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JUSTICE DELAYED

Date: February 8, 2024 -

RTÉ BOARD member and barrister Susan Ahern has plenty to keep here busy given events at Montrose. But she still finds time to chair assorted IHRB referrals committee hearings. A ruling has now been published concerning a point to point that took place no less than a year ago. At issue was a finding that… Read more »

I-RES DIRECTORS DESERVE TO BE VOTED OUT

Date: February 8, 2024 -

FANS OF Moneybags will not have been surprised by moves by 5% dissident shareholder in I-Res Reit, Vision Capital Corp (VCC), to requisition an EGM next week and seek effective control of the company by voting off five directors, including outgoing chairman Declan Moylan and outgoing CEO Margaret Sweeney. It is clearly the right move… Read more »

MAURICE HEALY’S LATEST CRASH-LANDING

Date: February 8, 2024 -

MAURICE HEALY floated off software company Glantus on the AIM market in London with an air of optimism in June 2021 at £1 a share to capitalise the company at £37m. Not for the first time, a company run by Healy found itself in trouble and by January 2023 Glantus shares had collapsed to 10p,… Read more »

SHANE KENNY’S BURRITOS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

THIS WEEK sees a creditors’ meeting being held for Poblano Ltd, which turns out to be the company behind Mexican burrito chain Tolteca, which had four restaurants around Dublin, all of which shut their doors at the end of last month. For one of the directors here, it is not his first setback in the… Read more »

WINDING UP DELTA INDEX

Date: February 8, 2024 -

WITH MICHAEL O’Shea busy making an impact thanks to his Pulse Market cloud-based platform, which loftily promises to help companies “do business for good”, he may have missed the recent appointment of a liquidator to his former alma mater, the troubled Delta Index spread-betting operation. It will come as little surprise to followers of the… Read more »

PETER DONNELLY’S POOR DIAGNOSIS

Date: February 8, 2024 -

IT WAS only a few years ago that the Dundalk Argus was highlighting the “life saving device for Africa” designed by Irish outfit Tapa Healthcare. Today, however, the company is in liquidation. Tapa is a business that was spun out of Dundalk Institute of Technology (DKIT) by Co Down-based medical technology consultant Peter Donnelly. He… Read more »

SAM BUNGEY ON IAN BAILEY AND THE MEDIA

Date: January 30, 2024 -

Sam Bungey (along with Jennifer Forde) created the 2018 13-episode ‘West Cork’ podcast on the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder, which is Audible’s most listened to podcast ever. The saga of Ian Bailey has taught us this: should you ever find yourself subject to trial-by-media,… Read more »

PURSUED BEYOND THE GRAVE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

IN ONE respect it is salutary to behold the gardaí and their media Greek chorus join forces to posthumously convict Ian Bailey of Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s murder, something they manifestly could not do when he was alive. But posterior covering in both these camps… Read more »

PROFILE: AODHAIN ORIORDAIN

Date: January 25, 2024 -

WHY DOES Labour Party TD and former junior minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin want to run in the EU elections in Dublin? Does he believe he can kickstart a Labour Party revival by actually winning a seat in the European Parliament? Perhaps he wants to build, or rebuild, his credentials to run again for the party’s… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: CONOR REDDY

Date: January 25, 2024 -

AS PRESIDENT of the Postgraduate Workers’ Organisation of Ireland (PWO), Conor Reddy is no stranger to politics, both on campus and further afield. Although he failed to get elected for People Before Profit in Dublin North-West (DNW) at the last general election, Reddy has not… Read more »

RTÉ ACCUSED OF GAZA BIAS

Date: January 25, 2024 -

HAS THE predicted subservience of a demoralised and virtually bankrupt RTÉ come to pass already, with the station fearful of upsetting the Government in its coverage of the biggest global story since the Ukraine conflict, namely the genocide in Gaza? The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign… Read more »

OLIVER CALLAN’S POOR MOUTH

Date: January 25, 2024 -

TO HARDLY anyone’s surprise, the safe pair of hands that is Oliver Callan landed the gig as Ryan Tubridy’s successor on RTÉ Radio 1. Maybe he will stop banging on about moolah. Callan was eager to highlight his efforts to “reach out” to poor Tubs when the brown stuff hit the fan in 2023, although… Read more »

KNEECAP’S CAPITAL

Date: January 25, 2024 -

CONTROVERSIAL HIP-HOP act Kneecap have attracted plenty of media coverage as a result of the antics of its three members, which have included some pretty provocative murals – the sort that attracts condemnation from the likes of the Daily Mail. Nevertheless, the boys’ eponymous biopic… Read more »

MAURA DERIVAN’S BIG YEAR

Date: January 25, 2024 -

EARLIER THIS month, Carrick-on-Suir accountant Bobby Fitzgerald’s 14-year-long defamation case against solicitor Maura Derivan, who until last November was president of the Law Society, came to a conclusion. Separately, it turns out that last year the society was itself engaging with a complaint about its then president – one involving a recommendation from the Ombudsman… Read more »

DENIS DESMOND’S RESTRUCTURING

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THERE WAS plenty of coverage of the latest results from the MCD-Live Nation concert promotion behemoth last week as the LN-Gaiety Holdings joint venture published its 2022 accounts. Although the profits were, yet again, top of the pops, it looks like Denis ‘MCD’ Desmond is concerned that profit-hungry hoteliers might throw a small spanner in… Read more »

KEVIN RAFTER’S DISAPPEARING ACT

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE DEADLINE has now passed for applicants looking to replace DCU’s Kevin Rafter as chair of the Arts Council following his premature exit from Merrion Square. Having been appointed at the end of June 2019, Rafter’s five-year term only comes to an official end next summer. Much like Mary Robinson chose to depart Áras an… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 02

Date: January 25, 2024 -

EDDIE AND BRENDAN

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE PUBLIC veneration of the late Eddie O’Connor – with tributes to his visionary, wealth-creating genius and so on – included an unwitting reference to a particular aspect of this talent for making money, namely his friendship and partnership with the late Brendan Halligan. The Sindo’s Liam Collins described how Eddie “generously cut his mentor,… Read more »

REVISING NÍ GHRÁLAIGH’S IDEAS

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE IRISH TIMES’s authority on modern Irish history, Ronan McGreevy, seems confused about the political inspiration behind barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh. The Irish lawyer has been lauded by many for her role as one of South Africa’s barristers laying the charge of genocide against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Strangely, McGreevy also posted… Read more »

DANNY MCCONNELL’S RIGHT MOVE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

BUSINESS POST editor Danny McConnell gave Palestinian supporters in the Dáil a good telling off last week for supporting the South African charge of genocide against Israel, describing it as “a historically sensitive term”. As the mass murder toll in Gaza passes the 25,000 mark, it is difficult to appreciate the plea for sensitivity towards… Read more »

KITSON’S DIRTY WAR

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE RECENT demise of General Sir Frank Kitson (see The Phoenix 12/1/24) was a blessing in disguise for the darker elements of the British establishment: Kitson cannot now let slip anything he knows about the roots of the ‘dirty war’ in Ireland. Kitson was the… Read more »

DISSIDENTS SPLIT THE DIFFERENCE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

WHILE SINN Féin’s project has brought the republican movement close to state power north and south, the factions that split away from SF retreated into political ghettoes and fruitless attempts to revive the ‘armed struggle’. Now, two such dissident political groups are attempting a left-republican renewal with a unification process. The development of a close… Read more »

IRELAND AT NATO MEETINGS

Date: January 25, 2024 -

Last June, when President Michael D Higgins commented on the Government’s Forum on International Security, he talked of a dangerous “drift” away from Ireland’s long-standing policy of neutrality. Tánaiste and foreign affairs minister Micheál Martin was quick to dismiss Higgins’s assertions, claiming: “The Government have made clear that we do not intend to change Ireland’s… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

It involves making intentional decisions about what to keep, donate, or discard. In doing so, we create space for new possibilities and a sense of calmness in our lives. Darren Kennedy on throwing things away, Sunday Independent Life Magazine On Zoom from his home in London, looking far younger than his 60 summers, Norton is… Read more »

RAY BATES’S CAMPAIGN

Date: January 25, 2024 -

Climate denial has lost its most persistent Irish advocate with the recent death of Prof Ray Bates, formerly of Met Éireann and UCD. Since retiring over 20 years ago, Bates led a Quixotic campaign against action on climate change. In 2017, he spearheaded the formation of a club styling itself the Irish Climate Science Forum…. Read more »

‘NEW’ CLIMATE DENIAL

Date: January 25, 2024 -

Climate denial was once a straightforward affair. All you had to do was to grasp what a poor understanding the public and most of the media have of even the basics of science. This meant that climate deniers could dress up crackpot ideas developed by a PR company working for the energy industry, push it… Read more »

LEGACY OF LEGACY ACT

Date: January 25, 2024 -

A grim race has been running in the north’s coroners’ courts for several months. It will come to an abrupt end on May 1 when the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act comes into force. Among several of its noxious provisions it will, incredibly, stop inquests into Troubles-related deaths in their tracks. The race… Read more »

FINE GAEL’S WILD GEESE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

IT’S NOT yet known where the soon-to-be-departed TDs and senators of Fine Gael will next surface, like some buccaneering wild geese marauding through board rooms and the professions or even the PR firms that fight so valiantly for the rights of tobacco companies and other… Read more »

FINIAN McGRATH RIDES AGAIN

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE RETIREMENT of Fine Gael former minister and failed leadership candidate Richard Bruton from the electoral fray has alerted the minds of those surrounding former minister Finian McGrath in Dublin Bay North (DBN). McGrath retired at the last election, intending never more to grace public life with his statesmanlike presence. It was McGrath, rather than… Read more »

SF ‘HARD AND FAST ON MEDIA’

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE GOVERNMENT parties, especially Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, will be pleased that the decade-long delay in doing anything in the face of media pleading for reform of the defamation laws has been shifted to the opposition. The country’s biggest newspaper and internet group, Mediahuis, has accepted – via its flagship Sunday Independent – that… Read more »

FINE GAEL’S LEAN, MEAN MACHINE

Date: January 25, 2024 -

READING A list of the generals that Leo Varadkar has appointed to his GHQ staff for the upcoming local, European and general elections as recently published in the Business Post, one is struck by the calibre and/or experience of nearly all of them. But one name and area of responsibility jumped off the page. The… Read more »

DANA’S COMPLAINT

Date: January 25, 2024 -

ONE OF the last defamation battles that singer, ex-MEP and former presidential candidate Dana has to sort out is, ironically, one that resulted from a libel case against her, instead of one taken on her behalf. Dana’s sister, Susan Stein, and a niece, Susan Gorrell, sued the singer over a 2011 interview with TV3 (now… Read more »

‘CURRENCY’ EXCHANGE?

Date: January 25, 2024 -

AS GOLDHAWK reported last year, the lofty “overarching philosophy” of The Currency is the creation of “journalism that is fearless, focused and always interesting” and free from “any corporate, sectoral or political interest – including our own” (see The Phoenix 25/8/23). The latest edition of the ‘fearless’ financial website reveals a publication that seems to… Read more »

AUDREY WHITTY’S GOOD NEWS

Date: January 25, 2024 -

HAVING JUST handed over €60,000 to the Crawford Art Gallery towards the acquisition at auction of Harry Clarke’s The Colloquy of Monos and Una, there was further evidence of the overflowing coffers in Catherine Martin’s arts department last week when she greenlighted the National Library of Ireland (NLI) to purchase the Bonar Law Collection of… Read more »

REALITY CHECK

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE LONG campaign to drag the Irish taxpayer into subsidising “unscripted” productions (ie reality TV shows) through the Section 481 tax break looks set to deliver. Then finance minister Pascal Donohoe first signalled that his officials were looking into the expansion in 2022 and current finance minister Michael McGrath reiterated his interest in the proposal… Read more »

PATRICK MULLINS’S INSTRUCTIONS

Date: January 25, 2024 -

THE SIGHT of Patrick Mullins wagging his finger at cousin Danny Mullins at the end of the Faugheen Novice Chase at Limerick last month was a reminder of the pecking order in Willie Mullins’s remarkable Closutton racing operation. Following a ‘near miss’ between the two stablemates at the end of the race, there was plenty… Read more »