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TOMAS BRENNAN’S THAI ADVENTURE

Date: October 30, 2025 -

HAVING FINALLY secured a public market listing on New York’s penny stock market, John Kieran Brennan’s family has wasted no time striking deals from Enniscorthy all the way to Thailand, where a wealthy old friend is helping to get their latest efforts off the ground. The Brennans, led by patriarch John Kieran, have been dealing… Read more »

CONNOLLY WON’T FIGHT BACK

Date: October 16, 2025 -

SECTIONS OF the Catherine Connolly-led left alliance are frustrated at the genteel refusal of their candidate to respond in kind to what they say has been a scurrilous campaign from the Heather Humphreys/Fine Gael camp, as recommended by Ivan Yates (see p11), as well as… Read more »

PROFILE: BILLY KELLEHER

Date: October 16, 2025 -

MICHEÁL MARTIN would not have anticipated that MEP Billy Kelleher would trigger the greatest political crisis of his leadership since Fianna Fáil’s disastrous 2020 general election result. Nor did anyone predict the embarrassing spectacle of Martin’s breast-beating, mea culpa speech to his parliamentary party last week – a humiliating but calculated performance required to save… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: BRYAN O’MAHONY

Date: October 16, 2025 -

WATERFORD NATIVE Bryan O’Mahony is the new president of Aontas na Mac Léinn in Éirinn (AMLÉ), formerly known as USI, the representative body of students in Ireland. It recently underwent a large expansion in membership, taking the Burren College of Art into the organisation following last year’s recruitment of UCD. O’Mahony was elected unopposed at… Read more »

ROB KENNY’S MEAT DISH

Date: October 16, 2025 -

WHILE THERE was plenty of media coverage of the new Dublin restaurant Entrecôte, which turned out not to be associated in any way with similarly named establishments in France and elsewhere, nobody thought to name the PR company that terminated its relations with the restaurant’s owner, moneybags Paul McGlade, as a result of the controversy…. Read more »

TIARNAN O’MAHONEY’S ‘PASSION’

Date: October 16, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK WAS surprised to see that one Tiarnan O’Mahoney has just been appointed a trustee of the Alfred Beit Foundation (ABF), which is responsible for managing the splendid 200-acre Russborough House estate outside Blessington, Co Wicklow. The foundation has encountered controversy in the past – notably when offloading a bunch of old master paintings in… Read more »

SEAN MULRYAN’S HEAVY GOING

Date: October 16, 2025 -

PROPERTY DEVELOPER extraordinaire Sean Mulryan has been focusing much of his energy on London in recent years, although the Irish market still looms very large. For example, his offshore-controlled Ballymore group is Diageo’s partner on its huge redevelopment scheme for a 12.8-acre site at Guinness’s St James’s Gate brewery. He also dabbles in horseracing and… Read more »

O’CALLAGHAN SITS TIGHT

Date: October 16, 2025 -

WHEN BILLY KELLEHER threw down the gauntlet to Micheál Martin and his presidential choice, Jim Gavin, Jim O’Callaghan trod a most cautious path – while he did support his leader’s selection, he made sure to be the last Fianna Fáil Cabinet member to do so (see The Phoenix 30/5/25). Thus, O’Callaghan did not offer any… Read more »

RUSSBOROUGH’S ROUGH RIDE

Date: October 16, 2025 -

ACCOUNTS HAVE just been filed for the Alfred Beit Foundation (ABF) that oversees the running of the historic Russborough House in Blessington, Co Wicklow. Things are not looking good. The ABF’s €160,000-a-year chief executive since 2022 is Orla Gallagher (ex-UCD Foundation) and, along with the Joe Carthy-chaired board, she has a lot on her plate… Read more »

O’DONOVAN LOSES THE PLOT

Date: October 16, 2025 -

FANS OF Goldhawk are well aware of a grant awarded to Listowel Writers’ Week (LWW) – now chaired by former Fianna Fáil senator Ned O’Sullivan – to compensate for the Arts Council’s controversial restructuring of the long-running literary event (see The Phoenix 13/6/25). The subject of the surprise bail-out appears to have touched a nerve… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 21

Date: October 16, 2025 -

SWAN DIVE

Date: October 16, 2025 -

IT WAS reported earlier this month that the fraud squad has recommended to the DPP that the principals in a liquidated company called Swan Fruit Ltd (SFL) be prosecuted. The main player here is Goldhawk’s old friend, John Swan, who is now a disqualified director. Fans of Goldhawk may not be surprised that the matter… Read more »

COSTS SLASHED IN MURDER ACQUITTAL

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE acquittal in January of law professor Diarmuid Phelan on a charge of murdering Keith Conlon, whom he shot on his Co Dublin farm in 2022, came as a great relief to Phelan. However, the legal eagle will have been disappointed at the judge’s reaction to his recent demand for legal costs in the Central… Read more »

MEEHAN V HANLEY

Date: October 16, 2025 -

A PREDICTABLE response to the recent killing of two Jewish people at a Manchester synagogue was a Sunday Times article in which stressed the need for extra security to protect Irish Jewish people. And the newspaper quoted Rabbi Zalman Lent saying: “These murders are the direct result of the last two years of unrestricted hate… Read more »

NIAMH SWEENEY’S CV

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE OFFICE of the Data Protection Commission (DPC) now boasts a full squad after justice minister Jim O’Callaghan appointed Niamh Sweeney as the third data protection commissioner. She turns out to have a most interesting background and it is perhaps not surprising that eyebrows have been raised by critics, including the likes of privacy activist… Read more »

CLANCY NOT STUCK IN NEUTRAL 

Date: October 16, 2025 -

WHEN GENERAL Seán Clancy was elected chair of the European Union Military Committee (EUMC) in May 2024, it was clear that there was potential for conflict with Ireland’s position as a neutral country. In a recent podcast that the former Irish Defence Forces chief of staff participated in with European Movement Ireland (EMI) CEO Noelle… Read more »

FRANK KITSON TELLS NOT ALL

Date: October 16, 2025 -

Before his death last year Brigadier Frank Kitson completed his memoir, Intelligent Warfare, on the condition that it “would only be published after his death”. Kitson, an old-school colonial racist, was Britain’s counterinsurgency guru. He was involved in dirty wars in Kenya, Malaya and Oman. Two chapters in the book detail his time in Ireland…. Read more »

JUSTIN BARRETT’S RIGHT SIDE

Date: October 16, 2025 -

A 34-PAGE Electoral Commission (EC) report last month on the contested leadership of the hard-right National Party (NP) seems to have finally brought the dispute to a conclusion. After two years the EC has accepted that Justin Barrett is no longer president of the NP. Many reports of the split have assumed that the crux… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: October 16, 2025 -

I am not a mind reader, but I can hack brains by deducing people, so I take a lot of inspiration from Sherlock Holmes. ‘Mentalist’ Keith Barry on who he most identifies with, Irish Independent For this Irish designer, home is where one’s authentic self is joyfully revealed without reservation. The Gloss Interiors on designer… Read more »

MARTIN’S CLIMATE CURVE

Date: October 16, 2025 -

Taoiseach Micheál Martin told the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow in November 2021 in the starkest possible terms of the gravity of the climate crisis and stressed Ireland’s willingness to step up to do its full and fair share. “If we act decisively now, we will offer humanity the most valuable prize of all –… Read more »

RICHARD KENNEDY’S MAGIC TRICK

Date: October 16, 2025 -

Did you know that incredible breakthrough technologies being developed by an Irish firm “have the potential to wipe out emissions from the State’s cattle herd by 2025”? That was the bold claim made in a puff piece in the Irish Times in 2019 singing the praises of Devenish Nutrition chief Richard Kennedy. That prediction was… Read more »

‘MINORITY’ RULE OK!

Date: October 16, 2025 -

Last Saturday at about 8.15pm, someone using an angle grinder cut the Irish-language section, which read Páirc an tSeandúin, out of a Belfast street sign. What remained is the English version of old fort – Shandon Park. In the last five years there have been over 300 street signs damaged or destroyed in Belfast, costing… Read more »

NEW RIGHT NEW PARTY

Date: October 16, 2025 -

A NEW middle-class party appears to be in gestation, judging by the noise surrounding the failure of Maria Steen’s smash-and-grab effort to break into the presidential campaign. This helps to explain the refusal of Michael McDowell to have anything to do with Steen’s entry to the contest. The angst felt and voiced by the more… Read more »

MI6 AND CHARLIE HAUGHEY

Date: October 16, 2025 -

Martin Mansergh will be remembered for his role in the northern peace process but less so for his deep understanding of British intelligence machinations, something that was instrumental in helping Squire Hockey navigate turbulent waters. Mansergh was among the first to recognise that MI6 was planting smears in the British media about Haughey with the… Read more »

YATES: ‘LET’S HEAR THE BASTARD DENY IT’

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE ARRESTING advice offered by ex-Fine Gael minister Ivan Yates to his former party colleague, presidential candidate Heather Humphreys, on how to handle Catherine Connolly was to “smear the bejaysus out of her”. This loud, brash soundbite in particular drew much attention. Humphreys and FG denied absolutely that they were engaged in such dirty campaign… Read more »

LUNDY LIVES!

Date: October 16, 2025 -

LAUNCHING BEN Collins’s book, The Irish Unity Dividend, former president Mary McAleese recently told her Dublin audience: “The ending of partition and the unification of Ireland can be a really noble undertaking that can offer a new rising tide of energy and momentum.” This much and other parts of McAleese’s speech were recorded in an… Read more »

ALAN ENGLISH’S EDITING

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE NEW associate editor of The Currency, Alan English – who resigned as editor of the Sunday Independent six months ago – has had a tumultuous ride in the sometimes contradictory wave of digital in the print world. When tendering his resignation earlier this year, English said he was leaving for personal reasons and that… Read more »

STARMER: CHINA NO THREAT

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE SUNDAY TIMES Aawrish edition ran a special red China scare story last weekend – “one of the most serious cases of foreign interference uncovered in the state” – after “months of investigation” that focused on one (very, very dangerous) individual working for the “shadowy” United Front, a Chinese intel-gathering vehicle. Apparently gardaí engaged in… Read more »

JP McMANUS’S COMPO

Date: October 16, 2025 -

JP McMANUS and veteran light-weight jockey Niall McCullagh recently teamed up to land quite a punt in the valuable Friends of the Curragh Irish Cesarewitch. The Geneva-based zillionaire may have felt it was the least he deserved after a recent run-in with the authorities. Trained by Joseph O’Brien, the aptly named Puturhandstogether (his dam is… Read more »

MULRYAN’S FORM

Date: October 16, 2025 -

BIG-SPENDING racehorse owner Sean Mulryan also happens to be a minted property developer and he recently landed the Freedom of the City of London at the city’s Guildhall for putting up loads of buildings – sorry, helping to transform London’s urban landscape. On racecourses in the UK and Ireland, Sean and Bernadine Mulryan’s blue and… Read more »

JOHN CUNNINGHAM’S EXTRA TIME

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THE DIRECTOR of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma), Annie Fletcher, was celebrating least month after the national cultural institution landed the impressive-sounding 2025 Art Academy Award. No doubt, the board of the gallery toasted the win too – a board that, surprisingly perhaps, still includes former Irish Permanent suit John Cunningham. Fletcher travelled… Read more »

HYPED IPO PLAN AT KINGSPAN HELPS TO DISGUISE STAGNATION

Date: October 16, 2025 -

KINGSPAN CEO Gene Murtagh’s announcement last month that he will target the data-centre boom by floating off 25% of the so-called ADVNSYS business came as a real surprise. What is clear, however, is that Murtagh has created a bulked-up unit with a suitably buzzy name that is actually dominated by the group’s Light, Air +… Read more »

SMURFIT WESTROCK COMBO FAILS TO EXCITE THE YANKS

Date: October 16, 2025 -

SMURFIT WESTROCK (SWR) CEO Tony Smurfit is not having a smooth journey on the New York Stock Exchange. Rather than taking off as anticipated, based on synergies etc, the share price is struggling a year on from the audacious deal between Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) and the US WestRock operation and the last accounts provide… Read more »

A FAMILY AFFAIR

Date: October 16, 2025 -

THERE HAVE been some tough times of late for John Kieran Brennan, founder of Moralltach, a vehicle set up after the crash to bail out heavily indebted property companies, but the good news is that he made some progress this year, courtesy of a familiar partner. Brennan found himself in the spotlight back in 2017… Read more »

TAXING TIMES FOR DALY AND COLLINS

Date: October 16, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK SPOTTED a hefty judgment registered by the dreaded Revenue Commissioners against a company with links to well-known Cork accountancy firm O’Brien Cahill & Co, which was founded back in 1972. Last month, the taxman registered a judgment for no less than €409,000 against the company O’Brien Cahill Ltd (OCL), where the principals are the… Read more »

ODHRAN O’REILLY’S BOUNDARY

Date: October 16, 2025 -

A LITTLE-known company called Landour Ltd, owned by a minted couple in the heart of Ballsbridge, has just registered a significant judgment against one Odhran O’Reilly, an experienced financial suit who has been active in the fast-growing family office sector – ie moving money around for so-called high-net-worth individuals. O’Reilly, who lives in Sandymount, D4,… Read more »