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UNA MULLALLY’S HIATUS

Date: August 12, 2022 - Affairs, Media

IRISH TIMES columnist Una Mullally and nail bar owner Andrea Horan have decided to put the curious beast that is their podcast into hiatus. The news will probably come as a disappointment to the Patreon subscribers to their United Ireland podcast – all 215 of them – which the gals say is aimed at those… Read more »

Tags: Irish Times, Podcasts

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE LUMBER BLUNDER

Date: August 11, 2022 - Affairs

RETICENCE at the Department of Agriculture has landed the mandarins in hot water with the Office of the Commissioner for Environmental Information (OCEI). Eco-conscious members of the public who are not satisfied in dealing with the state’s traditional attitude to transparency may escalate an appeal to this body, which is currently headed by former Financial… Read more »

DUBAI JUDGES: WHO KNEW AND WHEN?

Date: 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 the feudal state of Dubai’s financial court, but the silent acquiescence of senior Government politicians and senior legal dignitaries. But another question also remains: who in Government gave former chief justice… Read more »

PROFILE: JOHN BURNS

Date: August 11, 2022 -

THE CLEAR OUT of Sunday Times journalists leaves the Irish edition of that august institution in the last-chance saloon under the tutelage of current editor Nóirín Hegarty. She follows several determined editors of the Irish edition who struggled to placate their London-based masters in Rupert Murdoch’s empire, yet one of the few constants through their… Read more »

YOUNG BLOODS: DARREN O’ROURKE

Date: August 11, 2022 -

WITH OPINION polls showing Sinn Féin knocking on the door of government, attention is turning to who its ministers might be and how they will confront the difficult challenges of office. High on the list of contenders is 40-year-old Darren O’Rourke, Sinn Féin TD for Meath East. O’Rourke was also in the news recently as… Read more »

HAS GOODMAN GOT HIS TIMING RIGHT IN PROVIDENCE?

Date: August 11, 2022 -

THE MUSICAL chairs continue at Providence Resources, with the latest face popping up being beef baron Larry Goodman, who now holds a 16.1% stake. His most recent buy-in was the 8.2% stake held by big UK investment group M&G, which clearly got tired of the procession of drilling and funding failures. It sold out the… Read more »

BISHOPS CENSORED!

Date: 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 Eamon Martin. It follows the refusal of the Belfast Telegraph to publish an advert from northern bishops ahead of the Assembly elections in May unless they made changes to the text… Read more »

NEW WOMAN AT THE GALLERY

Date: August 11, 2022 -

AT LONG last the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) has got around to appointing its new €130,000 pa director. It is perhaps not surprising that the board has gone with a woman. The incumbent for the last decade, and counting, has been Sean Rainbird, who arrived in Dublin in 2012 fresh from his role as… Read more »

HOZIER’S HITS

Date: August 11, 2022 -

THE FOG-HORN voiced Hozier – formerly known as Andrew Hozier-Byrne, until he was championed and molded by music supremos Caroline Downey and Denis Desmond – has weathered the pandemic and the ban on live music better than most performers, but he’s also taken a few canny accounting decisions, new financial statements show. Being the bard… Read more »

SABINA HIGGINS’S CRITICS

Date: August 11, 2022 -

WHAT AN interesting group of politicians vied with each other to stick it to Sabina Higgins over her outrageous suggestion that negotiations for peace should replace the Russian invasion and war in Ukraine. While some pundits noted that most of these critics (five out of six) were undistinguished senators looking for attention, they may have… Read more »

ALL ABOUT EVA

Date: 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 a “health hotel” in sunny Portugal. As usual, Eva ensured oodles of pre-publicity courtesy of assorted interviews, including one in her fanzine, the Sindo, which devoted a chunk of page 5… Read more »

LAFFAN V O’BYRNE

Date: August 11, 2022 -

PRESUMABLY THE tweedies in the Irish Georgian Society (IGS) were suitably entertained by a scathing review in the Sunday Times of Robert O’Byrne’s book on the burning of Irish country houses, Left Without a Handkerchief. Having earlier been given top marks by the Irish Times, the author may have been shocked by the merciless dissection… Read more »

FRANCES RUANE’S SHORT RUN

Date: 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 chair of the Abbey Theatre. Generally, the practice when a minister opts to reappoint a candidate to a state board, it is for a full term. Indeed, Ruane’s predecessor, Brian McMahon,… Read more »

VOL 40 NO 16

Date: August 11, 2022 -

FRANC’S UKRAINIAN BONUS

Date: 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 for his wedding operation during the pandemic. The Ukraine invasion has provided a surprise silver lining. The former Say Yes to the Dress presenter made his name as a self-styled “creator… Read more »

MORGAN O’SULLIVAN’S CAST

Date: 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 Vikings: Valhalla and Kin productions, which had highlighted the differences between Siptu and John Arkins’s group. The isolated IFWA condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the angle taken by the ST… Read more »

CHECKING THE FACT CHECKERS

Date: 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 chief protagonists against this ‘fake news’ in Ireland is The Journal. TheJournal.ie’s Good Information Project is, it says, co-funded by Journal Media and a grant from the European Parliament. But the… Read more »

GREAT GREEN GAS WARS CONTINUE

Date: 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 veritable scramble to move toward “clean” green gas production is now under way. The Government recently announced plans to produce significant quantities of methane from farm-based anaerobic digesters (ADs). These units… Read more »

MI6, BORIS AND THE LEBEDEVS

Date: 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 veracity of British intelligence whistleblowers such as Fred Holroyd and Colin Wallace, who were making damaging revelations about MI5/6 transgressions in Ireland. The Independent eventually went into decline and was purchased… Read more »

PEACE IN COVENEY’S TIME?

Date: August 11, 2022 -

DESPITE CHAMPIONING armament for the Irish Defence Forces, foreign minister Simon Coveney has been central to a strategy of appeasement by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in relation to the Idlib Governorate in north-western Syria. The province is ruled by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an Islamic fundamentalist coalition that was once allied to Al… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: August 11, 2022 -

You have to watch this film to really appreciate it. Áine Moriarty, chief executive of IFTA on An Cailín Ciúin, Morning Ireland What matters is that Ó Broin handled the cookery slot with Aisling Larkin with the quiet authority of the gourmet that he is. Declan Lynch comments on Eoin Ó Broin’s presenting skills on… Read more »

LIZ TRUSS: THE DUP’S NEW FRIEND

Date: August 11, 2022 -

LIZ TRUSS looks certain to be the next British prime minister on September 6. Rishi Sunak has reduced her lead a bit after Truss scored a couple of own goals and ate her words, but tax and benefits are not the main issues for many Conservative party members, the only people entitled to vote. For… Read more »

DOGS THAT DIDN’T BARK

Date: August 11, 2022 -

WHERE WERE the radical opposition parties when the Government let slip the dogs of war from among their favourite media servants against Sabina Higgins – if only to try and put her husband, Michael D, in his place? The silence from Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats and even Labour – to which Michael Higgins gave… Read more »

NORMA FOLEY’S SCHOOL RUN

Date: August 11, 2022 -

While Government party leaders and whips worked frenetically to fend off a no-confidence vote just before the Dáil broke for its summer recess, some backbench TDs found more amusing ways to pass the time, such as trawling through the long list of Parliamentary Questions to ministers and their departments for entertaining answers. The pick of… Read more »

MARTIN’S LOYAL MINISTERS

Date: August 11, 2022 -

WHAT A curious story the Irish Mail on Sunday published last weekend, headlined “Martin’s loyalists hit back at rebels” and spread over the front page and two pages inside the paper. The story, marked “exclusive”, said that three of Fianna Fáil’s ministers had given a “significant boost to the Taoiseach” by backing him to continue… Read more »

MEDIA TAKES ON HIGGINS — AND LOSES

Date: August 11, 2022 -

THE IRISH TIMES got out of jail a fortnight ago courtesy of Russian ambassador Yuriy Filatov, who opportunistically embraced Sabina Higgins’s letter to the newspaper criticising its failure to advocate for peace and negotiation in Ukraine. Without the ambassador’s undiplomatic intervention, the scenario might well have been that of the once liberal, peaceful paper of… Read more »

CATCHING UP WITH HENRY MCDONALD

Date: August 11, 2022 -

IT WILL be interesting to see just what the book released this week – Rewriting the Troubles: Ireland/Algeria – says about the Workers’ Party and some former members and journalists, such as Henry McDonald. The book is being published by Greenisland Press, a project of former Sinn Féin spokesman and writer Danny Morrison, in conjunction… Read more »

KEVIN MYERS’S ‘SCUM’

Date: August 11, 2022 -

IN ALL the analysis of the crisis at the Sunday Times Irish edition, perhaps the most poignant was an article arguing that what really happened was the Murdoch-owned operation never recovered from the damage done by the “ruthless and unjustified dismissal” in 2017 of its then star columnist, Kevin Myers. The remarkable, 1,600-word piece, written… Read more »

SF’S HAZZARD WARNING

Date: August 11, 2022 -

“If I had a De Lorean, I’d go back in time and ban sheep and sitka spruce.” The would-be time traveller is south Down Sinn Féin MP Chris Hazzard, who delivered some truth bombs at an event in Belfast that may have had his southern SF brethren running for cover. Hazzard, a vegetarian, also said… Read more »

JUST BECAUSE YOU’RE PARANOID…

Date: August 11, 2022 -

DID YOU know that attempts at regulating agriculture pollution are really part of a sinister globalist plot being co-ordinated by communists under the guise of protecting the environment and tackling climate change? It turns out that the whole “sustainability” narrative is “a tool to gain control over food, agriculture and people”. And the vehicle for… Read more »

CONSUELO’S REIGN

Date: August 11, 2022 -

SO IT’S farewell then to Consuelo O’Connor, who has just officially stepped down from the board of the Beit Foundation, a whopping 46 years after she was first appointed a trustee of the entity that controls Russborough House. Long-time Ballsbridge denizen Consuelo (sister of former Dublin lord mayor Carmencita Hederman) had long been An Taisce’s… Read more »

CALDWELL’S HEAVY GOING

Date: August 11, 2022 -

WITH THE Irish Stable Staff Association (ISSA) having generated headlines last month by delaying racing at Kilbeggan racecourse due to a protest over the failure to provide free bottles of water to stable staff, it is interesting to note that the association itself has been the subject of calls for a stewards’ inquiry over a… Read more »

TOM KELLY’S SECOND CHANCE

Date: August 11, 2022 -

HERE WAS good news for jockey Tom Joseph Kelly last month when his appeal against a further three years of suspension proved successful. Kelly had ridden five winners before testing positive for the cocaine metabolite benzoylecgonine at Killarney. As a result, Kelly was handed a hefty four-year suspension from riding in December last year (backdated… Read more »

ROSE McHUGH’S THREE SEATS

Date: August 11, 2022 -

LAST WEEK was the closing date for receipt of expressions of interest in (unremunerated) vacancies on the Rose McHugh-chaired board of the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, with three seats to be filled by arts minister Catherine Martin. The seats are to be filled in part as a result of the expiration of the terms… Read more »

CASTING GROUCH

Date: August 11, 2022 -

INTERESTED PARTIES are running the abacus over the spat between RTÉ and its non-staff contractors on the one hand and Revenue and the Department of Social Protection on the other since the “bogus self-employment” issue became a high-profile plot across the film and TV business a few years ago. The costs could start mounting up…. Read more »

IDOL – LOUISE O’NEILL

Date: August 11, 2022 -

SINCE HER 2018 adult fiction debut Almost Love, novelist Louise O’Neill has focused on writing about topical feminist themes (and more recently in her media columns) – particularly exploitative obsessive relationships, consent and victim-blaming. Her stories are usually centred around flawed and unlikable protagonists and there is more of the same here. Predictable to a… Read more »