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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 »

GREEN GLOBAL GLOOM

Date: December 12, 2024 -

‘APRÈS-NOUS, le déluge’ summed up the atmosphere at the European Greens convention last weekend in the cavernous Dublin Convention Centre. The poorly attended event was a tragedy for its hosts, the Green Party of Ireland, following successive routs in June of its two Irish MEPs and in November of all but one TD. It can… Read more »

MARTIN TO KEEP O’CALLAGHAN CLOSE?

Date: December 12, 2024 -

WILL MICHEÁL MARTIN honour his accord and reconciliation with former leadership challenger Jim O’Callaghan or will he welch on a deal that Fianna Fáil members believe has been struck for Jim to be made minister for justice or some other department with a similar title and brief? The near Faustian pact made by the two… Read more »

WHATEVER YOU SAY…

Date: December 12, 2024 -

THE RECENTLY released Disney+ film, Say Nothing, has resurrected the usual controversy about Gerry Adams’s alleged involvement in the killing and disappearance of widowed mother of 10 Jean McConville. One of the main promoters of this story is former Irish-based journalist Ed Moloney, a principal in the Boston College tapes exercise that produced tales about… Read more »

DUBLIN’S KRISTALLNACHT

Date: December 12, 2024 -

DUBLIN HAS become afflicted by “rising antisemitism”, according to a recent headline and article in the Irish Times. The article focused on a reported attack by three men on a Jewish man in a Dublin nightclub at 2 am. The man was wearing a small Star of David necklace and was asked if he was… Read more »

SEÁN O’KEEFFE’S PLOT SPOILER

Date: December 12, 2024 -

INTERESTING TO see that the website for the small Irish publisher established by Seán O’Keeffe, Liberties Press, is still up and running, “seeking new work from new and established authors” and also open to “unsolicited submissions”, which require an up-front payment of €922 (inc VAT). Given that the limited company that registered the business back… Read more »

RICH RICCI’S CENTURY

Date: December 12, 2024 -

FORMER BARCLAYS moneybags Rich Ricci has had a rollercoaster few weeks on racecourses in different parts of the world and achieved a significant milestone on his travels. Following Vauban’s latest flop in the Melbourne Cup last month, the nag’s minted owner sold him for €1.25m to continue his racing career Down Under. Vauban will now… Read more »

VLADISLAV AIMS HIGH

Date: December 12, 2024 -

AGROLEXICA INTERNATIONAL Trading BV – the Dutch agricultural commodity trading entity with interests in Ukraine and owned by Ukrainian Vladislav Pasztirya (see The Phoenix 17/10/24) – was in the racing news here once again when snubbing huge sums for a nag. Having raised eyebrows with its high-profile purchase of a €850,000 Blue Point yearling filly… Read more »

ENDA McEVOY’S INDIGESTION

Date: December 12, 2024 -

MICHELIN-STAR chef Enda McEvoy has moved to wind up the company that was behind his award-winning Loam restaurant in Galway, which closed a couple of years back, as well as another foodie venture that has now also called it a day. McEvoy was one of the poster boys of the upmarket Irish dining scene, with… Read more »

KERRY GROUP DEAL A BONANZA FOR CO-OP SHAREHOLDERS

Date: December 12, 2024 -

AFTER A decade of bickering, Kerry Co-Op Creameries has eventually agreed to a €500m deal to buy the listed Kerry Group’s Irish dairy business. Fans of Moneybags will be aware he has been advocating this move for over a decade but the problem was the difficulty in satisfying both the 9,000-plus dry shareholders in Kerry… Read more »

NEW LOOK AT I-RES REIT, SAME OLD PROBLEMS

Date: December 12, 2024 -

HAVING SURVIVED the attempted ousting of the board by Jeff Olin’s Vision Capital Corp (VCC) early this year, I-Res Reit nevertheless has a rather different look today. But for shareholders, new CEO Eddie Byrne has yet to deliver any improvement to the bottom line. Quite the reverse in fact. With the situation looking gloomy ahead… Read more »

AUBREY’S ELECTION CAMPAIGN

Date: December 12, 2024 -

WITH NOMINATIONS closed for the upcoming university Seanad elections, the battle for the three seats in Trinity College will be more interesting than usual, given the absence from the ballot of long-term shoe-in David Norris, who retired last year. One player eyeing up one of the three seats on offer is millionaire, philanthropist, “visionary leader”… Read more »

DAVID ROCK’S HEALTH EMERGENCY

Date: December 12, 2024 -

TWO OF David ‘RocDoc’ Rock’s companies are to be wound up next week on foot of liabilities built up. This follows last year’s liquidation of RocDoc Health Check Ltd (RHC), which turns out to have owed unsecured creditors just on €1m. Ashbourne-based GP David Rock became something of a pandemic poster boy courtesy of his… Read more »

NOEL FRISBY’S FEISTY FOES

Date: December 12, 2024 -

WATERFORD DEVELOPER Noel Frisby’s plans to build a three-block development of around 79 apartments at a site on the ring road around Waterford city has hit a bit of a snag, with an appeal lobbed in to An Bord Pleanála by some grumpy local residents. Frisby is one of Waterford’s most prolific developers, having set… Read more »

LORETTA DIGNAM’S MENOPAUSE MONEY

Date: December 12, 2024 -

LORETTA DIGNAM will have plenty to celebrate this Christmas, having just secured €¼m in funding for her Menopause Hub operation. There are some interesting names among the backers. The menopause business is an increasingly hot one these days and corporate sponsors have been queuing up to display their credentials, with various parties now vying for… Read more »

MARIAN KEYES’S AMERICAN DREAM

Date: December 12, 2024 -

THE MYRIAD of fans of scribbler Marian Keyes had a collective meltdown online last week when RTÉ announced The Walsh Sisters, a six-part drama based on her series of novels about “a chaotic, dysfunctional but deeply lovable family of five sisters, a devout mother and a bemused father”. Although the author is Irish, the director… Read more »

FINE GAEL: WHAT NEXT?

Date: November 28, 2024 -

THE TRENDS are impossible to dismiss – Fianna Fáil is in the ascendant over Fine Gael and even a battered Sinn Féin looks to have had a better general election campaign than Fine Gael. But while An Taoiseach and party leader Simon Harris is, naturally, shipping most of the blame from party members for the… Read more »

PROFILE: MICHEÁL MARTIN

Date: November 28, 2024 -

YOU HAVE to hand it to Micheál Martin – or to chance – he has presided over the continued, resilient existence of Fianna Fáil and even its place in government since it was nearly wiped out in 2011. This is despite the hollowing out of the party’s long-time political character and membership as well as… Read more »

YOUNG BLOODS: BARRY HENEGHAN

Date: November 28, 2024 -

WITH OPINION polls showing that 20% of voters will back Independent candidates, keen observers are asking whether the new boy on the block, councillor Barry Heneghan, can also break the mould and take a seat in the five-seat Dublin Bay North (DBN) constituency. A protégé of former Independent TD and super junior minister Finian McGrath,… Read more »

HUTCH TO TAKE OUT STEENSON?

Date: November 28, 2024 -

THE SPECTRE of master criminal Hutch or right-wing, anti-immigrant councillor Malachy Steenson – or both – entering Leinster House after the general election has unnerved many in and outside the Dublin Central constituency. It has even excited those self-styled ‘adults in the room’ in the media and establishment parties, who were quietly anticipating with relish… Read more »

CONOR MCGREGOR’S NEW-RIGHT SUPPORT

Date: November 28, 2024 -

Over the last year much was made of Conor McGregor’s posts on X about his plan to run for the presidency. With Elon Musk backing him online, it was no surprise to see many who should have known better expressing support for the Dublin MMA fighter’s political ambitions. But given the recent civil court guilty… Read more »

HARRIS, KANTURK AND RTÉ STORY

Date: November 28, 2024 -

SIMON HARRIS is correct to say that contact was made with RTÉ following the Kanturk incident but it is not true that this was done merely to offer RTÉ a statement on the matter, which is an “appropriate and normal thing to do during an… Read more »

BONO’S EXTENSION

Date: November 28, 2024 -

A NEW planning application has just been greenlighted by Kildare County Council to ensure that the whiskey distillery planned by Bono and Paddy McKillen Sr on an old mill site a couple of kilometres from Monasterevin will be completed within the rules. Last year, the boys chucked in an additional €5.5m to facilitate the development…. Read more »

CILLIAN MURPHY’S MOOLAH

Date: November 28, 2024 -

SUPERSTAR Cillian Murphy continues to take on new roles and his latest is as the saviour of the Phoenix cinema in Dingle, which has been closed since 2021. The actor has set up a company called Dingle Phoenix Projects Ltd, where he is joined as a director and equal shareholder by his wife, artist Yvonne… Read more »

TARGETING JOHN MAGNIER

Date: November 28, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK WONDERS if John Magnier spat out his tea when perusing the Indo earlier this week. The Squire of Coolmore might have wondered just who Micheál Martin was referring to in the paper’s farming supplement story headlined, “Tánaiste pledges Budget action against ultra-wealthy land buyers”. Having recently been on the end of a kicking from… Read more »

EDITING SALLY HAYDEN

Date: November 28, 2024 -

HIGHLY REGARDED journalist Sally Hayden was notably underwhelmed by the hapless editing process in the Irish Times, where many of her impressive news stories, concerning events in the Middle East in particular, appear. Hayden has made quite a name for herself in recent years and her book, My Fourth Time, We Drowned – which focuses… Read more »

BALMORAL SHAREHOLDERS SUFFER AS EXECS RAKE IT IN

Date: November 28, 2024 -

THE PRIMARY fiduciary duty of directors is to serve the interests of all the company’s shareholders. In the case of Balmoral International Land Holdings (BILH), it is difficult to see how this is being implemented. For the hapless small shareholders, the actions of the board that have just played out represent a second whipping in… Read more »

EDITING MOLI

Date: November 28, 2024 -

NINE MONTHS after it emerged that the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) on St Stephen’s Green was in financial disarray, the required cuts have been implemented. It turns out that the operation was haemorrhaging money at a remarkable rate. It will be recalled (see The Phoenix 22/2/24) that MoLI is a “partnership” between UCD and… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 23

Date: November 28, 2024 -

CHUPI SWEETMAN’S BOUNCE

Date: November 28, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK was surprised to see that media-friendly jeweller Chupi Sweetman has been having a tough time, with the spoilsports in the dreary Irish Times taking the shine off her recent move to a “flagship” store in Dublin’s Powerscourt Townhouse Centre. Happily, all seems well now, despite the gallons of red ink on her books, and… Read more »

BERTIE’S LUCKY BREAK

Date: November 28, 2024 -

ONE WOULD expect Bertie Ahern to be pleased at the rosy prospects for Fianna Fáil as the general election reaches a climax, but there is a story behind the story of Bertie’s delight at this turn of events. FF leader Micheál Martin had set his sights on either winning another term as taoiseach or running… Read more »

MEP MULLOOLY’S MOOING

Date: November 28, 2024 -

WHILE GOVERNMENT politicians and many others may regard as “sinister” Sinn Féin’s intention to order a “peer review” of RTÉ’s international coverage, support for the move came from the other end of the political spectrum in the form of Independent Ireland (II) MEP Ciaran Mullooly. The former RTÉ hack said he wanted not just a… Read more »