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JOHN MAGNIER’S MIXED FORM

Date: July 11, 2024 -

IT HAS been a successful but mixed couple of weeks for John Magnier, Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith and the rest of the loaded Coolmore ‘lads’. Having landed the Epsom Derby in no little style, City of Troy scrambled to victory in the Coral Eclipse Stakes last weekend, on what was the 40th anniversary of the… Read more »

CHAOTIC C&C’S PROFITS SET TO GET VERY FIZZY

Date: July 11, 2024 -

THE C&C saga continues to deliver twists and turns. Less than one year after David Forde stepped down with immediate effect as chief bottlewasher at C&C (on foot of the disclosure of a €25m software adjustment charge in one division), his replacement as CEO, Paddy McMahon, has also cleared off. What is it about C&C… Read more »

TONY SMURFIT’S US DREAM COULD BE A NIGHTMARE

Date: July 11, 2024 -

IF THE agreed €7bn takeover of DS Smith group by International Paper (IP) goes through, this could be Tony Smurfit’s worst nightmare, just as he has completed the near $13bn reverse takeover by Smurfit Kappa Group (SKG) of the American WestRock packaging company. There are huge challenges in store for Smurfit, given the state of… Read more »

TWIN OAKS JUDGMENT

Date: July 11, 2024 -

A JUDGMENT has just been registered by Fingal County Council for a paltry €4,500 against a company called Castleknock Hospitality but it seems unlikely that this small rates bill will be settled as the company has ceased trading. Owned by Stephen Donnelly with an address in the Ashleight retail centre, the firm traded as The… Read more »

LUKE COMER’S BLEMISHED RECORD

Date: July 11, 2024 -

MONACO-BASED billionaire property developer Luke Comer is set to begin his lengthy three-year suspension as a racehorse trainer next Monday, although until the last minute it is possible that an application may be made for a judicial review of the ban imposed by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) on foot of traces of steroids being… Read more »

BECKETT END GAME

Date: July 11, 2024 -

NEXT WEEK the High Court will hear a winding-up petition for a company called Beckett Acquisition Ltd (BAL). This is a company controlled by South Korean investors that owns the Beckett Building on East Wall Road, which had housed social media behemoth Facebook Ireland/Meta. Mark Zuckerberg’s operation, however, has cut short its lease and exited… Read more »

AUBREY MCCARTHY’S B&B

Date: July 11, 2024 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p18) Goldhawk looks at the awarding by the RDS of honorary lifetime membership to businessman and philanthropist Aubrey McCarthy. He is keeping his fingers crossed that An Bord Pleanála also awards him a prize, in the form of planning permission for a large B&B operation in Dublin’s city centre. Punchestown-based… Read more »

MARY LOU’S POST MORTEM

Date: June 27, 2024 -

FOLLOWING ITS dreadful local election results, Sinn Féin members believed that the outcome of the internal battle over policies and electoral strategy would depend on just who Mary Lou McDonald would listen to: the conservative faction, which stands accused of hollowing out SF policies to prove to the establishment that the party can be trusted… Read more »

PROFILE: BRÍD SMITH

Date: June 27, 2024 -

RECENT ELECTIONS stimulated much discussion about the centre-right, far-right, centre-left, Sinn Féin and so on, but very little about the small but sometimes significant far-left movement, whose main personality for some years now has been former MEP Clare Daly. A favourite trope of right-wing critics… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: LOTTIE RYAN

Date: June 27, 2024 -

When she was announced last month as the new face of afternoon radio on 2FM, it seemed that Lottie Ryan was living proof of the tenet that persistence pays off – or if you hang around somewhere long enough, you’ll finally get your moment in the sun. Gerry Ryan’s eldest child has been knocking about the 2FM building… Read more »

PETER WEDDERBURN’S BARK

Date: June 27, 2024 -

WITH THE Dog Control Stakeholder Group set to meet this week to “prioritise” the issue of restricted dog breeds, the ante has been significantly upped by the minister responsible, Heather Humphreys, who has supported a ban on dangerous breeds. This comes in the midst of an ongoing PR campaign by opponents of a ban, including… Read more »

TREVOR WHITE’S MUSEUM PIECES

Date: June 27, 2024 -

READERS OF the Irish Times last week would have noticed a couple of adverts for Trevor White’s very well-funded Little Museum of Dublin (LMD), inviting people to take one of the establishment’s tours and “discover the Little Museum pop-up around the corner from Stephen’s Green”. Apparently, the pop-up operation on Pembroke Street, D2 – a… Read more »

DERMOT DESMOND’S WINDING UP

Date: June 27, 2024 -

A MYSTERIOUS company called Dies Irae Ltd (DIL) – linked to Dermot Desmond’s International Investment and Underwriting (IIU) investment vehicle – has been quietly wound up. It is hard to tell exactly what the entity ever got up to but what makes it interesting is that in 2021 Liam Collins in the Sindo reported the… Read more »

IAN KEHOE’S ‘CURRENCY’ RATE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

SIGNS ARE that Tom Lyons and Ian Kehoe, joint owners of digital financial publication the Currency, are intent on selling their company, judging by the recent release of its figures for the year to September 2023. Not many publications publicise their subscription numbers but the Currency boasted of 6,200 paying subscribers, although this is only… Read more »

JOHN BYRNE’S BLINKERS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

PROPERTY MONEYBAGS John Byrne – the new chairman of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) – thanked “all those race-day staff and volunteers who commit to upholding the integrity of Irish horse racing”, when releasing the Bowler Hats’ 2022 annual report earlier this month. Remarkably, he added: “I am encouraged by the real progress we… Read more »

SHARK HANLON’S ROUGH RIDE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

A VIDEO of an uncovered dead horse in an open builder’s trailer, which was being towed by John ‘Shark’ Hanlon’s Boylesports-sponsored horse box to a factory for disposal, went viral recently. While Shark Hanlon duly apologised for any distress caused, he stated that the tarpaulin that had been covering the horse came undone during the… Read more »

FRANCES RUANE’S TIMING

Date: June 27, 2024 -

WHILE THE Abbey Theatre’s most famous Broadway hit of modern times, Brian Friel’s Tony award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa, is about to be produced by the Gate Theatre at the far end of O’Connell Street, the €7m-a-year Abbey, run by Frances Ruane, has been reduced to attaching its name to a New York run by independent… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 13

Date: June 27, 2024 -

KILLARNEY’S GAZA STANCE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

THE ISRAELI government will surely appreciate that it has finally and completely lost the global propaganda war when it receives a report from its ambassador, Dana Erlich, about the goings-on in Killarney, tourist mecca of Ireland and a must-see attraction for high-spending American tourists. Each year Killarney Chamber of Tourism and Commerce organises a Fourth… Read more »

NEW C/S FACES FIGHT

Date: June 27, 2024 -

OUTRAGE AT soldiers’ violence against women and the lenient treatment many have received on conviction will have strengthened the hands of reformists in the Defence Forces. So will the Defence Forces Tribunal, which is hearing complaints from the Women of Honour about abuse of women in the ranks. Alternatively, developments other than the Defence Forces… Read more »

ALL IN GOOD TASTE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

LAST WEEK Merrion Square finally fully reopened to Dublin’s citizens after nearly three weeks of severe restrictions, which were put in place so the Dublin City Council-controlled public space could be given over for a four-day private shindig for foodies, Taste of Dublin. Sponsored by the uber-profitable Danish retail outfit, Jysk, punters were asked to… Read more »

MI6, HAUGHEY AND THE MAFIA

Date: June 27, 2024 -

AN UPCOMING book on British intelligence in Ireland, The Puppet Masters, includes new material on Patrick Crinnion of Garda intelligence, who worked for MI6 in the 1960s and early 1970s. Author David Burke has gained access to papers written by Crinnion, which provide the backbone of the volume and shine new light on a string… Read more »

BIG JOBS FOR BIG IRISH SOLDIERS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

FOLLOWING THE appointment of Defence Forces chief of staff Seán Clancy as the first Irish chairman of the EU Military Committee, Irish ex-officer Seán White was appointed by the European Defence Agency (EDA) as director for industry, synergies and enablers (ISE). Thus, the integration of the top brass of the Irish Defence Forces into joint… Read more »

NEW-RIGHT RIFTS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

FOLLOWING THE recent elections there has been feverish speculation about how Ireland’s new right could have a significant impact on the Irish political landscape if it could just find a common vehicle or platform. But the simplistic mathematics of adding together votes received by the Irish Freedom Party (IFP), National Party (NP), Ireland First (IF)… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

To travel by train is to see a textbook case of neoliberal capitalism’s endgame. Football hack Ken Early’s, er, interesting take on at Euro 2024 in Germany, Irish Times Like Jonathan [Anderson], Guinness has always seen the world differently, moving beyond life’s limitations and expectations to make a brighter world. Stephen O’Kelly, Guinness global brand… Read more »

TRUMP ‘HATES’ WIND ENERGY

Date: June 27, 2024 -

The EU elections may have been a bad day for the planet, with climate disinformation helping the far right take seats across Europe, but the vista is altogether more appalling in the US, where Donald Trump has casually asked the fossil fuel industry for a $1bn “donation” in return for undoing all of Joe Biden’s… Read more »

THE EARL AND THE ENVIRONMENTALISTS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

Nicholas Ashley-Cooper, 12th Earl of Shaftesbury, has never lived in Ireland but has managed to hang on to a colonial inheritance – ownership of the bed of Lough Neagh. This entitles him to royalties from the industrial dredging of sand, a practice environmentalists say is one factor in the ecological disaster at the lake. The… Read more »

DUP UNDER PRESSURE

Date: June 27, 2024 -

DUP party spokesmen (there is a dearth of women) are displaying a distinct lack of confidence in interviews about next week’s general election. The party, and its new leader, Gavin Robinson, are nervous because, although opinion polls show they retain their position as the main unionist party, a Queen’s University poll on June 21 shows… Read more »

GREEN ENTITLEMENT

Date: June 27, 2024 -

GREEN SENATOR Pippa Hackett and her co-conspirators – senators Pauline O’Reilly (party chair) and Róisín Garvey – will likely be seen off by rival leadership contender Roderic O’Gorman, but the three senators’ ambition is in reverse proportion to their own record in sundry elections. Hackett’s first effort was at the 2019 local elections in Edenderry,… Read more »

BLUE-BLOUSE BATTLES

Date: June 27, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK REPORTED in the last edition on the two Dublin Bay South (DBS) Fine Gael personalities, ex-TD Kate O’Connell and newly elected councillor Emma Blain, who hoped to stand here at the next general election. The options appeared to be that one of them would accompany barrister James Geoghegan on the DBS ticket, while the… Read more »

TIMMY DOOLEY’S DELIGHT

Date: June 27, 2024 -

IT’S REFRESHING in these times of political hand-to-hand fighting and abuse of – and between – politicians to note the fraternal expression of great joy from Clare Fianna Fáil senator Timmy Dooley at his “neighbour and friend” Michael McNamara’s victory in South at the recent EU elections. Within minutes of the Independent TD’s triumph, Timmy… Read more »

DUBLIN DANGER FOR FIANNA FÁIL

Date: June 27, 2024 -

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S appointment of Jack Chambers as finance minister and also as deputy leader of Fianna Fáil, a post that had been vacant for four years, was doubtless a recognition of the party’s need to project a Dublin image in these divisive times. It was also a reward for the party’s unexpected success in the… Read more »

GARDA BUGGERS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

TD RICHARD Boyd Barrett hauled justice minister Helen McEntee over the coals in the Dáil last week regarding Garda surveillance of the survivors and families of those butchered during the Dublin-Monaghan (D-M) bombings (see The Phoenix 13/6/24). Boyd Barrett asked the minister about the presence of undercover special branch officers at Garden of Remembrance ceremonies for… Read more »

CLARE DALY AND THE ‘IT’

Date: June 27, 2024 -

IS THE Irish Times worried that many readers recognise that its hounding of Dublin MEP Clare Daly helped to unseat her and nearly led to the election of new-right candidate Niall Boylan? Since the count, it has twice defended its coverage of Daly, with political editor Pat Leahy doing so on the front page and… Read more »

MEDIAHUIS SHEDS HACKS

Date: June 27, 2024 -

AS MEDIAHUIS continues to cut a swathe through its workforce, the genial, soft-spoken Mediahuis chief executive, Peter Vandermeersch, has been issuing soothing statements coupled with financial warnings about inadequate revenue streams at the publishing company. The Belgian-owned Mediahuis includes the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, Sunday World and Belfast Telegraph among its titles. On the one… Read more »

SMOCK ALLEY’S PATHWAY

Date: June 27, 2024 -

ACCOUNTS SIGNED off this month for Smock Alley Theatre (SAT) in Temple Bar make clear the state of affairs that has seen Dublin City Council (DCC) moving in to take overall control (see p28). Fans of Goldhawk will not have been surprised that SAT is in a financial mess. It will be recalled (see The… Read more »