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ALKEN BROTHERS‘ WHINE LIST

Date: May 1, 2025 -

THE HAPLESS wine-importing Alken brothers, Anthony and Greg, found one of their companies on the wrong end of a winding-up petition from the dreaded Revenue this week but it was struck out. This, however, doesn’t look like an escape for the siblings from their troubles, as the withdrawal of the petition coincides with separate ongoing… Read more »

FASHION VICTIMS

Date: May 1, 2025 -

LOUTH BROTHERS John and Michael McKeown have come to the end of the road with their trendy men’s fashion business after their big plans ended in the bargain bin. Two years ago, John and Michael were rather fashionable and their casual menswear clothing operation, Carpe Omnia (Latin for ‘seize everything’), was attracting positive attention in… Read more »

CIARA DONLON’S EXIT

Date: May 1, 2025 -

THEYA LINGERIE, which produced post-surgery underwear from bamboo no less, has now been dissolved but the name lives on in the form of Theya Healthcare Ltd. The original company founder, Ciara Donlon, also popped up as a director in the new venture, although it turns out that she has stepped down as a director here…. Read more »

CENTRAL BANK GENOCIDE CHARGE?

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THAT THE Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), of all European banks, might face criminal charges over its enabling of the multi-billion sale of Israeli bonds used to support the genocidal war on Gaza says a lot about the Irish Government’s ‘talk-not-walk’ attitude to the beleaguered Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) has presented a… Read more »

PROFILE: JAMES BROWNE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

The appointment of James Browne as housing minister surprised many people, including the new minister himself. His performance since then in this most daunting of ministerial positions has been anything but stellar. His defenders say he is an independent-minded politician but other Fianna Fáil members believe he is Taoiseach Micheál Martin’s creature and is being… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: MICHAEL ROCHE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

UCD STUDENTS’ UNION (UCDSU) has a new president, Wexford native Michael Roche. He succeeds Miranda Bauer, whose family political background included the likes of Tristán Bauer, former Argentine culture minister (until President Javier Milei axed the department). Despite her ministerial connections, Bauer’s presidency failed to excite and this year UCDSU has not lived up to… Read more »

BERTIE’S ÁRAS BID

Date: April 17, 2025 -

BERTIE AHERN is fretting at vacillating Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin’s failure to make up his mind about whether the party will support the former taoiseach’s burning ambition to run for the presidency. But Bertie is about to play a wild card that could swing it one way or the other. On the… Read more »

EOIN McGEE’S ‘MATERIAL UNCERTAINTY’

Date: April 17, 2025 -

CELEBRITY FINANCE expert Eoin McGee has been signed up by Mediahuis as a personal finance columnist and will apparently be writing for the so-called ‘Indo Money hub’, which, in case you didn’t know, “is a new dedicated hub for financial advice”. Maybe Eoin could do with taking some of his own advice. Mediahuis Ireland editor-in-chief… Read more »

BLINDNESS CHARITY BLINDSIDED

Date: April 17, 2025 -

IT IS strange to see so little media coverage of the appointment by Charities Regulator Madeleine Delaney of inspectors to two blindness charities, the biggest of which by far is the Vision Ireland (VI) group, formerly the National Council for the Blind of Ireland. This operation boasted income of €30m in 2023 but that could… Read more »

ICY DEFROSTED

Date: April 17, 2025 -

A STEWARDS inquiry may be in order for outspoken online racing pundit Gearoid Norris (aka Icy), who has just found himself ‘unplugged’ from his X and Facebook soapboxes. Coincidentally, the suspension of his @icyestretro account followed a day after his airing of a “trilogy of articles” examining the Pro Sports Advice (PSA) tipping service. While… Read more »

BROPHY’S TIMES

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE IRISH TIMES has found it difficult to keep up with the chequered but successful CV of Karl Brophy, CEO of Red Flag Global, which was sold to New York-based Ankura Consulting Group for €45m circa in February. That nice little earner was treated with the respect it deserved by IT business editor Ciarán Hancock,… Read more »

MICHAEL LOWRY’S POLITICAL CHUMS

Date: April 17, 2025 -

MICHAEL ‘NO MATES’ LOWRY is more isolated (outside the company of Micheál Martin and Simon Harris, that is) than many have realised and political schizophrenic TD Barry Heneghan is not the only soulmate that recently came within Lowry’s orbit before fleeing in great haste. Barry would need his mentor, former minister Finian McGrath, to walk… Read more »

KARL WHELAN’S GOOGLE GRUB

Date: April 17, 2025 -

IT IS full steam ahead at the brash Boland’s Mill development in Dublin’s south docklands, acquired by Google for a reported €300m. Interestingly, it turns out the tech giant is also providing some funding for at least one of the extracurricular offerings to be available onsite in the coming weeks. It was reported last month… Read more »

EMMA MAYE’S MANSION

Date: April 17, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK NOTES that Weavers Hall, a “New England style” mansion off Westminster Road in Foxrock, has come on the market with an asking price of over €7m. Although described by Sherry Fitzgerald as “a most impressive modern, detached home of distinction”, it is not so long since plans were drawn up to knock the whole… Read more »

VOL. 43 NO. 08

Date: April 17, 2025 -

NEW FACES ON CHI BOARD

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE TIMING wasn’t great for the two new directors who have just been appointed to the board of Children’s Health Ireland (CHI). They arrived exactly as the brown stuff was hitting the fan over the scoliosis scandal and opposition TDs were scenting blood. The CHI board had already suffered a couple of recent health scares… Read more »

LUCINDA CREIGHTON’S PROFITS

Date: April 17, 2025 -

IT WAS reported in March that a couple of Irish Blueshirt adversaries have been generating significant revenue in their consultancy (ie lobbying) businesses in Brussels. Filings with the EU transparency register show that Phil Hogan’s Triton Advisory had declared income of over €1m from clients such as Ardagh and Vodafone. Lucinda Creighton’s Vulcan Consulting, which… Read more »

THE MOST RELIABLE FRED HOLROYD

Date: April 17, 2025 -

It is becoming clear that the Operation Denton inquiry into the crimes of the UVF’s Glenanne gang will establish a modicum of collusion with the UK state, albeit at the level of a few local UDR foot soldiers. No links will be found that connect MI5’s Denis Payne, the director and co-ordinator of intelligence at… Read more »

BRITISH/IRISH FAR RIGHT

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE DEEPENING relationship between loyalists, British fascists and right-wing activists from the south was very much in evidence at a recent anti-immigration protest at Belfast City Hall. A few dozen anti-immigration activists travelled north for the protest. On the day, the Off-Grid Ireland livestream on X provided by Offaly man Gavin Lowbridge was shocking not… Read more »

DISSIDENTS PEACE PROCESS

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE MOOD at dissident republican Easter commemorations in 2024 was subdued. This was because there was no sustained armed campaign under way but the frustration of dissident republicans was compounded by the seemingly irresistible electoral rise of Sinn Féin. In the year since, the main armed dissident groups have not mounted any bomb or gun… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

There’s a psychosexual dimension to Trump’s tariffs. You don’t have to be Freud to see it. Fintan O’Toole (who else?), Irish Times That was the greatest slap in the face to any nation we ever saw. Labour TD George Lawlor calmly reflecting on Conor McGregor’s invite to the White House, Today With Claire Byrne I… Read more »

ESRI BLAMESFARM LOBBY

Date: April 17, 2025 -

The latest research from the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) had some fascinating insights into how climate change is perceived by both urban and rural communities, but the real fireworks involved the report’s scathing criticism of another state agency. The ESRI report noted that the so-called urban-rural divide around climate issues is being inflamed… Read more »

TOMMY TIERNAN’S HOT AIR

Date: April 17, 2025 -

Almost 10 years ago, comedian Tommy Tiernan roared from the Abbey Theatre stage: “It’s too fucking late.” The event was the Climate Gathering and Tiernan was warning that failure to act on the climate emergency was going to get us all killed. That was then. The 2025 version of Tiernan is a Nimby objector to… Read more »

SF/DUP SHAM FIGHT

Date: April 17, 2025 -

Residents from Belfast’s staunchly loyalist Sandy Row gathered on Monday evening at the nearby new £340m Grand Central station to protest at plans to add Irish-language signage to the station. Slogans on social media encouraging people to attend said there would be “no sham fight over Irish in Grand Central”. A sham fight is exactly… Read more »

GENDER QUOTA BACKLASH

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE MOTHER of all political battles could be on the cards if disgruntled noises from inside the parliamentary parties of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael result in demands to scrap or at least reform the gender quota legislation. And while Browne’s abiding concern is, of course, housing (see profile, pp14/15), he is also responsible for… Read more »

LEFT UNITY THREAT

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE CENTRE-RIGHT parties and their media supporters ought to make up their minds about whether they support left unity or not. Recent reaction to the opposition uniting against the Lowry deal (the deal that isn’t a deal at all, at all) was even more vehement than the initial campaign from the same quarters in support… Read more »

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S POLITICAL PEDIGREE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

UNIONIST COMMENTATOR Sam McBride positively gurgled with pleasure in the Irish Independent and Belfast Telegraph at Micheál Martin’s dismissal last week of a border poll and a united Ireland – not even in 50 years’ time and certainly not in the life time of this Government. McBride compared Martin most favourably to former Fine Gael… Read more »

MORE ‘SINDO’ FALL-OUT

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE ASCENT of new Sunday Independent editor Liz Kearney from highly proficient sub-editor to the top job at the country’s biggest-selling newspaper completes the Belgian counter-revolution at the Mediahuis Irish colony. But the comparison between departing editor Alan English – his weekly letter to readers exemplified his Washington Post, Ben Bradlee complex as a stand-out… Read more »

DEIRDRE VELDON’S BLURRED VISION

Date: April 17, 2025 -

Last weekend’s Sunday Times saw Deirdre Veldon – the €270,000-a-year MD of the Irish Times group – deny that Irish news publishers are as addicted as ever to newspaper ink because the moolah from flogging digital subs still isn’t paying the bills. Veldon is in her second year of running the IT business, which (at… Read more »

TOP GARDA ‘SECURITY’ THREAT

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE IRISH Times reported last weekend on the “unprecedented… crisis” due to the ongoing pension tax anomaly that will see any senior Garda officer taking the Garda commissioner’s job facing a huge tax bill on retirement. This means that An Garda Síochána may have to recruit a police officer from outside the state to succeed… Read more »

GRÁINNE’S SWEET LIFE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

LAST WEEK, in the run-up to the busy Easter period for chocolate-maker Gráinne Mullins of the high-profile Grá Chocolates operation in Galway, she posted that her fledgling firm would be churning out over 1,000 eggs. Given the premium prices for the products, Gráinne should do rather nicely this month but the former pastry chef has… Read more »

LANDMARK’S LOLLY

Date: April 17, 2025 -

WHILE ARTS and culture minister Patrick O’Donovan has been playing Scrooge with the TV producers over the streaming levy, he has also been chucking the green stuff around at Culture Ireland (CI), the department’s vehicle for promoting Irish arts abroad. This is one of the ways the minister has to get credit for funding arts… Read more »

O’DONOVAN’S ORDERS

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE LEGACY of the RTÉ Tubs scandal is now clearer, with arts and media minister Patrick O’Donovan introducing some policy swerves that will rankle in Montrose. Rather than adding to the pot of money available to RTÉ and assorted film and TV players, O’Donovan nixing of the proposed content levy on Netflix et al has… Read more »

COOLMORE SHUFFLE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

THE SQUIRE of Coolmore, John Magnier, and his team recently undertook a little international jockey juggling, with Ryan Moore jetting Down Under to ride in the valuable Star Championships at Royal Randwick, while Coolmore’s usual Australia rider, James McDonald, flew north to the Dubai World Cup meeting. While it was understandable that McDonald was keen… Read more »

PATRICK MULLINS’S MOUNTS

Date: April 17, 2025 -

AMATEUR RIDER Patrick Mullins left his dismal Cheltenham form behind when winning on three of his five mounts at the Aintree festival, all of which were trained by his father, Willie, most notably Stewart Andrew’s Grand National winner, Nick Rockett. Given that David and Emmet Mullins (Patrick’s cousins) have also won the famous race, Patrick… Read more »

TWOMEY’S CHALLENGE

Date: April 17, 2025 -

IT WILL be recalled (see The Phoenix 12/7/24) that handler Paddy Twomey found himself on the end of some surprising criticism last season from former-trainer-turned-pundit Sarah Lynam, who suggested that he had been having “a bit of a disappointing time of it lately”. But Twomey went about dispelling such notions recently and is also now… Read more »