Search the Archives

SIMON COVENEY’S CONUNDRUM

Date: December 2, 2021 -

HOW LONG more will Minister Simon Coveney’s floundering and dangerous foreign policy agenda in the African continent go unreported in the Irish media? Ireland has had a military presence in Mali since February 2013. The Defence Forces have 20 personnel deployed with the European Union Training Mission (EUTM), which trains and advises the Malian Military… Read more »

BIG PHIL AND VLAD TO MAKE UP?

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THE PROPOSITION that Big Phil Hogan would be amenable to reconciliation with tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Leo Varadkar, if the latter would only call him for a chat, was put forward by Newstalk news presenter Shane Coleman in the Sunday Independent last weekend. The rationale was that Vlad needs Big Phil to shore up… Read more »

PROFILE: RODERIC O’GORMAN

Date: December 2, 2021 -

RODERIC O’GORMAN is turning into the Green party’s answer to Fianna Fáil’s health minister Stephen Donnelly, with a series of apologies, contradictions and U-turns. The minister for children, disability, equality and integration has faced a barrage of criticism on a number of fronts since he was appointed to the cabinet last year, and his critics… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: CATHAL CROWE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

WITH FIANNA Fáil paralysed by its alliance with Fine Gael, and uncertainty as to its future, attention is turning to where the new TDs stand, among them Clare’s Cathal Crowe who displaced Timmy Dooley as the sole FF TD is the party’s most republican county. Crowe has been involved in Fianna Fáil politics since he… Read more »

BROWNE BEGGED HAUGHEY FOR CASH

Date: December 2, 2021 -

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT extracts from the biography, Haughey, by academic Gary Murphy, opened with a passage about how the founder of Magill magazine, Vincent Browne, had written to Squire hockey on the day he became taoiseach in December, 1979. Browne wanted to do an in-depth interview on how Haughey had won the leadership of Fianna Fáil… Read more »

REGINA DOHERTY’S COMEBACK

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THE COMEBACK campaign of former minister Regina Doherty, who lost her Meath East seat at the last general election, has been revving up to full throttle in recent months. But even though she is now leader of the Seanad and leader of Fine Gael there she recently told senators that “I am now representing the constituency… Read more »

ROBERT QUIRKE’S VENTILATORS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

MORE THAN 20 months after Covid-19 impacted this country, one of the players who made a killing by importing ventilators is now living in a sunny paradise, where he has moved to count his money. An Irish company, Roqu Energy Ltd, has just been incorporated by 42-year-old Robert Quirke, and it looks set to add… Read more »

AMANDA PRATT’S NEXT MOVE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

LAST WEEK’S examination of the Avoca operation in the Irish Times was less than flattering for owner Aramark, who purchased the high-profile food and retail business from the Pratt family in 2015 for a reported €64m. The general gist was that it has been downhill for the past six years with exits by assorted senior… Read more »

JOHN GOODWIN’S PENTHOUSE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IT WAS not quite the raffle result that John Goodwin expected when he put his expensive Grand Canal penthouse apartment up for grabs, courtesy of a UK-based outfit called Raffall. The Raffall modus operandi is pretty straightforward. The company hosts raffles for people who think that they can make a better return than, for example,… Read more »

LIFE WITHOUT CHILDREN – RODDY DOYLE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IN THIS slim short fiction collection, Roddy Doyle has managed to get to market one of the very first fiction efforts to encapsulate (cash in on? – Ed) the pandemic. Was it worth being so quick out the gate? The collection of stories focuses mainly on middle-aged and elderly men coming to terms with a… Read more »

VOL 39 NO 23

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THE ‘IT’ IN TRINNERS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IRISH TIMES editor Paul O’Neill was presumably somewhat relieved that a referendum carried out at Trinity College Dublin fell short of having the newspaper officially boycotted by the university. It will be recalled (see The Phoenix 27/8/21) that the student newspaper Trinity News set the cat among the pigeons by cancelling its printing deal with… Read more »

ISRAELI PROPAGANDA BLITZ

Date: December 2, 2021 -

FORMER UCD president Hugh Brady is moving from the president’s chair at the University of Bristol to become president of Imperial College London. But Brady leaves behind him an unholy row about alleged antisemitism and counter charges from Palestinian supporters of victimisation of an academic critic of Israel. The Irish dimension to this issue is… Read more »

CHARLIE AND BRITISH INTELLIGENCE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

GARY MURPHY’S book Haughey may disappoint some long-standing Phoenix readers as the author barely addresses the Squire’s bruising entanglements with Her Majesty’s spooks. Murphy refers briefly to the book Operation Brogue (1984), which alleged British dirty tricks but was lacking in detail; and a letter from Seán MacBride, which supported the theory about British spooks’… Read more »

IMMORAL IRISH

Date: December 2, 2021 -

MANY READERS of The Phoenix will recognise the episodic campaigns for Ireland to formally join up with the incipient EU military machine being constructed and spend billions on serious hardware and weapons of war. Apparently it’s our duty, and traditional Irish neutrality is a cowardly cop-out, as some are now arguing again. The latest push… Read more »

SQUIRE HOCKEY’S BEN DUNNE DOSH

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IN THE biography Haughey, Gary Murphy writes that RTÉ’s Prime Time reported on April 17, 1997, that Ben Dunne had given CJ Haughey more than a £IRm over a period of some years and that this was when “Haughey’s name was outed” in connection with the then upcoming McCracken (Dunnes Payments) tribunal. Moran also wrote… Read more »

JUSTIN BARRETT IN TWO MINDS…

Date: December 2, 2021 -

ON SATURDAY, November 27, almost a thousand people protested outside the GPO against Covid-19 restrictions and vaccine passports in probably the biggest gathering of citizens fighting governments’ restrictions in the past 12 months. With the government then looking at renewing some of the restrictions, protests – some violent – were taking place around Europe in… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

I am also working on expanding the range with well-thought-through additions that make sense to the brand’s story and ethos. Aimee Connolly, ‘Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year’, on her plans for Sculpted By Aimee, Irish Times We need that hope. We need the joy and giddiness of 400,000 Garth Brooks fans to infect us all…. Read more »

JEFFREY VS THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THE STORMONT executive is grinding to a dead stop. Nothing illustrates the Alice in Wonderland stasis better than the Flags, Identity, Culture and Traditions commission (FICT) set up in 2016 after serious rioting in 2013 and 2014, the so-called flags protests. It was hoped FICT would establish a set of enforceable protocols for displaying symbols,… Read more »

LABOUR’S PROSPECTS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

HOW APPROPRIATE that ‘Austerity junkie’ Brendan Howlin, former public expenditure minister who damaged Labour’s credibility with its working-class base perhaps beyond repair, should have made it onto the Irish Independent’s Political Rich List recently. This may or may not compensate for the legacy that Howlin bequeathed on the party during his last term in government… Read more »

NO DESSERT FOR BARRISTERS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

FURTHER EVIDENCE that throwing money at government party Fine Gael is not only a waste of time but positively counterproductive comes with the latest appointments to the High Court. Goldhawk has drawn attention already to the dozens of barristers that attended an expensive Fine Gael fundraising dinner in Suesey Street restaurant in June 2019 for… Read more »

SHATTER V MAIL ON SUNDAY

Date: December 2, 2021 -

ALAN SHATTER has been pursuing the Mail on Sunday and its political writer John Drennan for some time after he delivered a line on the former justice minister that greatly perturbed him and which has led to a High Court writ alleging libel. The commentary that so irked the former politician was published in the… Read more »

TWEED NON-STORY AND THE ‘IRISH TIMES’ 

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THE RECENT death of former Ireland rugby player Davy Tweed did not excite interest on the Irish Times news pages. A brief sports supplement report mentioned his four caps in 1995 plus his Orange Order, DUP and, latterly, TUV political associations. His participation in a nine-month picket of a Roman Catholic Church in Harryville, Ballymena, in 1996-97… Read more »

FOR PEAT’S SAKE, REGINA

Date: December 2, 2021 -

FOR AT least the last decade, Fine Gael has made little secret of its disdain for climate and environmental issues. Lately, sensing a shift in the zeitgeist, the Blueshirts have been making some tentative moves to shake off their tag as eco-laggards, since this is now becoming a serious electoral liability, especially among younger voters…. Read more »

CIARÁN CUFFE’S QUERY

Date: December 2, 2021 -

NOBODY DIALS up the instant outrage quite as often or as theatrically as the Irish Farmers Association. The lobby outfit turned its latest fit of pique on Green MEP Ciarán Cuffe, who apparently is trying to “sabotage Irish farmers”. Cuffe’s crime? He recently wrote to financial institutions to ask about carbon lock-in and the risk… Read more »

HERITAGE TRUST REFRESH

Date: December 2, 2021 -

THIS WEEK was the closing date for any tweedies interested in joining the board of the underfunded Irish Heritage Trust (IHT). The trust, where Anne O’Donoghue is in situ as chief executive, is currently responsible for three properties, including Fota House, which was the first property that came under the ownership of the IHT more… Read more »

NATIONAL GALLERY GLITCH

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IT LOOKS like, surprise, surprise, there will be a bunch of empty seats at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) board meetings, as the terms of no less than six directors came to an end last month. With former chairman Michael Cush having quietly stepped down a year early at the end of 2020, this… Read more »

LARRY BASS’S GOOD NEWS

Date: December 2, 2021 -

SCREEN IRELAND’S third quarter ‘loans’ for producers popped up online last week and one of the winners is Larry Bass, who exited the RTÉ board after concerns were raised by fellow directors about the fact that his shows were big beneficiaries from the state broadcaster. Happily, there were no such problems during his three years… Read more »

HIDDEN ASSETS – RTÉ ONE

Date: December 2, 2021 -

FOR WHAT it’s worth, the end credit on RTÉ’s latest ‘local’ drama series Hidden Assets, reads: “Produced by Saffron Moon, Potemkino, and Facet 4, (c) MMXX1 Saffron Moon Ltd/Potemkino Port bvba/Facet 4 Productions (Acceptable Risk 2/Hidden Assets ) Inc.” In the preceding credits, for a supposedly local offering, there is a multitude of public funding… Read more »

ROTHWELL’S REACTION

Date: December 2, 2021 -

PHILIP ROTHWELL is certainly making an impression with his recent interviews on Racing TV. The Wicklow trainer delivered an emotional performance, after landing a minor race at Cheltenham’s November meeting, as he fought back the tears when explaining to presenter Lydia Hislop that it had taken him 15 years to get back into the winners’… Read more »

MCNALLY DOES IT AGAIN

Date: December 2, 2021 -

CONTROVERSIAL TRAINER Ronan McNally got one over on the bookies once again when landing a well-executed gamble with All Class at Punchestown. The mare had also landed a sizable gamble at Navan in March when she won on the flat, having been backed from 100/1 into 9/2 favourite. At that time, she was being trained… Read more »

PAPERWORK PREVARICATION

Date: December 2, 2021 -

IT APPEARS the IHRB has a significant backlog of cases on its books judging by a recent case that came before the referrals committee of Nick Wachman, Peter Reynolds and Anthony Byrne. The matter dates back more than two years to November 2019, following a routine stable inspection carried out at Meath trainer Matthew Smith’s… Read more »

AFTER THE RAID

Date: December 2, 2021 -

AS THE dust settles on that raid on a premises near Monasterevin, Co Kildare, the IHRB confirmed that hair and blood tests carried out on horses present at the farm returned negative for “prohibited at all substances”. The statement is not, however, in itself a reassurance that there isn’t a doping problem elsewhere in racing…. Read more »

REAPING THE PROFITS AT ORIGIN ENTERPRISES

Date: December 2, 2021 -

TOM O’MAHONY hung up his CEO boots at Origin Enterprises in June 2020 and passed the baton on to Sean Coyle, who arrived at the company in September 2018 as CFO. He inherited an organisation that O’Mahony had refocused on the root crop sector, which is very much du jour. The company has had a difficult… Read more »

FINEOS SHARES SKY HIGH DOWN UNDER

Date: December 2, 2021 -

FINEOS IS one of the few Irish so-called unicorns and happens to be quoted on the Australian Stock Exchange. It was founded in 1993 by DCU graduate Mick Kelly and has its head office off East Wall Road in D3. Kelly is still sitting on a 54% stake, with the company now capitalised at just… Read more »

TAXMAN TAKES A BEATING

Date: December 2, 2021 -

GOLDHAWK regularly features the Revenue Commissioners in these pages, mostly when some slippery type has been caught bang to rights for evasion. It is rare to see the dreaded taxman on the wrong end of a good old-fashioned kicking but that was the case last month when Tax Appeals Commission (TAC) chair Marie-Claire Maney issued… Read more »