue) before becoming the first Irish-trained horse to win the contest in its 135-year history. He is owned by the Furze Bush Syndicate,… Read more »

ERIC McCARTHY’S FORM

Date: October 30, 2025 -

UNLIKE 2024 when returning five winners, Eric McNamara had a quiet time at the Listowel Harvest Festival, with this year’s accolades going instead to local handler Eoin McCarthy, who saddled no less than six winners at the Kerry venue. Both trainers, however, shared the honours recently on the opening day of Limerick’s Munster National meeting,… Read more »

GALLERY’S NEW CAST

Date: October 30, 2025 -

PORTRAITS of actors Ruth Negga and Stephen Rea were unveiled by Caroline Campbell’s National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) last week. The works are by painter David Booth and photographer David Stephenson. These are portraits that were commissioned as a result of the annual Portrait Prize awarded by the NGI and, unlike last year’s addition to… Read more »

CHAPTER ONE’S MONEY MENU

Date: October 30, 2025 -

WITH THE Michelin Guide organisation bringing its 2026 ceremony for Ireland and the UK to Dublin next February, the chatter has once again turned to an elusive third star for some Irish restaurant, inevitably the highly regarded Chapter One opened by Ross Lewis many moons ago. These days the brilliant Parnell Square restaurant is fronted… Read more »

SINÉAD KEARY’S FAMILY AFFAIR

Date: October 30, 2025 -

FASHION DESIGNER Sinéad Keary popped up last month in the Business Post’s soft-soap ‘Taste Maker’ column to give readers an insight into her modus operandi and influences (Breakfast at Tiffany’s appears to have played a role in her eventual career path). There was, however, no room in the piece to mention where most of the… Read more »

ORIGIN UP 43% THIS YEAR – WITH MORE TO COME

Date: October 30, 2025 -

AT THE beginning of the year, Origin Enterprises shares were at a low, which was not too surprising after a period of indifferent performance. Readers will recall, however, that Moneybags identified that there were reasons for optimism (see The Phoenix 7/2/25). As noted at the start of 2025: “There is much in the group’s current… Read more »

GLENVEAGH GAINING MOMENTUM, FOR NOW AT LEAST

Date: October 30, 2025 -

IT IS not all that rare for an Irish-quoted company to effect a secondary offering of its shares but a unique transaction took place earlier this month courtesy of Adel Epstein’s Swiss-based Teleios Capital Partners, the largest shareholder in one of the biggest Irish housebuilders, Glenveagh Properties. The fund has taken advantage of an impressive-looking… Read more »

THE GANLEY GANG

Date: October 30, 2025 -

EARLIER THIS month it was reported that Rivada boss Declan Ganley’s daughter, Rafaella, has been appointed as a director of a new company in the Rivada group. She’s not the only high flyer in the family. Legal-eagle Rafaella Ganley is on the board of one of Decco’s various satellite entities, Rivada ELO Holdings Ltd, which… Read more »