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IRISH RIGHT’S FAR-OFF FRIENDS

Date: January 23, 2025 -

The failure of new Irish right-wing parties to gain an electoral breakthrough has resulted in many of their members seemingly more concerned with developments internationally than with issues at home. Keith Woods of the National Party (NP) has been keen to promote Remigration Summit 25, a gathering of white nationalists in Europe planned for May…. Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: January 23, 2025 -

The one I’m most excited about – I’ve had a couple of emails that said, “I watched the tango and afterwards I told my parents that I’m gay”. Dancing With The Stars contestant Gearóid Farrelly on the impact of his dance moves, Irish Independent A billionaire innovator and entrepreneur with time to parse history’s great… Read more »

TRUMP RULES HERE TOO

Date: January 23, 2025 -

IT HAS long been understood that the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael element of the outgoing coalition Government had to be dragged kicking and screaming in the direction of an even vaguely climate-friendly agenda by their oh-so annoying Green Party junior partners. Simon Harris and especially Micheál Martin were quite capable of talking a good fight on… Read more »

END TO BUSINESS AS USUAL

Date: January 23, 2025 -

A recent landmark High Court judgment has given a huge boost to environmental protection. Justice Richard Humphreys lambasted An Bord Pleanála (ABP) for being more concerned about the visual impacts of wind farms than complying with EU law or addressing the climate emergency. Section 15 of the Climate Act demands that public bodies must act… Read more »

PRESIDENTIAL GERRYMANDER

Date: January 23, 2025 -

On June 6 last year several hundred Poles voted at four venues in the north – Belfast, Ballymena, Omagh and Newry – for candidates in the European parliament elections in Poland. Other EU citizens also voted in consulates and community centres. Across the border thousands of people were voting for Irish MEPs. Irish citizens in… Read more »

SINN FÉIN’S NEW SENATOR

Date: January 23, 2025 -

SINN FÉIN’S decision to transfer its northern economy minister to the Seanad has provoked much curious comment but little of the usual media conspiratorial analysis about two or three men making decisions in a back room in Belfast. That may be because the crushing logic of replacing the disgraced Niall Ó Donnghaile as party leader… Read more »

FLIGHT OF THE WILD GREENS

Date: January 23, 2025 -

THE LAST Green standing, party leader Roderic O’Gorman, recently slid his stiletto with surgical precision into both his party chair, ex-senator Pauline O’Reilly, and ex-junior agriculture minister Pippa Hackett (his vanquished leadership rival), telling the Irish Independent that both of them were stepping away from the party. This was based on personal statements from both… Read more »

REINVENTING VARADKAR

Date: January 23, 2025 -

IS LEO VARADKAR trying to reinvent himself as a retired western statesman turned champion of the oppressed in the manner of late US president Jimmy Carter? Hard core Young Fine Gael reactionaries who grew up with him back in the noughties were mourning the political demise of their former hero quite some time before he… Read more »

BIG PHIL’S LAMENT

Date: January 23, 2025 -

THE MOST original – contrarian even – critique of Michael Lowry’s central role in the creation of the new government came in the Sunday Independent from Mediahuis Ireland editor Fionnán Sheahan, whose article on the controversy positively dripped with sarcasm. Fionnán wrote an analysis of the first opinion poll of 2025, which covers all the… Read more »

TIMES SUBVERSIVES?

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HAS THE Irish Times editor’s office been infiltrated by those Sinn Féin subversives? Last week the comparison was uncanny between the newspaper’s editorial outpourings on the new programme for government and the more predictable onslaught from SF senior front-bench figures. On January 15 the opening paragraph of SF health spokesperson Dave Cullinane’s statement said the… Read more »

FOREIGN SPIES IN IRELAND

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ANOTHER CORKER from Sunday Times security correspondent John Mooney recently told of the “United Front Work Department (UFWD), a shadowy Chinese agency” that has “cultivated connections across Ireland”. UFWD activities, the story went, include the recruitment of people doing sensitive research, spying and intimidation of dissidents. This information has come to MI5’s favourite Irish newspaper… Read more »

NIALL GUNNE’S BUS CORRIDOR

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ONE OF the juicier-looking properties to arrive on the market is a large house on Rathgar’s leafy Highfield Road, which got a glowing review in the Business Post at the weekend. The seller here is looking for no less than €3.95m and he turns out to be a chap who knows a thing or two… Read more »

ARCHIVES COUNCIL IN STORAGE

Date: January 23, 2025 -

JUST OVER a year on from a leak, which started on the top floor of the National Archives premises on Bishop Street in D8, a number of changes have been introduced by director Orlaith McBride et al. Obviously, however, the National Archives Advisory Council (NAAC) had no input whatsoever. While the leak could have proved… Read more »

GATHERING FEEDBACK

Date: January 23, 2025 -

LAST MONTH Jessica Drum’s Screen Guilds of Ireland (SGI) – an association of technicians’ guilds in film and TV – announced it would be “gathering feedback” from personnel in all film and TV production departments, with an online survey launched two weeks ago. The SGI is chaired by former Anglo Irish banker Peter Fitzgerald, who… Read more »

HUSBANDS’ CUSTOMERS

Date: January 23, 2025 -

LEOPARDSTOWN BOSS Tim Husbands and his team have decided it’s time to “improve customer experience” by making the 2025 Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) a pre-booked, ticket-only event. Certainly, the track could do with a good result next month. The thinking behind the Leopardstown move is that the executive can anticipate the volume of attendance and,… Read more »

LONDONOFFICECALLIN FLIES HIGH

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HIGH-FLYING racehorse Londonofficecallin – a 23-times-raced maiden when leaving Evanna McCutcheon’s yard – won his seventh race from a dozen starts at Punchestown’s opening meeting of 2025 for his new owners, the In Bounds Syndicate. Winning for the second time in three starts for trainer Gavin Cromwell, the grey gelding had been successful five times… Read more »

HAYES BACK ON TRACK

Date: January 23, 2025 -

FOLLOWING HIS 15-month suspension for failing to take proper care of a horse, Patrick Joseph Hayes has trained his first winner since being re-issued with a training licence by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB). Hayes’s licence had been suspended by the regulatory body following his conviction in Naas Circuit Court for animal neglect after… Read more »

UNDERVALUED TULLOW OIL NEEDS NEW ENERGY

Date: January 23, 2025 -

The International Chamber of Commerce announced on January 2 that Tullow Oil is not liable to pay the $320m branch profit remittance tax (BPRT), which the Ghanaian government was seeking to levy, on the grounds that BPRT falls outside the tax regime provided for in the petroleum agreements. This is obviously good news for Tullow… Read more »

BOTSWANA DIAMONDS FAILING TO SPARKLE

Date: January 23, 2025 -

There are three main areas for diamonds in the world – southern Africa, Canada and the Karelian Craton in Finland and Northern Russia – and Irish-connected companies have a presence in all three. The largest of these is the Dermot Desmond-linked Mountain Province Diamonds in the northern territories in Canada. The second is Karelian Diamonds,… Read more »

VISUAL’S QUARE OLD LOSSES

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HAVING JUST celebrated 15 years in operation, the well-funded Visual arts centre in Carlow – the largest visual arts space in the country – has started off 2025 with a pretty minimal offering to tempt in the arty-farty brigade, but presumably the coffers did get a boost before Christmas from Freezin’ – The Quare Cold… Read more »

DAVID STONE’S POP FLOP

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ANOTHER SETBACK for hapless businessman David Stone, whose efforts to rescue one of his many companies has just fallen flat. For many, it is not Stone’s eclectic mix of investments that would be recognised but rather the headlines he made in 2023 as a result of his conviction for allowing the euthanasia drug pentobarbital to… Read more »

KOREAN POWER PLAY

Date: January 23, 2025 -

A JUDGMENT for a whopping €3m has just been registered by a South Korean energy giant against an Irish-registered company called Instant Upright Ltd (IUL), which was actually incorporated by the Stowe family in the sunny Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. No doubt Donegal property developer Pat Doherty is keeping one eye on… Read more »

WINDMILL LANE’S FADE-OUT

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ON FRIDAY there will be a creditors’ meeting held for Windmill Lane Pictures Ltd (WLP) – the audiovisual post-production business established under James Morris’s leadership – at which Nicholas O’Dwyer and Paul Walsh of Grant Thornton are to be appointed as joint liquidators. The collapse has sent shockwaves through the sector given the company’s high… Read more »

BONO BENDS TO BIDEN

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BONO’S FAWNING behaviour towards US presidents and other powerful western leaders while simultaneously crying peace and freedom have become too much even for many U2 fans. But his latest blessing – Joe Biden’s award of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom – as well as his cloying response of gratitude to the US president is… Read more »

PROFILE: OLIVER SEARS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

DESPITE IRISH people’s revulsion at Israel’s continued slaughter of Palestinian children and other civilians in Gaza, the ‘paper of reference’, the Irish Times, has given a repeated platform to the Zionist rhetoric of art gallery owner Oliver Sears. London-born Sears claims that Ireland is suffused with antisemitism, the standard argument or diversionary insult of apologists… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ALBERT DOLAN

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IS THE success of 26-year-old Albert Dolan in taking Fianna Fáil’s seat in Galway East – displacing incumbent Anne Rabbitte in the process – a harbinger of a new attractiveness of the party to the younger generation? While FF is preening itself after coming top in last November’s general election, opinion polls remain consistent in… Read more »

WUFF JUSTICE

Date: January 9, 2025 -

WITH HEATHER Humphreys’ regulations banning the breeding and resale of XL bully dogs coming into force next month, it is not surprising that the ongoing rearguard action by animal charities has picked up pace. Their case has, however, not been helped by a shocking incident at the ISPCA’s National Animal Centre in Longford. Shortly before… Read more »

NOT SO MAGNIFICENT €7M PROJECT

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THERE IS no sign of the Arts Council’s 2023 annual report, which was supposed to have been laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas by arts minister Catherine Martin months ago. It remains unclear exactly what is the cause of the delay but Goldhawk understands it relates to a multimillion-euro write-down of assets that has… Read more »

DEIRDRE VELDON’S FUNERAL NOTICES

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THERE HAS, not surprisingly, been a fair deal of whingeing about the impact of the takeover of RIP.ie by the Irish Times, on foot of the hefty €100 charge for funeral notices that kicked in this month. IT managing director Deirdre Veldon may have been as surprised as anyone else by the move. Certainly, the… Read more »

BIG BUDGET PÁLÁS FLOP

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THE LATEST plot twist in the tortuous tale of Galway’s Pálás arthouse cinema (controlled offshore since 2020) is the decision of Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe to call ‘cut’ on the business at the end of next month, claiming it is haemorrhaging money at the rate of €¼m a year. It appears to be a… Read more »

NORMA FOLEY’S POOR HOMEWORK

Date: January 9, 2025 -

EDUCATION MINISTER Norma Foley is expecting to either retain her current role or be moved sideways in Cabinet and with party leader Micheál Martin likely to have eight Cabinet places, an increase of two, the Tralee woman will surely not be axed. But that’s not necessarily the view of all Fianna Fáil decision makers, especially… Read more »

SIMONE’S ‘SUBVERSIVE WORLD’

Date: January 9, 2025 -

FASHION DESIGNER du jour Simone Rocha will be hard-pressed to top her performance in 2024, which started with her outfits on show at Jean Paul Gaultier’s haut couture show in Paris back in January and ended with a major gong at the British Fashion Awards and a high-profile boost for the brand courtesy of one… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 01

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BERNARD MCNAMARA’S CREDITORS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BOOM-TIME BUILDER extraordinaire Bernard McNamara has slowly but surely been building back up his business despite the odd setback. Now a couple of his firms are set to be liquidated. McNamara was one of the biggest casualties of the property crash, having been hugely backed by Anglo Irish Bank, with well over €½bn still outstanding… Read more »

NIGEL FARAGE’S IRISH ALLY

Date: January 9, 2025 -

REFORM UK leader Nigel Farage may have lost the support of Elon Musk but his ally in the north appears to be rock solid. Farage’s policy on Ireland is influenced by Jim Allister of the Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), with whom he concluded a formal ‘partnership’ last March. Farage’s Scottish organiser, Craig Campbell, was starting… Read more »

ENTRAPMENT STORY A POLITICAL TRAP

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Last October the Sunday Times published an article asserting that ‘Cobalt’, a serving member of the Oireachtas, was a Russian agent. Cobalt denies this. Within days, the country was consumed with gossip about the sexual entrapment of the enigmatic Cobalt. A closer analysis of the original ST piece, however, reveals there is no evidence that… Read more »