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COALITION LEADERS’ TENSIONS ALREADY

Date: March 20, 2025 -

IT’S EARLY days but with Donald Trump creating a daily sense of geo-political crisis, Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris are already competing with each other for public attention on such giant issues. As Martin is the Taoiseach (and the tetchiest politician in the western world), he is feeling more resentful than Harris, his… Read more »

PROFILE: TOM CLONAN

Date: March 20, 2025 -

FORMER ARMY officer, journalist, military analyst and Independent senator Tom Clonan is an unusual army vet. A strong advocate of neutrality, he has spoken out against the dogs of war that have colonised newspaper columns and broadcasting outlets in recent years. He is also a strong supporter of modernising the centuries-old culture that dominates the… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: THALIA HEFFERNAN

Date: March 20, 2025 -

Being a glamorous model who dates well-known men has garnered acres of column inches and newspaper supplement covers for Thalia Angel Heffernan, the 30-year-old daughter of former model Susan Ebrill and TV director Gerald Heffernan, who founded Frontier Films. Last week, the Sunday Times devoted three pages to the model, where she said little worth repeating as she… Read more »

JENNIFER ZAMPARELLI’S BIG BUCKS

Date: March 20, 2025 -

IT HAS been hard to avoid the glamorous mush of Jennifer Zamparelli over the past week as the media went Dancing With The Stars (DWTS) crazy in the run-up to last weekend’s final. Now the show has ended its latest run, she has big plans. There was the cover of the RTÉ Guide (natch), as… Read more »

RTÉ’S EMPTY CHAIRS

Date: March 20, 2025 -

WITH WEB Summit co-founder Daire Hickey kicking off a possible nine-week battle in the Four Goldmines with former pal Paddy Cosgrave this week, he clearly has a lot on his plate and a few weeks ago decided to step down early from his membership of the RTÉ board. There are now three vacancies on the… Read more »

LOTTIE RYAN’S RADIO SILENCE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

RADIO STATION 2FM unveiled yet another new schedule (yawn) to a largely indifferent public and yet again poor old Lottie Ryan has been left out in the cold. Gerry Ryan’s eldest child is probably used to shivering on the sidelines as, despite being steadfast in her loyalty to the state-owned station since she joined in… Read more »

TONY BLOOM’S FORM

Date: March 20, 2025 -

A LOT of people will have taken note of the remarkable 100/1 win last week by Poniros in Cheltenham’s JCB Triumph Hurdle, which saw moneybags Tony ‘The Lizard’ Bloom pocket a handy £84,000 to add to his enormous cash pile. While such long-shot outsiders are not completely unheard of, even in Grade 1 races like… Read more »

ANNE O’LEARY’S META HEADACHES

Date: March 20, 2025 -

IT HAS been a busy couple of weeks for the boss of Mark Zuckerberg’s sprawling Meta operation in Ireland (and also Ibec president), Anne O’Leary, as workers prepare to fight back against impending lay-offs and her boss advocating for more “masculine energy” in the workplace. There is also a controversial new book from a former… Read more »

UNSUNG HERO DECLAN RYAN

Date: March 20, 2025 -

RYANAIR MONEYBAGS Declan Ryan must be delighted with his latest investment – a publishing (or should that be vanity publishing) business called Irelandia Press. Certainly, the chief executive of The Currency business website, Tom Lyons, has been giving his book on Decco’s airline adventure plenty of air. Earlier this month The Currency published a glowing… Read more »

CHARLES NOELL III SELLS UP

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THE SQUIRE of Ardbraccan House in Co Meath, US moneybags Charles E Noell III, has stuck the splendid estate on the market with a tasty €10.15m price tag. It doesn’t look like he can make much money from his adventure here, given the truckloads of moolah that have been poured in. According to the gushing… Read more »

GUNS NOT BUTTER: GET READY

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THERE ARE various reasons for the more outlandish media and political hyperbole about the monsters Trump and Putin and their iniquitous behaviour but at bottom the rhetoric is about softening up the country for massive expenditure on guns and high-tech toys. The Irish Mail on Sunday runs a regular column by British commentator Dan Hodges,… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 06

Date: March 20, 2025 -

MR AND MRS IRISH VIKING

Date: March 20, 2025 -

BY QUITE some way, the most interesting of the Revenue settlements published last week related to Matthew Gilbert and his company, Matty Irish Viking Ltd (MIV). Gilbert, described as an influencer and OnlyFans “content creator”, set up the spicy online account after the barber shop he ran closed during the pandemic. He claimed at one… Read more »

BREATHNACH’S BROADSIDE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THERE AREN’T many figures on the Galway arts scene as high profile as Páraic Breathnach. He co-founded both the Galway Arts Festival and Macnas, and was awarded an honorary degree from NUI Galway “for his immense contribution to cultural life in Galway and Ireland”. In other words, when he talks, the arts community in Galway listens…. Read more »

PROPAGANDA PROBLEM

Date: March 20, 2025 -

WITH RENEWAL of Israel’s genocidal attacks on Gaza this week – several hundred killed and counting – the media should get a grip on what is really horrifying and what is exaggerated propaganda in its coverage of Irish outrage at the slaughter in Gaza. Unfortunately the Irish Times in particular has gone out of its… Read more »

HEATHER TO SET THE PARTY BLAZING?

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THE LIST of potential candidates for the Fine Gael nomination for a presidential contest includes former tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald; former European commissioner Mairead McGuinness; MEP Seán Kelly; and a recent possibility, former minister Heather Humphreys, is coming up fast on the inside. Tánaiste and party leader Simon Harris is anxious for an electoral victory over… Read more »

GANGING UP ON GLENANNE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

Marie Anderson, the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, has postponed the release of her Operation Newham report on the UVF’s Glenanne gang. The deferment is in response to the Public Prosecution Service’s decision to prosecute John Weir, who was a member of the RUC’s Special Patrol Group (SPG) and the Glenanne gang. He is to… Read more »

SUBVERSIVE IRISH LANGUAGE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

FOLLOWING GERMANY’S general election, the electoral surge for the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) received much Irish media coverage. The resurgence of the left-wing Die Linke received much less – and there was no mention in any Irish media outlet of the curious contribution of the Irish language to the election campaign. The growth of… Read more »

THE FIRST ITEM…

Date: March 20, 2025 -

When a gunman approached the taxi of Sean O’Reilly in Dunmurry, Belfast, in late February, he was aiming to kill the former republican prisoner. Despite five shots being fired, O’Reilly miraculously survived. The attack marked a serious ratcheting up in tensions that have developed between two rival factions of dissident paramilitary group Óglaigh na hÉireann… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

That whole episode – what I call the kerfuffle – was not nice and I didn’t like it… But it did give me a beautiful cosmic nudge to do things I thought I’d never do in my life. A contrite Ryan Tubridy recalls the RTÉ ‘kerfuffle’, Irish Independent I think Grace [O’Malley] knew she had… Read more »

X MARKS THE DROP IN STANDARDS

Date: March 20, 2025 -

AS THE US slumps ever deeper into authoritarianism, the leading role played by social media in spreading hatred and division is coming into ever sharper focus. The chief purveyor of this tsunami of disinformation is X, which zillionaire Elon Musk bought in 2022 for a jaw-dropping $44bn and quickly weaponised into a tool for the… Read more »

DATA DELUGE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

Won’t anyone think of the data centres? Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s heartfelt plea to end the “demonisation of data centres” came shortly after his supplicating visit to the White House to present the traditional bowl of shamrock to US president Donal Trump. Martin’s comments are indicative of frantic efforts at Government level to avoid incurring the… Read more »

DYSFUNCTIONAL STORMONT

Date: March 20, 2025 -

The Stormont executive repeatedly demonstrates that it is dysfunctional – and it’s not just the failure to agree on policies, leading to stagnation and stand-offs, or that nothing is achieved. The executive fails to function as an administrative bureaucracy and it seems to be accountable to no one. For example, early this month, NI comptroller… Read more »

FF PRESIDENTIAL PROBLEMS

Date: March 20, 2025 -

IN THE absence of a strong leftist-republican candidate, November’s presidential campaign is a contest which Fianna Fáil would surely be favourites to win – if only they had a stand-out candidate. The trouble is there are big question marks over the only personalities that could or would win it for the party and the candidates… Read more »

THERE AIN’T NOTHING LIKE A DAME

Date: March 20, 2025 -

DAME LOUISE RICHARDSON will have been pleased, although hardly surprised, that the Government is moving on her recommendation that it drop the triple lock. Richardson chaired Micheál Martin’s “inclusive” Consultative Forum on International Security Policy in 2023, which was stuffed with anti-neutrality and militarist personalities. Despite stating that the forum was not designed to make… Read more »

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Date: March 20, 2025 -

MENTOR McGRATH Dear Editor, I would like to clarify some issues in relation to Barry Heneghan TD. Barry supports the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB) and will be doing so when it comes before the Dáil. He will not bottle it when all the technical and legal flaws are resolved. He totally supports the Palestinian people… Read more »

PAUL TWEED’S MIDDLE EAST ROW

Date: March 20, 2025 -

EVEN LAWYER to the stars Paul Tweed can claim to have suffered collateral damage in the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. Tweed has been accused (and cleared) of mounting a Slapp (strategic litigation against public participation) action against military academic and security consultant Dr Andreas Krieg. But the solicitor has taken an action in… Read more »

OLD BAILEY

Date: March 20, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK WAS surprised that the Sunday Independent did not put on its front page Senan Molony’s scoop last weekend about a breakthrough in his quest to posthumously convict Ian Bailey for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. The opening line in Senan’s exclusive declared that a media witness in the original murder investigation had… Read more »

TONE-DEAF ‘IRISH TIMES’

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THE IRISH TIMES last week published a letter from History Ireland editor Tommy Graham, who was questioning Trinity College Dublin for the controlled process by which it ensured that poet Eavan Boland’s name was chosen for the college’s library to replace that of slave-owner and slavery-advocate Bishop George Berkeley. The public were invited to nominate… Read more »

PRESENCE PAY DAY

Date: March 20, 2025 -

PR QUEENS Joanne Byrne and Sinéad Ryan are winding up their successful Presence Communications PR and celebrity company after more than 20 years but the good news is that the gals are already up and running in their new business, with a third partner now on the share register. Impressively, according to the most-up-to-date filings… Read more »

CATHERINE FULVIO’S HIDDEN RECIPE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

SO-CALLED celebrity chef Catherine Fulvio’s latest dish was an undercooked offering served up on RTÉ to celebrate Paddy’s weekend – Catherine Fulvio’s St Patrick’s Way. While the reaction to the show that she executive-produced with Another Avenue was lukewarm (“flavour-free stodge”, according to the Irish Times), it is possible that the Yanks will lap it… Read more »

ART ATTACK

Date: March 20, 2025 -

COVERAGE OF the arts took a bit of a hit this week, with the Business Post editor announcing the dumping of the Arts & Living supplement and its replacement by something called Life & Luxury. Apparently, the new offering is “a fresh and sophisticated take on how we live, entertain, travel and interest ourselves”, according… Read more »

CHELTENHAM CHALLENGES

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THERE WERE plenty of interesting match-ups at Cheltenham last week, notably reigning champion Galopin Des Champs failing in his attempt to win three Gold Cups when finishing behind the supplemented JP McManus Leopardstown eye-catcher Inothewayurthinkin on the final day. Once again, Willie Mullins dominated proceedings and was crowned champion trainer for the 12th time, while… Read more »

ERIC’S APPEAL

Date: March 20, 2025 -

FOLLOWING THE lacklustre run of Mount Ferns in Clonmel last month, the race-day stewards clamped down and fined trainer Eric McNamara €6,000, suspended his jockey son, Conor, for a hefty 40 days and banned the horse for 90 days for breach of rule 212A(i) – “deliberately or recklessly causing or permitting a horse to run… Read more »

GLANBIA’S SHARE-PRICE CORRECTION LOOKS OVERDONE

Date: March 20, 2025 -

THE OUTLOOK was positive when CEO Siobhán Talbot headed into the sunset early last year, having scooped a phenomenal remuneration package of €8m for 2023 and Hugh Maguire stepped into her shoes. He apparently seamlessly moved up after running the high-growth Glanbia Performance Nutrition (GPN) division for 15 years. Today negativity is the order of… Read more »

UNIPHAR’S PRESCRIPTION IS HARD TO READ

Date: March 20, 2025 -

UNIPHAR CHAIRMAN Maurice Pratt and CEO Ger Rabbette have overseen a major transformation of the company over the last 15 years and today it boasts sales of €2.77bn as well as a dominant 54% share of the wholesale pharmaceutical market and 60% of the hospital supply market in Ireland. Profitability, however, is a cause for… Read more »