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GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

DALKEY BOOK FESTIVAL, the ego-child of David McWilliams, came around this month with little danger of anyone in the literary and media establishment having a pop at the author’s limited self-esteem and his understated predictions. But Village Magazine proprietor and editor Michael Smith took off his kid gloves and slapped them across McWilliams’s face with… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 13

Date: June 26, 2025 -

WUFF JUSTICE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

LAST MONTH Working Animals Guardians (WAG) secured an invitation to Leinster House to brief TDs and senators about the amendments required for Heather Humphreys’ XL bully breed ban. Among those facilitating the session were senators Chris Andrews (Sinn Féin) and Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats). WAG, it will be recalled, is one of six dog rescue… Read more »

COUGHLAN’S CAUTION

Date: June 26, 2025 -

That indefatigable political warrior, academic Anthony Coughlan, recently came up with what appears to be a strong argument against the abolition of the triple lock that has not yet entered the debate. He points out that Ireland made a solemn national declaration in 2002 to retain the triple lock in order to allay fears that… Read more »

DUBLIN/MONAGHAN INQUIRY SLOWS

Date: June 26, 2025 -

WITH THE Omagh bombing inquiry already slowing under the weight of its initial disclosure, the inquiry into the other most deadly attack of the Troubles, the UK’s Operation Denton into the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of 1974, is also handicapped by its own omission. It is missing a golden opportunity to shine some light on… Read more »

LIAM LYNCH’S IRISH GOODBYE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

A CREDITORS’ meeting was held earlier this month for a company called Irish Studio Media Publishing Ltd (ISM), the outfit established here by New Jersey-based Irish-American moneybags Liam Lynch, which ended up owning 10% of the Business Post. It also ended up owing a fair few bob to its backers and even found itself on… Read more »

DID MI5 MANIPULATE GROOMING GANGS?

Date: June 26, 2025 -

SIR KEIR Starmer has reluctantly agreed to establish a statutory inquiry into the failure of the police and other state agencies in the UK to confront the crimes of grooming gangs in England and Wales. They ignored multiple reports of rape involving underage girls, some of whom became pregnant while residing in care homes. The… Read more »

THE WHITE NORTH

Date: June 26, 2025 -

FOR OVER a week in early June the pogroms in Ballymena, Larne and elsewhere in the north grabbed media headlines, while dramatic broadcasts of immigrants being targeted and burned out were accompanied with sober analysis of the causes of these racist attacks. The violence did not materialise out of thin air. Many commentators focused on… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

I think it’s a bit of a superpower to be a little bit underestimated. Pippa O’Connor, Sunday Independent Life Magazine For Silver Light, think of rules that produce unpredictable outcomes. But think of those outcomes as being a microtonal fantasy world in which individual notes and unusual timbres can brush off each other to produce… Read more »

OIL SPILL

Date: June 26, 2025 -

An Post garnered some soft PR for plans to reduce the carbon footprint of its fleet. Given the state company is already successfully operating 1,400 electric vehicles, it was hugely disappointing to see it touting the “transformative” use of hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO) instead of diesel in its heavy goods vehicles. Experts are deeply sceptical… Read more »

VARADKAR V MARTIN AND DUP

Date: June 26, 2025 -

TAOISEACH Micheál Martin and the DUP’s deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, have at least one thing in common – neither of them wants to talk about a united Ireland. But Martin goes one step further than the DUP woman. He won’t let the words ‘united Ireland’ cross his lips. They were both asked last Friday… Read more »

BROWNE UNITES DUBLIN ON HOUSING

Date: June 26, 2025 -

THE FULL extent of the political crisis on housing was revealed at Dublin City Council (DCC) this month, when housing minister James Brown managed to unite not only Sinn Féin and the left against his latest proposals but also councillors from Government parties – Fine Gael, Independents and his own Fianna Fáil party. The immediate… Read more »

PROXY FIANNA FÁIL ÁRAS CANDIDATE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

HAS THE dearth of persuasive Fianna Fáil candidates – apart, perhaps, from Bertie Ahern – persuaded some sneaking regarders of the ‘republican’ party that a surrogate candidate and organisation could do the trick? Irish multi-millionaire Gareth Sheridan from Terenure, Dublin – the founder of US pharma company Nutriband – is the latest name floating around… Read more »

FAIRWEATHER FINTAN

Date: June 26, 2025 -

THE VIRTUAL silence from both Labour and the Social Democrats to the notion of Irish Times guru Fintan O’Toole’s nomination as a presidential candidate compared sharply to the enthusiasm from Fintan’s peers in the media. Why so? It is just under nine years since the Soc Dems inaugural conference presented O’Toole as its keynote speaker… Read more »

COLUM EASTWOOD – ALWAYS THE BRIDESMAID

Date: June 26, 2025 -

IS FORMER SDLP leader Colum Eastwood suffering from some sort of political personality disorder brought on by persistent political abuse at the hands of Micheál Martin’s Fianna Fáil? How else to explain why the current head of the New Ireland Commission should open himself to further political derision and rejection by the cruel Martin, who… Read more »

GABIJA’S BARISTA BOMBSHELL!

Date: June 26, 2025 -

AS IF Government TDs did not have enough to put up with as voters whine about housing, it emerges that they are also being abused in public for the Government’s refusal to go further than verbally condemn the genocide in Gaza. The Sunday Independent’s Gabija Gataveckaite exclusively revealed that the abuse Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael… Read more »

DAY OF THE SQUIRE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

RECENTLY DECEASED Freddie Forsyth, the author of The Day of the Jackal and other bestsellers, revealed in his 2015 biography, The Outsider, that he was once an asset of MI6. Forsyth lived in Ireland in the 1970s, where he availed of the tax exemption introduced by Charles Haughey for creative artists. The author soon became… Read more »

ULTAN PRINGLE’S PROMOTION

Date: June 26, 2025 -

IN DONEGAL, up and coming playwright Ultan Pringle continues his momentum, ably assisted by the Arts Council. His new play, Snowflakes – partly “inspired by Greta Thunberg” – recently debuted for one night at An Grianán Youth Theatre, where the son of former TD Thomas Pringle is ensconced these days as writer in residence. Last… Read more »

OLLIE’S ARMY

Date: June 26, 2025 -

IT WAS just like old times recently when the Magnier family plus its Coolmore entourage teamed up with one Ollie Sangster for racecourse success courtesy of a well-bred filly. This time, however, a Sangster was doing the training rather than paying the owner’s bills. Ollie, grandson of the late owner-breeder Robert Sangster, enjoyed training success… Read more »

COLIN KEANE’S ASCOT CARD

Date: June 26, 2025 -

JOCKEY Colin Keane’s new retainer with Juddmonte got off to the best start with a facile victory aboard the John and Thady Gosden-trained Field of Gold in Ascot’s Group 1 St James’s Palace Stakes. But it was heavy going from then on. The fortuitous Keane had replaced the ‘jocked-off’ Kieran Shoemark when steering the grey… Read more »

LANSDOWNE PLACE’S NEW FACES

Date: June 26, 2025 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO former Independent News & Media (INM) head honcho Vincent Crowley, who has just shifted an impressive 3,700 sq ft three-storey redbrick pile on leafy Herbert Park in the heart of D4 for €4.25m. Having now switched base to one of the upmarket apartments in Joe O’Reilly’s Lansdowne Place development, which would have set… Read more »

RYANAIR PROFITS SET TO SOAR DESPITE O’LEARY

Date: June 26, 2025 -

FOR THE financial year ending March 31, 2025, Ryanair recorded net profits down 16% to €1.61bn, with CEO Mick O’Leary up to his old tricks. Poor fuel hedging yet again played its part, as did the group CEO’s bizarre obsession with ramping up capacity at all costs. As a result, Ryanair saw its earnings per… Read more »

NEW REGIME AT CRH BUT SAME OLD STORY

Date: June 26, 2025 -

THE REMARKABLY well-remunerated Albert Manifold has left the stage at CRH and his successor as CEO, Jim Mintern, has inherited a US-focused group. The Irish man has also inherited a profitable enterprise that is beset by falling sales and he urgently needs to adopt a strategy that doesn’t simply rely on shoving up prices, which… Read more »

TENI’S BIG BACKERS

Date: June 26, 2025 -

THE CONTROVERSIAL Transgender Equality Network Ireland (Teni) last week found itself in the sights of conservative media organs such as Gript and the European Conservative after the charity was selected as one of the recipients of RTÉ’s Toy Show Appeal grants, scooping €15,000. Having featured prominently in these pages in the past over its failure… Read more »

THE OTHER MULTIMILLION-EURO ‘VERBAL CONTRACT’

Date: June 26, 2025 -

THE HIGHLY entertaining contest in the Four Goldmines between John Magnier and Richard Thomson-Moore over the disputed €15m sale of the 750-acre Barne Estate in Co Tipperary increasingly reminds Goldhawk of a similar high-stakes battle many moons ago. There are a number of similarities between the current case and the action taken by the Aga… Read more »

ROSS O’DWYER’S IMPRESSIVE SQUAD

Date: June 26, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK NOTES a recent order in the High Court striking out a petition from the dreaded taxman to wind up a company called Readia Ltd. This turns out to be the company behind Pundit Arena, which describes itself as “one of Ireland’s premium sports media houses, delivering content in written, video and audio format, while… Read more »

THE ‘POST’S’ WAREHOUSE

Date: June 26, 2025 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p5) Goldhawk looks at former Business Post shareholder Liam Lynch’s challenges in his Irish company, which built up losses of almost €3m. What is also worth a look is the scenario at the operating company behind the Post, which has just filed its own accounts. Ownership of the Post these… Read more »

HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER AN ‘INFORMER’

Date: June 12, 2025 -

THE UNSTINTING state apology delivered in the Dáil recently by justice minister Jim O’Callaghan to the family of Shane O’Farrell – killed in 2011 near his Carrickmacross home by hit-and-run driver Zigimantas Gridziuska, who should have been in jail at the time – was welcomed by O’Farrell’s family. So were the sincere speeches by not… Read more »

PROFILE: DANIEL LAMBERT

Date: June 12, 2025 -

As manager of the Irish-speaking, hip-hop/rap trio Kneecap, Daniel Lambert has found himself increasingly in the spotlight as he is called upon to defend the group over their pro-Palestinian commentary and messaging. These values appear to align with the passionate and pragmatic Dubliner’s own views on the subject and his measured defence of the band… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: KEIRA KEOGH

Date: June 12, 2025 -

Guaranteeing the succession is always a fraught task in politics but 37-year-old Keira Keogh managed to climb back from a poor local election outing to hold Michael Ring’s Fine Gael seat in West Mayo at the general election. FG has had a strong grip on this constituency since the watershed election of 2011, when Fianna… Read more »

OOH AH, YOU’RE IN THE ’RA, SAID THE BBC

Date: June 12, 2025 -

THE BBC must cough up millions and lose face over its astonishing decision to broadcast an allegation of murder against Gerry Adams, citing on television just one anonymous source. But the reaction of the southern legal and political ruling classes to the Adams libel action tells its own story. While much was made by some… Read more »

NED O’SULLIVAN’S REVENGE

Date: June 12, 2025 -

FANS OF Goldhawk are well aware of the disastrous IT project debacle in the Arts Council – including arts department secretary general Feargal Ó Coigligh, who told the Public Accounts Committee earlier this month that he only became aware of the €7m balls-up after being forwarded queries from The Phoenix. The most high-profile casualty has… Read more »

SETBACK FOR SUZANNE O’CONNELL

Date: June 12, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK SPIES a winding-up meeting has been called for a charity called Outreach Moldova, which raised funds for orphans in the eastern European country that borders Ukraine. The writing was, however, on the wall for some time. A message on the now-defunct social media platform for the charity stated: “After 25 years of caring for… Read more »

MAGNIER’S NEW WORLD

Date: June 12, 2025 -

DISCONTENT WITH Coolmore’s near stranglehold on Irish racing had been a talking point at bloodstock sales in recent seasons but that has all changed. But the result is a significant hike in prices for top-quality horseflesh. Tattersalls and Goffs sales have seen records tumble, with Sheik Mohammed al Maktoum’s Godolphin, Kia Joorabchian and John Stewart’s… Read more »

ALAN CLANCY’S TAXING MATTER

Date: June 12, 2025 -

ONE OF the most high-profile players in the club and bar scene in Ireland, and especially Dublin, in recent years has been Alan ‘House’ Clancy, who is associated with numerous well-known venues. Alas, one of his many companies has come to the attention of the dreaded taxman, who is seeking to have it liquidated in… Read more »

DER KAISER’S TRUSTEES

Date: June 12, 2025 -

DERMOT DESMOND’S favourite charity, the Chester Beatty Library (CBL) – where he is a trustee “for life” – is set to get some new blood courtesy of arts minister Patrick O’Donovan. This week is the deadline for expressions of interest from suitable candidates to fill three upcoming vacancies on the 12-member CBL board of trustees,… Read more »