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CATCHING UP IN BRITTAS

Date: February 22, 2024 -

INTERESTING TO see a truckload of documents filed in the Companies Registration Office (CRO) in recent months relating to Ballinacarrig Park Club (BPC), a name that will ring bells with visitors to the sandy environs of Brittas Bay in Co Wicklow. Ballinacarrig Park Club is known to many as the poshest of the various mobile… Read more »

FLUTTER SHARES COULD HIT £300 IN NEXT TWO YEARS

Date: February 22, 2024 -

IT IS quite jaw dropping to delve into the remarkable figures being delivered by gambling behemoth Flutter Entertainment. The company’s market capitalisation is almost £30bn and the transfer to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is set to push the shares higher in the short term. Indeed, given the potential for growth across the Atlantic,… Read more »

TAPPING INTO NORWEGIAN ENERGY

Date: February 22, 2024 -

IT IS hard to overestimate the impact Eddie O’Connor has had on the renewable energy sector, which is attracting increasing interest from shareholders as climate change continues to dominate the agenda. One interesting Norwegian operation, Aker Horizons, has had a remarkably stormy couple of years following its acquisition a couple of years ago of a… Read more »

GRANT ASHTON’S ADVENTURES

Date: February 22, 2024 -

A RATHER interesting business that had been involved in cutting-edge integrated circuit technology architecture – and featuring a rather exotic shareholder base – was quietly wound up last month. The liquidation of Akya Holdings Ltd (AHL), however, comes more than six years after the operating subsidiary, registered in the UK, bit the dust. The UK… Read more »

BERNARD CALDWELL’S MEMBERS

Date: February 22, 2024 -

THERE WAS some off-track activity in the horseracing world this month, with Bernard Caldwell’s Irish Stable Staff Association (ISSA) holding its AGM last week in the Trim Castle Hotel. Interestingly, a change to the constitution means that all Irish stable staff who were historically defined as members of the association have to apply for membership…. Read more »

CLOCK TICKING FOR FLEXTIME

Date: February 22, 2024 -

THERE WAS a suitably glowing write-up in the Indo’s property pages last week featuring a house called Ard Aoibhinn in Dundrum, south Co Dublin, which has gone on the market with a €1.85m price tag. While there was plenty of detail about the owners and their entrepreneurial skills, there was one significant detail overlooked. Ciaran… Read more »

MARY LOU’S BACK YARD MESS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

DESPITE THE ascent of Sinn Féin’s northern leader, Michelle O’Neill, to the Stormont summit, Mary Lou McDonald and SF have endured various tribulations down south in recent months. The latest setback is the Horlicks of a local election strategy in the North Inner City (NIC) electoral area located in McDonald’s Dublin Central Dáil constituency. Initially the… Read more »

PROFILE: IAN BAILEY

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE DEATH of Ian Bailey, ‘chief suspect’ for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in 1996, drew the sort of crowd that sometimes gathers outside police stations to bang on the vans bearing murder suspects to court. Except that this particular crowd was composed… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ANNIE HOEY

Date: February 8, 2024 -

FRESH FROM being squeezed out of a Labour Party nomination to stand in the forthcoming European election, can vibrant senator Annie Hoey build on her strong involvement in student politics and lay the basis for a Dáil seat for herself and for her beleaguered party. The 35-year-old senator enjoyed a prolific and high-profile career in… Read more »

RAMSAY’S IRISH RECIPE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

IT HAS probably escaped most viewers’ attention that the latest TV venture of Gordon Ramsay, Next Level Chef – Series 3, launched this week in the US on Fox’s Food Club. Irish taxpayers provided some of the ingredients here, as the series was co-produced by Pat Kiely’s BiggerStage at Joe O’Connell’s Ashford Studios. Ramsay’s series… Read more »

ALL CHANGE AT GLENCREE CENTRE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

JUST WHAT is going on on the board of the publicly funded Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, where there have been some odd comings and goings? Despite being a charity in receipt of around €400,000 directly from the taxpayer, transparency does not appear to be high on the agenda at Glencree. The Glencree centre… Read more »

AUBREY’S ELECTION WAR CHEST

Date: February 8, 2024 -

WITH MUCH of the political speculation focused, unsurprisingly, on the possible timing of a general election, one contest that looks set to go ahead is the by-election to determine David Norris’s successor in the Seanad. One person sure to throw his hat in the ring here is businessman and philanthropist Aubrey McCarthy, whose campaign won’t… Read more »

PAUL HOURICAN’S NEW HAT

Date: February 8, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK’S FAVOURITE landlord, Paul Hourican, is back in action again, with a new company but some of the same old problems. Fans of The Phoenix will be familiar with Hourican’s rental adventures thanks to the high-profile collapse of Period Door Properties Ltd (PDP). It will… Read more »

THE BROWNS PULL THE PLUG

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE SURPRISE dispersal of the entire string of racehorses owned by Andy and Gemma Brown, the star of which was Grade 1 Future Champions’ Novice Hurdle winner Caldwell Potter, took place earlier this week in the aftermath of the Dublin Racing Festival. The move has resulted in plenty of head-scratching by punters and, for trainer… Read more »

MARK’S ISRAELI VICTIMS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE REVIVAL of an Israeli PR blunder – unusual for the well-resourced PR machine of Israel and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) – was reported in the Irish Times last Saturday under the headline: “Hamas mutilated women ‘like garbage’ campaign launch hears”. Last week’s meeting in central London was hosted by Labour peer Lord Mendelsohn… Read more »

YOUNG BLUESHIRTS CHAMPION McMANUS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

HEALTHY RIVALRY is how Fine Gael councillor David McManus would likely describe a leaflet due to be distributed in his local election area of Rathfarnham-Templeogue this weekend. The leaflet has a Valentine’s Day flavour to it but is hardly a love letter to his party colleague on South Dublin County Council, Lynn McCrave. The leaflet… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 03

Date: February 8, 2024 -

IRELAND-US MILITARY ALLIANCE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

NOT FOR decades has a Middle East crisis come so close to provoking war on a global scale of East versus West, with Ireland by now virtually dragooned into being part of it via Nato partnership groups and EU security policies. Just days ago the… Read more »

MATT COOPER V RTÉ

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE UBIQUITOUS Matt Cooper was taking pops at RTÉ once again last weekend in the Business Post, a pastime neither he nor his editor feels should be qualified by any mention of the degree to which his views as an independent commentator are hopelessly compromised. While the hack found space on a couple of occasions… Read more »

GROW UP, SENATORS!

Date: February 8, 2024 -

MARK FOLEY, the smooth-talking CEO of Eirgrid, got quite a rude response last week from senators Alice Mary Higgins (Independent) and Lynn Boylan (Sinn Féin) at an Oireachtas climate action committee on data centres and the stratospheric rise in their electricity use. Foley, a prominent advocate for data centre growth, had little time for the… Read more »

THE ‘IT’ ON JOHN BRUTON

Date: February 8, 2024 -

In an obit of nearly 2,500 words, the Irish Times devoted just over 200 words to the stewardship of the late John Bruton of the peace process – damning him with faint praise on the issue – while commenting uncritically several times on his reverence for John Redmond and his condemnation of the 1916 Rising…. Read more »

PARKER GREEN TRIMMED

Date: February 8, 2024 -

A COMPANY with the name of GEI Crystal Ltd has just been wound up by its owners, although it is unlikely that many would recognise the name, given that for years it was called Parker Green International (Waterford) Ltd. Under this guise it attracted plenty of media attention as a result of the company’s extensive… Read more »

THE NEW REGIME

Date: February 8, 2024 -

It was the changing of the guard in the north on February 3 in more ways than one. Obviously the most historic and revolutionary change was a republican taking the position of first minister in a polity and in Stormont, a building where that was never supposed to happen. Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill walked down… Read more »

IRISH FAR-RIGHT FEARS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE PLIGHT of British far-right activist Sam Melia – who was convicted in January at Leeds Crown Court for inciting racial hatred and intentionally encouraging or assisting racially aggravated criminal damage – has incensed many agitators on the far right of Irish politics. Melia has… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

I cannot emphasise enough the speed and turnaround they arranged in getting us up and home in their beautiful PC12. Christian Stokes expresses gratitude to Stellaer private jet business after he had found himself stuck in London, LinkedIn Celebrate the female form as artist Tamara Fiabane takes you step by step through the process of… Read more »

POLLS DISTORT REFUGEE ‘CRISIS’

Date: February 8, 2024 -

ARE THE ‘quality’ broadsheet Sunday newspapers reflecting the crisis and anger about immigration or are they stimulating it with sensationalist coverage? Scrutiny of recent polls would indicate that sometimes the phrasing of the questions is designed to elicit the worst and most alarmist results. And if the results do not fit the catastrophic frame, they… Read more »

BASHFUL BRENDAN O’CONNOR

Date: February 8, 2024 -

RTÉ PRESENTER and Sindo front-page commentator Brendan O’Connor has turned out to be the shy, retiring type, despite giving the impression of being full of in-your-face braggadocio. And how ironic that it should be the Sindo that recently failed to elicit from O’Connor whether he had objected to RTÉ publishing his name and earnings as… Read more »

REGINA V JOSEPHA V BARRY

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THE THREE-CORNERED battle between Fine Gael ex-minister and now senator Regina Doherty, junior education minister Josepha Madigan and senator Barry Ward for the Dublin nomination at the EU election will be settled at a convention later this month. Right now it is reckoned that the two women are neck and neck but Ward cannot be… Read more »

EARLY ELECTION?

Date: February 8, 2024 -

REPETITIVE SPECULATION about an early general election – before the local and EU elections in June – is being argued about among ministers from the three Government parties, according to media reports. But this debate is also a burning question for backbench TDs in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Much of the present debate has… Read more »

IRISH FREELOADING ON ‘BRITISH ISLES’

Date: February 8, 2024 -

A RECENT report by British think-tank Policy Exchange describes our foreign security policy as “persistent Irish security freeloading” just as “Russia once more poses a maritime threat to the Western Approaches to the British Isles”. The belligerent think-tank claims that “the UK also faces a… Read more »

A WAIT AT THE MUSEUM

Date: February 8, 2024 -

A MERE six months after the closing date on the advert seeking new board members for the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), arts minister Catherine Martin has announced the new chair, along with two ordinary directors. The delay is hard to justify. In June last year, the advert was posted in advance of outgoing chair… Read more »

NOT SO SUPERJET

Date: February 8, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK SPIES a creditors’ meeting has been called for Superjet Leasing Private Ltd, a company where the director is Indian moneybags Jayvaradhan ‘Jay’ Goenka. Goenka is the face of the Dynamix Group, which is one of India’s oldest real estate development businesses. He is the third generation of the Goenka family to front the conglomerate,… Read more »

CHARITY BEGINS OFFSHORE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

BILLIONAIRE BUDDIES – and fellow Swiss tax residents – JP McManus and John Magnier have been making headlines for their charitable deeds. It emerged last week that McManus provided Westlife star Shane Filan with a €780,000 loan so that the popstar, who emerged from bankruptcy in 2013, could purchase a house at Rosses Point in… Read more »

HENRY GWYN-JONES’S HOUSE

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THERE HAS been plenty regurgitation of the Irish Examiner’s scoop that UK billionaire James Dyson is set to acquire the impressive Ballynatray House on 850 acres on the banks of the Blackwater river in Co Waterford for over €30m. This looks like quite a result for the current Squire of Ballynatray, property investor Henry Gwyn-Jones…. Read more »

RICKY DOYLE’S POST

Date: February 8, 2024 -

GRAND NATIONAL-winning jockey Ricky Doyle’s X social media profile photo shows him donning the famous green and gold silks of JP McManus. Ricky Doyle was viewed in a different context last month thanks to an ill-advised post on X. This year has not delivered the most auspicious of starts, with Doyle landing a 10-day suspension… Read more »

KEATLEY’S BUSY AGENDA

Date: February 8, 2024 -

FANS OF Goldhawk will recall that popular Curragh trainer Brendan Duke secured a temporary ex-parte injunction against the purchasers of Fenway House in Pollardstown, Co Kildare – Peter Keatley and Teresa Kearney – as well as the Dublin debt collection agency that the couple engaged, Seoige O’Faolain & Co (see The Phoenix 25/8/23). This followed… Read more »