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GELDOF WAIVES AWAY THE ÁRAS

Date: October 2, 2025 -

LIKE GROUPIES throwing their underwear at a real rock star, the fawning behaviour of various hacks at the feet of Bob Geldof as they urged him to save Ireland and run for the presidency was unsettling. But the story line from Bob and his media courtiers took a sharp turn when Micheál Martin made clear… Read more »

HUMPHREYS’ ‘ORANGE’ LINK

Date: October 2, 2025 -

THE IRISH TIMES was quick to publish a denunciation of the Irish Mail on Sunday for questioning presidential candidate Heather Humphreys and hubby Eric about any Orange links they had in the past. The man they chose to denounce the Mail was Edward Burke, who thought it “self-evidently inappropriate” to ask such questions. It is… Read more »

FIONNUALA’S FANTASIES

Date: October 2, 2025 -

FORMER CAMBRIDGE young Tory, now Irish Times columnist Tory, Finn (Fionnuala) McRedmond likes to lecture the Irish for being no better than the British anti-Irish media. “In reverting to base instincts – indulging latent nationalistic one-upmanship – we reveal ourselves to be no better than the British tabloid press,” she told a perhaps receptive IT… Read more »

MOLI’S SCARY PLOT

Date: October 2, 2025 -

ALMOST 20 months on from when it first emerged that the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) on St Stephen’s Green was in financial disarray, the operation continues to haemorrhage money despite significant cutbacks. The new boss clearly has a hell of a job on his hands. It will be recalled (see The Phoenix 22/2/24) that… Read more »

AMNEST’S FINANCES

Date: October 2, 2025 -

GIVEN THE current state of play in the Middle East, it is not surprising that Amnesty International Ireland (AII) has been issuing statements on the Gaza genocide. Another statement that chairwoman Bríd Cannon has just issued is the financial one, which has put the final nail in the disastrous ‘Face To Face’ (F2F) membership drive… Read more »

NCH VACANCY

Date: October 2, 2025 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p18) Goldhawk looks at the appointment of a new chief executive at the National Concert Hall (NCH). There has not, however, been any appointment of new board members. The NCH board should have 10 directors but, although the cultural institution is on the cusp of undertaking a huge multimillion-euro capital… Read more »

INTERVIEW WITH THE JOCKEY

Date: October 2, 2025 -

THREE JOCKEYS – Ben Harvey, Alex Harvey and Tom Harney – were each fined €400 by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board’s (IHRB) referrals committee following an investigation into comments made in a post-run Racing TV interview at Leopardstown in April. The interview, conducted by Gary O’Brien, followed the success of the Willie Harvey-trained Harbanaker in… Read more »

THE REAL WHACKER

Date: October 2, 2025 -

ENGLAND-BASED trainer Patrick Neville has just been adjudged a bankrupt at Darlington court. According to the Racing Post, the petition had been lodged by creditor Rebecca Dennis, a former associate of Neville, who owns a quarter share in stable star The Real Whacker. At issue was a 2022 loan of €110,000 made by Dennis to… Read more »

GOOD FRIDAY GOING

Date: October 2, 2025 -

LEOPARDSTOWN RACECOURSE’S interim boss, Vicki Donlon, oversaw a 12% rise in attendance at the recent Championship Weekend race day, before exiting the south Co Dublin track to take up her new position with Diageo. Presumably, the drinks giant will be looking to shift lots of product on Good Friday next year. It looks like Donlon… Read more »

MAKING PLANS FOR NIGEL

Date: October 2, 2025 -

CONGRATULATIONS to Nigel Flegg, who has landed one of the most prestigious jobs in the Irish cultural sector, having been appointed as chief executive of the National Concert Hall (NCH). He certainly has a lot on his plate. The exit after five years of former NCH boss Robert Read has come as something of a… Read more »

JOE ELLIOT’S GARDEN

Date: October 2, 2025 -

LAST WEEKEND it emerged that veteran rock-n-roller Joe Elliott was in yet another dispute with his neighbour over ambitious plans for his garden in Stepaside, south Co Dublin. A few years ago it was a giant treehouse that caused ructions and this time it’s a rather large statue, which might actually be more accurately described… Read more »

SUTHERLANDS SELLING UP

Date: October 2, 2025 -

INTERESTING TO see a modern three-bedroom house in the gated ‘Shrewsbury’ development off Merrion Road coming on the market. Not surprisingly, the Irish Times described the recently developed (2010) exclusive development as “sought after”. It turns out that the property in question is owned by one Ian Sutherland – son of former attorney general and… Read more »

CORRIGAN’S CASH

Date: October 2, 2025 -

MOUTHY CELEBRITY chef Richard Corrigan has just published accounts that, not surprisingly, show turnover for his operations in Ireland was down last year. The good news is that, despite the overall drop in tables served, the holding company managed to boost profits. Registered in London – where Dickie is behind the likes of Bentley’s Oyster… Read more »

IAG SHARES SET TO SOAR BUT AER LINGUS LAGS

Date: October 2, 2025 -

IT IS a decade since the giant International Airlines Group (IAG) took over Aer Lingus for €1.4bn. This deal would possibly never have flown were it not for the fact that Willie Walsh, who had previously run Aer Lingus, was at the time CEO of British Airways (BA), one of the four brands that make… Read more »

A NEW CHAPTER FOR MINCON

Date: October 2, 2025 -

A NEW chapter beckons for Irish engineering firm Mincon, which specialises in rock drilling tools. Last May, company founder Paddy Purcell announced his retirement as a non- executive director and it now turns out that chairman Hugh McCullough will step down at the end of the year, to be replaced by number-cruncher and former Applegreen… Read more »

WASEEM SAEED’S EXPANDING MENU

Date: October 2, 2025 -

LATER THIS month, the former Dylan McGrath restaurant, Rustic Stone, on Dublin’s South Great George’s Street is scheduled to re-open as a gastro pub following the sale at the start of the year of the lease by liquidators Dessie Morrow and Diarmaid Guthrie of Azets to Michael Wright’s loaded Wright Group for €275,000. Another McGrath… Read more »

DOUBLE ACT

Date: October 2, 2025 -

SEAN HANNIGAN and Clodagh Robinson of the Double Property Group boast an impressive property portfolio, with the company’s website proclaiming total assets worth €49m and annual income of €10m. And while they have not been having too much luck recently, at least in Co Longford, the duo do have plenty of other projects to distract… Read more »

NIAMH’S NEXT GIG

Date: October 2, 2025 -

WELL-KNOWN campaigner Niamh Uí Bhriain will surely have been disappointed that her fellow pro-life advocate, Maria Steen, failed to get the nod to run for the Áras this month. The former, however, does have rather a lot on her hands in trying to get a few different enterprises off the ground. Uí Bhriain is already… Read more »

DES MCGAHAN’S PRICE WATCH

Date: October 2, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK NOTES that the asking price for the truly impressive Ballinacurra House outside Kinsale continues to slide, much to the chagrin of former owner Des McGahan, who continues to insist that the price being sought by the receiver for Mars Capital Finance grossly undervalues the property – where one Michael Jackson enjoyed a sojourn with… Read more »

JOHN MAGNIER’S CREDIBILITY PROBLEM

Date: September 18, 2025 -

JOHN MAGNIER is having a dreadful year in the Four Goldmines, with not just one but two High Court judges getting stuck into him. The high-profile (ie expensive) legal proceedings launched by Magnier and family members to force the sale of Richard Thomson-Moore’s sprawling Barne Estate to his Coolmore operation backfired spectacularly this week and… Read more »

PROFILE: HEATHER HUMPHREYS

Date: September 18, 2025 -

FINE GAEL’S presidential candidate, Heather Humphreys, has been packaged by the party and its media supporters as a no-nonsense, can-do matriarch, whose Protestant background facilitated inclusive management of the 1916 commemorations. A benign glow of rural wholesomeness has been created around the Monaghan politician whose chief virtue, it appears, is one of saintly political decency…. Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: MAISIE HALL

Date: September 18, 2025 -

UNIVERSITY OF GALWAY (formerly known as NUIG) Students’ Union (SU) has a new president, Maisie Hall. Hailing from Dingle, Co Kerry, and born to English parents, she received the highest number of votes ever for the position of Galway SU president, beating Elijah Burke (of… Read more »

BLOODY SUNDAY: THE REAL STORY

Date: September 18, 2025 -

Anyone hoping that the full truth about Bloody Sunday will emerge from the trial of Soldier F is likely to be disappointed. The official narrative, outlined in Lord Saville’s 2010 report, claims paratroopers, in an impromptu frenzy, massacred 13 innocent people in Derry, with a… Read more »

CONOR MCGREGOR’S MMA SHARES

Date: September 18, 2025 -

CONOR McGREGOR has had his hands full over the last few weeks, between seeking a nomination for the presidency, announcing an MMA bout on the White House lawn next summer and keeping an eye on the alleged perjury investigation into two of the witnesses who… Read more »

JP McMANUS’S BAD DREAM

Date: September 18, 2025 -

GENEVA-BASED JP McManus’s dream of winning the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch with his 10/1 second favourite, A Dream To Share, has turned into something closer to a nightmare. The John Kiely-trained seven-year-old was deemed ineligible to run in Newmarket’s £175,000 heritage handicap as the Irish handicapper, Garry O’Gorman, had failed to allocate the former national hunt… Read more »

JENNY KEANE’S OH! MOMENT

Date: September 18, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK’S FAVOURITE “trail-blazing holistic sex educator”, Jenny Keane, was generating media attention again ahead of the latest live show, the Orgasm Tour. This follows on foot of a rebrand by the 39-year-old, D4-based entrepreneur, which has seen the boring old jennykeane.com website name now jazzed up to oh-moment.com. Earlier this month, Jenny was given a… Read more »

BOB GELDOF’S MASTER PLAN

Date: September 18, 2025 -

THE MYSTERY of why Bob Geldof should want to be president of a nation whose 1916 origins he despises and whose leaders, Pearse and Connolly, he has traduced has become apparent to Goldhawk. Bob’s anguish at Ireland’s misplaced fight for freedom – he has argued we were better off in the empire – led him… Read more »

DECLAN RYAN’S DISCOUNT

Date: September 18, 2025 -

GREAT NEWS for fans of saunas and minted publishers. One of the (two) books published to date by Irelandia Press is now being offered for sale with a very generous discount of just on 40%. Ryanair moneybags Declan Ryan is the man behind the publishing venture and its first offering, earlier this year, was called… Read more »

ALAN HAUGH’S SETBACK

Date: September 18, 2025 -

POPULAR BARRISTER Alan Haugh BL got plenty of support from the media for his criticisms of the decision by Peter Burke’s Department of Enterprise not to reappoint the legal eagle as deputy chairman of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) after a mere decade in the role. As poor Alan told the Indo last week, he… Read more »

JOE LEWIS’S TACTICS

Date: September 18, 2025 -

CONTROVERSIAL BILLIONAIRE Joe Lewis – familiar in these parts thanks to his close connections to fellow moneybags Dermot Desmond, JP McManus and John Magnier – has bounced back from last year’s public embarrassment, with his family overseeing a clinical coup in Premier League footie team Tottenham Hotspur. Last year, Bahamas-based Lewis managed to avoid prison… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 19

Date: September 18, 2025 -

NETFLIX AND BILL

Date: September 18, 2025 -

EARLIER THIS year, culture and communications minister Patrick O’Donovan appeared to nix an attempt to introduce a levy on the giant streaming companies, known as the ‘Netflix levy’. A revolt on the Oireachtas communications committee by the Fianna Fáil partners in coalition has resulted in a recommendation in favour of the levy. Among those who… Read more »

MICHAEL GOVE V KINGSPAN

Date: September 18, 2025 -

IT’S BEEN a year since former judge Martin Moore-Bick issued his report on the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower tragedy and Kingspan boss Eugene Murtagh could be forgiven for thinking that the whole thing is in the rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, one man seems intent on making sure that the British government does not forget the… Read more »

GARETH SHERIDAN’S SUPPORTERS

Date: September 18, 2025 -

GARETH SHERIDAN’S presidential nomination campaign brought together unlikely allies. Fresh from winning a 18-14 nomination from Kerry County Council on September 15, the 36-year-old multi-millionaire came up short the same evening at Laois County Council, with a vote of 11-6. The presidential hopeful, who is largely running on a platform of being 36 years of… Read more »

PSNI’S ABSENT OMBUDSMAN

Date: September 18, 2025 -

AS IF the doubts about British PM Keir Starmer’s willingness to reform Britain’s Legacy Act were not alarming enough, the “temporary leave of absence” of Northern Ireland Police Ombudsman Marie Anderson – whose office oversees investigations into police conduct, of which there are many pending – has hardly been timely. In June this year the… Read more »

HARD-RIGHT DISUNITY

Date: September 18, 2025 -

The series of anti-immigration rallies that brought thousands on to the streets over the spring and summer months in Grand Old Duke of York fashion have petered out in recent weeks as crowds attending fell dramatically. At the same, time negotiations between the various right-wing parties and independent activists trying to agree to the formation… Read more »