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SECOND-GUESSING IRELAND FIRST

Date: April 3, 2025 -

WITH FURIOUS ‘debate’ recently about voting rights and the like, the Electoral Commission will have been fazed to receive a complaint from Dr Caoimhín Ó Maolchalann, a fretful observer of the new right. Ó Maolchalann told the commission he is concerned as he believes that Ireland First (IF) is out of sync with its own… Read more »

ISRAELI SOLDIERS – THE REAL VICTIMS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE WAVE of antisemitic terror sweeping across Ireland, which the Irish Times and other media have been courageously exposing, has reached appalling levels in Dublin City University. There, a recently formed group, Students Supporting Israel (SSI), has received an “outpouring of vile online hatred, with over 2,000 comments filled with insults of the worst kind,… Read more »

EU WARRIORS ON THE RETREAT?

Date: April 3, 2025 -

HAVE DIVISIONS among the European shock troops limbering up to confront Putin’s Russia caused some to have second thoughts? This disappointing retreat from where Hitler, Napoleon and others had to turn around and scuttle home has begun to dawn on even the bloodthirsty Irish media in recent weeks. On St Patrick’s Day the Irish Times… Read more »

VICTIMISING MUSK

Date: April 3, 2025 -

Sir, I was disappointed to read your article in the Phoenix [March 21, 2025] titled “X marks the drop in standards” because I did not expect your magazine to take the side of de-platformers and Euro-censors. I cannot stand the smarmy Elon Musk, but to call X hateful or extremist, or a threat to Irish… Read more »

NIALL DOYLE’S NEXT GIG?

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AS GOLDHAWK revealed (see The Phoenix 7/3/25), Niall Doyle, the long-time head of music and opera at the Arts Council, is one of those who has decided to exit Merrion Square in recent times. That position has now been advertised by the council but what may be of more interest to Doyle will have been… Read more »

MORE ARTS COUNCIL CONSULTANTS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AS THE Arts Council prepares for an eventual outing before the Public Accounts Committee, it is business as usual on Merrion Square. A revamped website has been unveiled, which feels a bit like painting the Titanic as it drifts towards the iceberg, while a major survey of the council’s many hapless clients is now under… Read more »

SEAN DAVIS’S DOUBLE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

PART-TIME jockey and now trainer Sean Davis had waited more than two years to train his first winner but he landed a double last month with the well-punted pair, Venetian and Porsche Lad, both here and across the Irish Sea. Having been a significant eye-catcher when unplaced at Wolverhampton just two days prior to his… Read more »

POOR PATRICK MULLINS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AMATEUR RIDER Patrick Mullins has had a few recent setbacks in his quest to ride a winner at every UK National Hunt course. The jockey looked set for certain victory on the Harry Derham-trained Kiwi Rush in Kelso’s Racing Post Go North Jodami Series Final Open NH Flat Race, only to be collared in the… Read more »

MARY CANNON’S JOINT

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AN IMPRESSIVE looking timber-clad pile on the salubrious Claremont Road in Howth has just gone on the market with a chunky €3m price tag. The house turns out to have been acquired back in 2004 by psychiatric heavy-hitters Mary Cannon and David Cotter and Goldhawk suspects the former did not tune in to watch Apple… Read more »

KIERAN WALSH’S STYLE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

LOADED COSMETICS entrepreneur Kieran Walsh was, er, made up recently when he landed a gong at the Cork Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, posting on Instagram that he was “over the moon” to win the “coveted award”. His post was immediately liked by assorted fans, including blogger/influencer/businesswoman Lisa Jordan who gushed: “You are outstanding in… Read more »

SILVANA’S ‘HANDBAG INVESTMENTS’

Date: April 3, 2025 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO Argentinian-Italian handbag queen Silvana Landa, who landed yet another big plug in the Business Post last month, just one year after she got to tell the same story to the readers. Silvana’s company, Landa Leather, has featured regularly in the Post’s fashion rag, Irish Tatler, and for example, a few months ago under… Read more »

PAUL COULSON ROLLS THE DICE AT ARDAGH

Date: April 3, 2025 -

LAST MONTH Paul Coulson was facing the possible collapse of the whole Ardagh Group glass and metal packaging outfit and he sought to put in place a capital restructuring as over $2bn in loan notes approached maturity. Unlike the situation that played out for Denis O’Brien when he found himself facing off against the bondholders… Read more »

DALATA’S OVERSEAS SHAREHOLDERS KEEN TO CHECK OUT

Date: April 3, 2025 -

IT IS hard to understand what Dalata Hotel Group CEO Dermot Crowley is hoping to achieve by calling in Rothchild & Co for a strategic review that could lead to “a formal sale” of the company. It looks like a coup by the big overseas shareholders. Crowley has been Dalata CEO since November 2021, when Pat… Read more »

CIAN DE BUITLÉAR’S HAPPY ENDING

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE FILM company that previously owned movie and TV lighting equipment business Teach Solais Lighthouse is being wound up by its principal – cinematographer Cian de Buitléar – and the good news is that there is still a fair few bob in the bank, despite very generous payouts to the directors down the years. De… Read more »

IAN HYLAND’S NEW PRODUCTION

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE NEW owner of James Morris’s Windmill Lane Pictures (WLP) is Business and Finance Group boss Ian Hyland and Goldhawk hopes to see more activity than has been the case to date with his other ‘extracurricular’ investment, the small London publisher, Quartet Books. This latter deal was done in June 2022, when he proclaimed: “I… Read more »

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 »