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NIGEL’S ‘ENERGY INDEPENDENCE’

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Last summer Tullamore company Lumcloon Energy drummed up widespread community support in Coolpowra in east Galway for a supposed solar farm but then caused great upset by instead applying for planning permission for what would be the biggest fossil fuel power station ever built on this island. (See The Phoenix 23/8/24.) This track record made… Read more »

JIMMY CARTER’S IRISH POLICY

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IN THE second public reference recently to his stewardship of Anglo-Irish policy at home and abroad, Seán Donlon wrote in the Irish Times about the late US president Jimmy Carter’s Irish policy. This, of course, necessitated Donlon recounting the splendid role that his embassy played in this ever-so-positive development by the US president, guided by… Read more »

INDEPENDENT SUPER JUNIORS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

LITTLE OR NOTHING was discussed between the two big Government parties and Independent TD groups over Christmas, despite insinuations and hints to media of serious policy negotiations. But Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are aware of what the two different groups – one led by Michael Lowry and the other by Michael Healy-Rae – want… Read more »

VENGEANCE BEJAYSUS IN NORTH CORK

Date: January 9, 2025 -

FIVE YEARS ago the failure of Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin to reward one of his most loyal followers, Cork North-West’s Michael Moynihan, with a junior minister’s job provoked a ferocious response from the TD. This time around Moynihan has behaved impeccably but it remains to be seen if his delicate manoeuvring proves more effective… Read more »

MAYOR BLAIN’S MEDIA EXPOSURE

Date: January 9, 2025 -

NEWLY ELECTED Dublin lord mayor Emma Blain recently told readers of the Sunday Independent, her old employer, that people should “get over” her past as one of the newspaper’s O3 girls. “We were a form of influencer back then in the Celtic Tiger,” she stated. In a most ironic statement Blain also said that she… Read more »

VIRGIN MEDIA’S NEWS BLACKOUT

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THE GOVERNMENT’S refusal to accede to Virgin Media’s demand for a slice of the licence fee when it bailed out RTÉ last year has been cited by management as the reason for the hollowing out of Virgin One’s news and current affairs output. But most of what is left of the station’s corps of news… Read more »

JOHN ‘UNIONIST’ BRUTON

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IRISH TIMES revisionism of national politics and modern history is one thing but revising the message purveyed in its own newspaper is pushing it a bit. Last week’s editorial attempt to rehabilitate John Bruton’s blundering management of the peace process was remarkable and, while it reflects the outlook of the newspaper’s Common Ground project, it… Read more »

DINEEN V NICHOLLS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

CORK PUNTER and racing pundit Johnny Dineen recently expressed his opinions on social media regarding the lack of success of the Paul Nicholls string, most especially at the Cheltenham festival. The bolshy Dineen told the Racing Post’s Dave Jennings: “Nicholls is a great trainer… but his horses are rubbish. I didn’t realise he has such… Read more »

HOLIDAY CRACKERS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

WILLIE MULLINS and Nicky Henderson faced off at Kempton Park on St Stephen’s Day, when the Rich Ricci-owned Lossiemouth challenged Michael Buckley’s Constitution Hill in the Grade 1 Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle. There was much pre-race hype thanks to former Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning jockey, now racing pundit, Paddy Brennan writing off the latter nag, which duly… Read more »

MAGNIER’S LAUGHING WATERS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

WHILE THE increasing appetite of John Magnier’s Coolmore operation for agricultural land has become something of a talking point here in the last couple of years – exacerbated by the High Court row over the 750-acre Barne estate – it turns out that the moneybags is also in the selling game, at least in the… Read more »

ALLEN KRAUSE’S MADRID MOVES

Date: January 9, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK’S FAVOURITE Mexican-English millionaire, Allen de Jesus Sanginés-Krause – the squire of Killua Castle in Co Westmeath, where he lives much of the year with his glamorous wife, Lorena – generated some interest in Spain last month, where his latest deals came under the microscope The couple are rather well known in Madrid and, back… Read more »

C&C’S BEWILDERING PERFORMANCE AND FIGURES

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THE UNFORTUNATE shareholders in C&C Group have had a torrid time since the company’s shares peaked at £11 in 2007 and it was not all that surprising to see shareholder Engine Capital recently seeking to have the company offloaded. Roger White is now in situ as C&C chief executive – the fourth in four years… Read more »

ROCHA FAMILY OVER THE MOON

Date: January 9, 2025 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p18) Goldhawk looks at the high-flying, high-fashion phenomenon that is London-based Simone Rocha, recently crowned British Womenswear Designer of the Year. While she has been generating substantial profits in recent years, boosted by stars such as Selena Gomez being photographed sporting her gear, in the early days a fair few… Read more »

DR EVA’S NEW REGIME

Date: January 9, 2025 -

FANS OF health guru Dr Eva Orsmond had a nice start to the new year thanks to the Indo giving the celeb lots of space to plug her new book, The Belly Fat Solution, which looks set to raise a few eyebrows, targeting as it does hot topics such as Ozempic and also the body… Read more »

FRANNO’S SCORES

Date: January 9, 2025 -

INTERESTING TO see a judgment mortgage registered against a company called KC Property Developments Ltd (KCP) by Killarney-based plant and tool hire company Allosales, following an outing in Mallow District Court. KCP is jointly owned by developer and engineer Chris Wholey and one Neil Francis, rugby-player-turned-journalist-turned-businessman. Franno was earning a tasty wedge from his various… Read more »

DALTON PHILIPS’S LIMITED HORIZONS AT GREENCORE

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IT MUST be surprising for those 10,000 stranded passengers who tried to fly out of Dublin Airport in May 2022 to see the Irish Times awarding Dalton Philips the “business person of the month” accolade. He has since moved on (although not too far) – just before that debacle, Philips had been confirmed as the new… Read more »

ZAHRA PUBLISHING’S RED INK

Date: January 9, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK WAS interested to see that a company called Zahra Publishing Ltd (ZPL) entered the Scarp company rescue process just before Christmas. The move comes not long after the principals experienced quite the payday courtesy of the Oirish Daily Mail group. ZPL is part of the Bray-based Zahra Media Group, originally established by South African… Read more »

MARTIN V DPP OFFICIAL

Date: December 12, 2024 -

MICHEÁL MARTIN made law and order one of his election issues and, in a calculated move shortly before the election was called, he made a most unusual initiative when sharply criticising decisions that “blocked the murder trial” in the case of Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s brutal killing in 1996. In an unprecedented initiative for a… Read more »

PROFILE: CIAN O’CALLAGHAN

Date: December 12, 2024 -

BEHIND EVERY great leader, there’s a deputy leader and Social Democrats head Holly Cairns was temporarily replaced by her deputy, Cian O’Callaghan, for most of the general election campaign due to her electorally untimely pregnancy. O’Callaghan is a politician of substance, like his leader, but both of them now stand on the verge of a… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: EMMA DORAN

Date: December 12, 2024 -

Celebs with a good personal back story will always find refuge in the welcoming arms of the Irish media and this year comedian Emma Doran has certainly scored a bullseye in that regard. Her tale of getting pregnant during the school holidays and giving birth 13 days before the Leaving Cert has garnered her copious… Read more »

COLLISON’S COLLISION

Date: December 12, 2024 -

MORE THAN 11 million people have now seen a tweet posted on X last month by Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison that included his photo of the Tel Aviv seafront under the message: “Great to be back in Tel Aviv. I missed this run.” What on earth was he up to? Not surprisingly, Collison, who boasts… Read more »

McENTEE REVIVES LEADERSHIP DREAM

Date: December 12, 2024 -

FIANNA FÁIL’s election strategy selected justice minister Helen McEntee as its prime target but the Fine Gael princess focussed on a game plan inside FG during the campaign in an exercise signalling that she has not yet given up hopes of the leadership. Many party members marvel at the patronage and preference afforded to Helen… Read more »

CONOR McGREGOR’S LOAN

Date: December 12, 2024 -

WITH FORMER MMA superstar Conor McGregor and businessman Paddy McKillen Jr both generating headlines recently – albeit for very different reasons – it is interesting to find that the two boys were doing business together. McGregor’s own ‘brand’ has of course been seriously tarnished by the rape case verdict earlier this month, with significant pushback… Read more »

RIGHT-WING RECRIMINATION

Date: December 12, 2024 -

THE FAILURE of Ireland’s new-right parties and Independents in the general election was always likely to lead to some level of introspection and reorganisation – as well as serious recrimination. While many on the right were keen to advocate unity as a solution to their electoral frustration this, as it turned out, was wishful thinking…. Read more »

LINDA O’SHEA FARREN’S ‘TENACITY’

Date: December 12, 2024 -

YOU HAVE to hand it to the ultra-ambitious Linda O’Shea Farren – she keeps bouncing back. A long-time member of the National University of Ireland (NUI) senate and serial election candidate, Linda has put her name forward again for a tilt at the upcoming Seanad elections, where she will contest for one of the three… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 24

Date: December 12, 2024 -

JOHN MAGNIER’S ROOSTING BATS

Date: December 12, 2024 -

JOHN MAGNIER has been attracting a lot of attention lately and, especially in Co Tipperary, the aggressive acquisition of large tracts of land by the Coolmore group and its owners is increasingly proving contentious as farmers in particular complain of being unable to compete with the zillionaire. Now his plans have potentially been scuppered, by… Read more »

FG SISTERS IN THE FIRING LINE

Date: December 12, 2024 -

A SILENT pall hangs over a deflated and even defeated Fine Gael, which lost the ‘other’ war (apart from the one with Sinn Féin and the opposition), namely that with Fianna Fáil in the historic, even existential, contest for supremacy on the centre right. That’s the reason for the gloom. The reason for the silence… Read more »

GOVT HANDLERS GO PRIVATE

Date: December 12, 2024 -

The Standards in Public Office Commission (Sipo) has a pragmatic attitude to red tape when it comes to waiving the rules about certain government officials being subject to a one-year cooling-off period before entering the lucrative private sector. This is to “manage” conflicts of interest that can arise for people that have worked in sensitive… Read more »

FENNELLY’S FIGHT

Date: December 12, 2024 -

THE BORING world of number crunchers sometimes throws up a good old yarn and one that has been running for nearly a decade concerns Chartered Accountants of Ireland (CAI) member Jimmy Fennelly’s attempts to get the body to admit it was wrong. The ante has been upped with the creation of a website last month…. Read more »

HIGH-END REACTIONARIES

Date: December 12, 2024 -

PROMINENT NATIONAL PARTY (NP) member Keith Woods (pseudonym of Roscommon native Keith O’Brien) likes to position himself at the more cerebral end of the new right. His assessment, however, of the NP’s poor performance in the general election is a little wide of the mark. Woods has quite a high profile internationally, having spoken at… Read more »

BBC SMEARS MARTIN McGUINNESS

Date: December 12, 2024 -

THE BBC has launched Stakeknife, a podcast series that looks at the activities of the late Freddie Scappaticci, MI5’s mole in the Provisional IRA. The first episode focused on a 1993 Cook Report (CR) documentary, which featured an incognito Scappaticci decrying Martin McGuinness in the car park of the Culloden hotel on the shores of… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: December 12, 2024 -

It’s becoming even clearer that she’s not just the female voice of a generation, but the humane voice of a century. Lena Dunham waxes lyrical about Sally Rooney, Financial Times Weekend Magazine Even Lazarus could not match the miracle Micheál Martin has pulled off. Justine McCarthy, Irish Times Moana… powerfully demonstrates how human action can… Read more »

TREASONOUS AN TAISCE!

Date: December 12, 2024 -

Shortly before the election, Independent TD Mattie McGrath introduced a bill in the Dáil aimed at stripping heritage charity An Taisce of its status as a “prescribed authority”. An Taisce has had this legal role since the early 1960s, meaning it is formally notified of planning applications that may have an environmental impact. This latest… Read more »

MARTIN’S NEW ALLY

Date: December 12, 2024 -

Micheál Martin spoke to the Alliance party conference in Belfast on March 1 as Tánaiste and Minister of Foreign Affairs. It was part of his policy of distancing himself and Fianna Fáil from northern nationalists, but it was more than that. He endorsed Alliance’s policy of reforming the functioning of the Stormont executive in the… Read more »

SCHULL-DUGGERY UNDERMINES FREE STATERS

Date: December 12, 2024 -

FOR THE second election in a row, Fine Gael has emerged with no seat in Cork South-West (CSW), a notable change of fortune in a constituency that had continuous FG representation from 1961 to 2020 and a reported party membership of 800. According to figures from Ireland Votes, a poll-aggregating website, CSW has emerged as… Read more »