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WHOSE SPY WAS EPSTEIN?

Date: February 12, 2026 -

READERS OF The Phoenix are likely aware of the unsettling parallels between the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and historical instances of child sexual exploitation, such as the Kincora Boys’ Home scandal in Belfast. The Kincora case involved the trafficking of teenage boys by MI5 to loyalist… Read more »

PROFILE: FIONNÁN SHEAHAN

Date: February 12, 2026 -

DURING HIS disastrous handling of Fianna Fáil’s presidential campaign and candidate, party leader Micheál Martin appeared to be on the run, not just from FF leadership critic and MEP Billy Kelleher but from Ireland editor of the Irish Independent, Fionnán Sheahan. The latter was like a dog after a bone as he gnawed away at… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: GRACE MCNALLY

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE NEW president of Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) is Westport native and general nursing student Grace McNally. Her ascension to the position came after the shock resignation of Seán Thím O’Leary (see The Phoenix 5/9/25) from the job on Halloween last year. McNally is unaffiliated politically but that doesn’t mean her allegiances are… Read more »

TREVOR WHITE’S FOOD POVERTY

Date: February 12, 2026 -

FAIR PLAY to Trevor White on his latest outing in the pages of the Irish Times, headlined: “The Michelin razzmatazz makes me queasy”. Not many people who trouser a six-figure salary from a charity they set up and whose father was for years synonymous with fine dining in Dublin would have felt comfortable delving into… Read more »

REPLAY FOR GAA V GAZA

Date: February 12, 2026 -

GAA HEADS will be hoping that the new armada being organised to lift the siege on Gaza will not help to ignite further protests from its members about its multi-million-euro sponsorship deal with Allianz due to a United Nations report linking Allianz with Israeli slaughter in Gaza. Meanwhile, the release of FBI files on Jeffrey… Read more »

NADIA’S ‘FUN VIDEOS’

Date: February 12, 2026 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO Nadia Adan, who popped up in the Enterprise Ireland (EI)-sponsored ‘Making It Work’ section of the Business Post last weekend, although her many fans might have been disappointed by the restrained tone. The section deals with businesses backed by EI and the article relates to the opening by the Ashford Motors car dealership… Read more »

HACKMAN’S NEW PLOT

Date: February 12, 2026 -

HARDLY HAD the ink dried on Goldhawk’s report of a default on a $1.1bn studio mortgage in sunny California for Ardmore and Troy Studios supremo Michael Hackman’s group (see The Phoenix 30/1/26) than some sunny PR appeared courtesy of Patrick O’Donovan. The culture minister breathlessly announced the striking of a deal on the future of… Read more »

FIACH MAC CONGHAIL’S STRATEGY

Date: February 12, 2026 -

GOLDHAWK WOULD like to congratulate the ever adaptable Fiach Mac Conghail, who has moved another step closer to saving his bacon as chief executive of the Digital Hub Development Agency (DHDA), which was earmarked for dissolution back in 2021. At the time, the government announced that it would transfer the assets of the sprawling Thomas… Read more »

PIGNATARO’S PARADISE

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE name of the tiny Caribbean island of Canouan popped up in dispatches a couple of times last week, albeit for very different reasons. As fans of Goldhawk are aware, Canouan is where Dermot Desmond has been splashing out oodles of dosh to develop his Sandy Lane Yacht Club & Residences on Glossy Bay. The… Read more »

ALBERT MANIFOLD’S RETIREMENT

Date: February 12, 2026 -

HAS ALBERT Manifold finally found peace in his comfortable ‘retirement’? The former CRH boss, who trousered tens of millions of euros in pay and shares annually, has been fighting a planning battle for more than a decade over his Cork bolthole. Manifold has a property on Long Island, off the coast of Schull, that is… Read more »

RESCUING CIARAN FITZGERALD

Date: February 12, 2026 -

GOLDHAWK SPIES the entry into the so-called Scarp rescue process for small companies of the loss-making entity that was behind the famous Blue Haven Hotel in Kinsale. The main man here is hospitality veteran Ciaran Fitzgerald but the threat might not be as great as it seems, as it looks like ownership of the business… Read more »

VOL 44 NO 03

Date: February 12, 2026 -

SO LONG SCOOP

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE BOYS behind the popular Scoop gelato operation in Dublin, have called it a day. Redmond Kennedy and Patrick Molony, who also set up a high-profile mobile crêpes business in a vintage Citroën HY convertible before going on to open the Voici crêperie and wine bar in Rathmines, D6, have just liquidated their loss-making Scoop… Read more »

SAVAGE’S BLIND TRUST

Date: February 12, 2026 -

NEW Newstalk Breakfast presenter Anton Savage must believe, perhaps correctly, that media watchdogs at Coimisiún na Meán and other media will continue to ignore his clear conflict of interest in presenting a current affairs programme. So far Savage has refused to even pledge that he will call out any conflicts arising from his coverage of… Read more »

THE GENTLE SAS

Date: February 12, 2026 -

IN A most civilised interview with the Irish Times recently, three veteran members of the Special Air Service (SAS) presented a sanitised view of their regiment, claiming it had never engaged in a shoot-to-kill policy. Conspicuously absent from their account was any mention of the controversial Mobile Reaction Force (MRF). It was established in 1971… Read more »

BANNON’S IRISH PLAN

Date: February 12, 2026 -

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon has been keen in recent years to platform a number of Irish right-wing activists on his War Room podcast, including councillor Malachy Steenson and Eddie Hobbs. But his boast of creating an Irish Maga and Trumpian equivalent is somewhat idle. Ireland’s new right is hopelessly splintered. The latest schism… Read more »

EU/US JOINT SURVEILLANCE?

Date: February 12, 2026 -

United States proposals requiring tourists to submit social media data as part of its Electronic System for Travel Authorisation applications has seen quite the brouhaha in the Irish media and much comment from Irish politicians. But there has been no media analysis of controversial EU proposals to expand travel surveillance. Will this come to a… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: February 12, 2026 -

I gave them to some friends of mine to read and they cried. They couldn’t believe how lovely people were. People had said in the cards, ‘Here’s a fiver, get yourself a coffee’ or ‘Here’s a pack of jellies, I know you love sweets’. Ryan Tubridy on the public response to his exit from RTÉ,… Read more »

AGRI-LOBBY FRENZY

Date: February 12, 2026 -

The farmers are revolting. Fresh from strong-arming the Government into securing a new derogation from the EU’s anti-pollution Nitrates Directive, followed by their success in having Ireland vote against the crucial Mercosur trade deal, you would think the agri lobby’s feeding frenzy had been sated. Think again. The state’s repeated capitulation to this small but… Read more »

BIZ POST AIR MILES

Date: February 12, 2026 -

Two cheers for the intrepid team at the Business Post. Its years of relentless campaigning for the removal of the cap at Dublin Airport finally seems to have paid off. Last Sunday’s edition blazed the story (yet again) across its front page that a new law “will remove airport passenger cap forever”. So electrifying was… Read more »

MANDELSON’S IRISH STINT

Date: February 12, 2026 -

The DUP was delighted with Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to Washington last February. Deputy first minister Emma Little-Pengelly was photographed with him when she visited for St Patrick’s Day. Afterwards she gushed: “Lord Mandelson served as our secretary of state and has a detailed knowledge and understanding of Northern Ireland. This provides a… Read more »

MARTIN GOADS JIM O’CALLAGHAN

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE POLLS that followed the upheaval in Fianna Fáil over the botched Jim Gavin presidential campaign may indicate a lull in the party’s in-fighting but the comments from interested parties say much more than most media analysis suggests. For a start, Gerard Howlin, a former advisor to Bertie Ahern as taoiseach, cut through the media… Read more »

MARY LOU’S BY-ELECTION ISSUE

Date: February 12, 2026 -

SINN FÉIN’S coup in landing Gillian Sherratt – the mother of nine-year old Harvey Morrison, who died after waiting years for a scoliosis operation – as its Dublin Central by-election candidate is not necessarily a done deal. The leadership leaked the story to the Sunday Times, which said her nomination, according to “party sources… was… Read more »

SOC DEMS SNUB LABOUR

Date: February 12, 2026 -

PERPETUAL PLEAS from politicians and pundits – with not the faintest appreciation of, or good will towards, social democratic policies – for the Social Democrats to combine with another party were heard again following the party’s recent conference. There are three alliance or merger options for the Soc Dems to take, with the first one… Read more »

HAZEL CHU REFUSES TO GO AWAY

Date: February 12, 2026 -

FORMER DUBLIN lord mayor and Green Party chair Hazel Chu may have allowed herself a moment of schadenfreude on her election as party deputy chair last month. Chu defeated Louth councillor Marianne Butler by a two-to-one ratio but it was the support for Butler from three party senators in the last government that might have… Read more »

JOE MULHOLLAND AND CENSORSHIP

Date: February 12, 2026 -

FAWNING COMMENTARY on the death of former RTÉ current affairs and news head Joe Mulholland ignored his real notability. It illustrated how RTÉ policed coverage of the conflict in the north from the 1970s to 1994 and beyond. In Ray Mac Mánais’s The Road from Ardoyne, former president Mary McAleese detailed aggressive bullying in the… Read more »

CHINESE WHISPERS

Date: February 12, 2026 -

HOW INSCRUTABLE the Sunday Times’s Irish edition and its Whitehall masters can sometimes be. Not so long ago the ST’s Aawrish edition published the latest of numerous alarming articles in recent years warning of “one of the most serious cases of foreign interference uncovered in the [Irish] state”. This was a report into the activities… Read more »

‘EAGLE-EYED’ IRISH TIMES

Date: February 12, 2026 -

IN KEEPING with the compelling mystique and tradition surrounding the Irish Times, not to mention its journalists’ self-regarding sense of the Old Crone of Tara Street, editor Ruadhán Mac Cormaic recently delivered an important message to readers about the latest update to the newspaper’s stylebook. This exclusive is one of the few breaking stories in… Read more »

O’DONOVAN’S MATCH PROGRAMME

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE ENERGETIC Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport, Patrick O’Donovan, paid a timely visit to Paris last week and managed to fit in an awful lot. The department’s press release was certainly comprehensive when it came to detailing the minister’s packed schedule for his sojourn in the City of Lights. The events included a reception… Read more »

CLEARING THE BYRNES BOYS

Date: February 12, 2026 -

IT IS unclear if there are any real winners from last week’s ruling of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board’s (IHRB) referrals committee on the long-running controversy over the unseating of jockey Philip Byrnes from Redwood Queen at Wexford way back in May. There was certainly plenty of expensive legal firepower on show but the lingering… Read more »

DONNELLYS’ FALLOW PERIOD

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE DISMAL season for owners Joe and Marie Donnelly continued last month when their Champion Hurdle favourite, Sir Gino, suffered serious injury in Cheltenham’s Grade 2 Unibet Hurdle. The Nico de Boinville-ridden odds-on shot was pulled up turning for home. This left the way clear for Dan Skelton’s The New Lion to scoop the prize… Read more »

CHESTER BEATTY BACKLOG

Date: February 12, 2026 -

NO LESS than eight months after the closing date for expressions of interest in serving on the Chester Beatty Library (CBL) board, culture minister Patrick O’Donovan has yet to fill two vacancies. This is despite significant challenges facing the Dublin Castle-based institution. O’Donovan is responsible for appointing three of the 12 trustees of the fabulous… Read more »

BARRY CONNELL’S BLUES

Date: February 12, 2026 -

GOLDHAWK’S FAVOURITE south Co Dublin investment-guru-turned-racehorse-trainer, Barry Connell, didn’t quite have the Dublin Racing Festival he had anticipated when his Cheltenham hot shot, Marine Nationale, failed to deliver. The weekend was the opposite for Geneva-based tax resident billionaire JP McManus, who saw his nag leapfrog Connell’s in the betting odds for the Champion Chase next… Read more »

C&C LOSES ITS FIZZ AGAIN

Date: February 12, 2026 -

THE HAPLESS C&C shareholders have suffered more than their fair share of upsets and disappointments over recent decades. The latest is a shock profit warning that reflects very poorly on CEO Roger White. And, despite the price falling, the shares are still not low enough to attract in the bottom feeders. C&C flew high and… Read more »

GLENVEAGH BUILDING NICELY WITH NUA ATTRACTION

Date: February 12, 2026 -

IT IS an achievement for a company the size of Glenveagh Properties – boasting sales touching €1bn – to be the first Irish plc this year to deliver preliminary figures for a December 31 financial year end. Its main competitor, Cairn Homes, published its update five days later but without anything like the same level… Read more »

JOANNE COSTELLO’S SUMMIT

Date: February 12, 2026 -

ACCORDING TO Stubbs Gazette, a tiny judgment has just been registered against something called The Irish International Fashion & Food Summit Ltd (IIFFS), which turns out to have been set up by former daytime TV fashion presenter, Wicklow Town-based Joanne Costello. It is not the first tax bill for the company, however. Certainly, back in… Read more »