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ROBERT WATT’S PERFORMANCE

Date: May 4, 2023 -

Much has been made of the demeanour of Robert Watt, secretary general of the Department of Health, with many Government TDs joining their opposition counterparts in criticising the combative, soccer-loving, 54-year old Dubliner. Described in Leinster House and in print as “dismissive and arrogant”, “overbearing”, “prickly”, “absolutely obnoxious”, “cocky” and more, for his defence of… Read more »

I-RES REIT ONLY ITSELF TO BLAME FOR REVOLT

Date: May 4, 2023 -

FANS OF Moneybags are very familiar with the criticism in these pages of the remarkably generous management fee arrangements put in place by the assorted listed Irish Reits and it is probably not too surprising that Green Reit, Hibernian Reit and Yew Growth Reit were all flogged off, leaving just I-Res Reit in situ. But… Read more »

KEVIN MYERS ‘SET UP’

Date: May 4, 2023 -

RIGHT-WING outlet Gript recently interviewed right-wing ex-Sunday Times journalist Kevin Myers about how he got sacked after making a “little joke” about two well-paid, Jewish, women BBC journalists. Myers denied he was being antisemitic when he wrote: “Jews are not generally noted for their insistence on selling their talent for the lowest possible price, which… Read more »

HAMISH MACAULEY’S FISH SUPPER

Date: May 4, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK THOROUGHLY enjoyed the Oirish Sun’s Punchestown splash on bloodstock agent Hamish Macauley last weekend. He is certainly a chap on the move but the tabloid has put something of a stop to his gallop. The immaculately bred Macauley clearly got caught up in the festivities at his local Punchestown track last week, having grown… Read more »

LISA MCGOWAN’S BIG PLANS

Date: May 4, 2023 -

LISA McGOWAN, the fashion blogger and influencer, betrayed a touch of frustration in her interview with the Sindo’s gossip queen, Niamh Horan, last weekend. Publicity surrounding McGowan’s near €1m profit at her company, Lisa’s Lust List, seemed to aggrieve her somewhat. Yes, she’s got piles of cash rolling in, she humble-bragged, adding that she’s up… Read more »

OONAGH BUCKLEY’S APOLOGY

Date: May 4, 2023 -

IT DIDN’T take the interim chair of An Bord Pleanála (ABP) too long to issue an apology to top planning lawyer Fred Logue, after she suggested he was raking it in courtesy of planning objections. Oonagh Buckley, who has plenty on her plate in her new ‘day job’, apologised “unreservedly” for remarks made at the… Read more »

DAVID SHARKEY’S ‘MAN CAVE’

Date: May 4, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK WAS not surprised to see the Irish Times drooling over a handsome red-brick, modern house on one acre in Foxrock, which is on the market for no less than €8.45m. Waverley, off leafy Westminster Road, was only built in 1999 before the current owners acquired it at the height of the boom in 2005… Read more »

CATHERINE MARTIN’S SLOW PACE

Date: May 4, 2023 -

WITH SPORT having lost out on increased funding this year, despite all the moolah sloshing around, the good news is that a new chairman has finally been appointed to the board of Sport Ireland (SI). The pattern here, however, is very familiar. Last month, Green Party deputy leader and sports minister Catherine Martin and her… Read more »

OOKS A DAISY!

Date: May 3, 2023 -

THE ODDLY named Zulleon Ltd has gone into liquidation, despite a share register choc-a-bloc with KPMG heavy hitters, some of who recently scooped millions from the sale of Global Shares plc. Their experience in Zulleon has, however, proved rather more painful. Zulleon was set up nine years ago by toy inventor Noel Donegan and his… Read more »

TAXING TIMES IN WEXFORD

Date: May 3, 2023 -

THE DREADED taxman has just registered a judgment for €237,000 against a company called Wexpack International Trading Company Ltd, which doesn’t appear to have any directors. Until last year, however, one of those in situ was a name familiar to fans of Goldhawk. Real estate operation Wexpack was incorporated in October 2017, with Co Wexford-based… Read more »

DUBLIN’S DISASTER MOVIE

Date: May 3, 2023 -

A COMPANY with the unwieldy name of Finance For An Italian Library Of Movies plc (Film) has been placed in receivership, almost 25 years after it was incorporated here as a special-purpose vehicle for an unusual Italian film securitisation deal based on the library of the long-established Cecchi Gori Group (CGG). The company’s better known… Read more »

MINCON SHAREHOLDERS PREPARE TO MINE PROFITS

Date: May 3, 2023 -

MINCON, which is headquartered in Shannon, has gradually become a worldwide force in designing and producing rock drilling tools for the mining and construction industry, with plants all over the world and sales now running at €170m pa, returning an operating profit last year of just on €20m. The signs are that the shares are… Read more »

THE CORONER’S DAUGHTER – ANDREW HUGHES

Date: May 3, 2023 -

FIRST PUBLISHED back in 2018, Andrew Hughes’s period thriller, The Coroner’s Daughter is the One Dublin One Book choice for 2023. The author is an archivist and historian whose research inspired his debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt, based on a real-life murderer and Dublin Castle informer in the early 1840s. Similar exhaustive –… Read more »

THEATRE FESTIVAL’S DIVERSITY PLOT

Date: May 3, 2023 -

LAST MONTH, the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF) issued a call for potential directors. It looks like David Nolan’s board is anxious to avoid the kind of controversy that recently landed the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons. The DTF circular went out to what looks like the full… Read more »

MICHAEL O’CALLAGHAN’S MISHAP

Date: May 3, 2023 -

SPARE A thought for Kildare trainer Michael O’Callaghan, who has just moved into his new purpose-built training complex, which cost a fair few bob to construct. O’Callaghan would have had to juggle this investment while also maintaining enough capital to re-invest at the breeze-up sales, where traditionally he does rather well. Having dug deep to… Read more »

ELLIOTT’S SADDLES

Date: May 3, 2023 -

HOT ON the hooves of his recent cock-up at Navan (see The Phoenix 21/4/23), Gordon Elliott fell foul at Punchestown when putting the wrong saddles on two runners in the Louis Fitzgerald Hotel Hurdle. Obviously, there are logistical challenges when training 200 or so horses and saddling up to 20 runners at big race meetings,… Read more »

DANNY’S WHIP HAND

Date: May 3, 2023 -

ANOTHER EXAMPLE of the disparity of racing rules between Irish and British jurisdictions (see ‘Bradley Gibbs’s Gripes’) was evident last week. At Punchestown, Danny Mullins got a three-day ban after his whip came into contact with fellow jockey Paul Townend’s body in the closing stages of the William Hill Champion Chase on the opening day…. Read more »

BRADLEY GIBBS’S GRIPES

Date: May 3, 2023 -

PUNCHESTOWN IS often referred to as Ireland’s version of Cheltenham and many UK owners and trainers try to beat the Irish on home turf. One such UK horse, Premier Magic, did not get the chance to follow up a Cheltenham victory at Punchestown. The horse had beaten the Emmett Mullins-trained Its On The Line when… Read more »

BOWING OUT AT BALLYFIN

Date: May 3, 2023 -

AFTER over 20 years in situ on the board of Fred Krehbiel’s magnificent Ballyfin Demesne, James Reynolds – whose garden designing skills were much admired by the Chicago moneybags – has resigned from the board. He was also listed as a director of assorted British Virgin Islands-registered Ballyfin entities, including the holding company Ballyfin Capital…. Read more »

LEE BUSHELL TRIPS UP

Date: May 3, 2023 -

A BIRMINGHAM millionaire – who even owns a bank – is behind the Irish Aldo shoe business relaunched here 12 months ago, which has already collapsed into liquidation. Lee Bushell may be an unfamiliar figure here but across the Irish Sea he has been making a splash courtesy of his Bushell Investment Group (BIG). According… Read more »

TACKLING MICHAEL D.

Date: May 3, 2023 -

“Many economists remain stuck in an inexorable growth narrative, or at best a ‘green growth’ narrative,” which has “resulted in a discipline… blinkered to the ecological challenge – the ecological catastrophe – we now face.” This observation by President Michael D Higgins last week touched a raw nerve. The Business Post quoted five economists as… Read more »

ANOTHER GREEN/RED LINE GONE

Date: May 3, 2023 -

Sinn Féin really is a laggard when it comes to climate policy but some in the party seem to be making an effort. Last week senator Lynn Boylan pitched a modest proposal to curtail the insidious power of fossil fuel lobbyists – an amendment to the Lobbying Bill that would limit the industry’s access to… Read more »

NO HELP FOR MCREDMOND

Date: May 3, 2023 -

POWERSCOURT GROUP boss Rory Godson contacted Goldhawk to inform us that we were incorrect to say he had assisted David McRedmond – former chairman of Powerscourt’s Irish arm – in his bid to take the job of RTÉ director general (see The Phoenix 21/4/23). We are happy to accept Rory’s assurance that he gave no… Read more »

CARLSON’S DOWNFALL

Date: May 3, 2023 -

Tucker Carlson, a right-wing broadcasting star on Fox News, was tipped as the political heir to Donald Trump, until he was sacked – without an explanation – last month by News Corp owner Rupert Murdoch. What went wrong? Many observers believe Murdoch jumped into bed with the CIA when he befriended Ted Shackley, a CIA… Read more »

SOC DEMS TO ECLIPSE LABOUR?

Date: May 3, 2023 -

THE ONLY constituency in the state to house both a Labour and a Social Democrats TD is Dublin Bay North (DBN) with Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Cian O’Callaghan respectively. This sets the scene for an electoral title fight between the two representatives to symbolically determine which party will survive to fly the cuddly left flag… Read more »

OLD ARMIES AND NEW

Date: May 3, 2023 -

THE WAR of words between the official National Army and the Respect and Loyalty to the Forgotten (RLF), a group of retired army officers, continued last weekend. In the absence of any official commemoration of those 700-plus National Army fatalities in the Civil War a hundred years ago, the RLF last November organised its own… Read more »

FARMERS IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

Date: May 3, 2023 -

ROSCOMMON-GALWAY TD Michael Fitzmaurice got a predictable reaction from Green Party representatives when he mooted his new farmers’ party. Junior agriculture minister and Green senator Pippa Hackett said Fitzmaurice was using the “playbook of Trump’s America” and had an “anti-environment sentiment for his own narrow electoral gain”. Meanwhile, Green Party bruiser senator Róisín Garvey was… Read more »

TORIES TAKE ON THE DUP

Date: May 3, 2023 -

The DUP is furious with the British government. The DUP hasn’t realised that the terms of trade have changed since the overwhelming 515-29 vote in Westminster to endorse the Windsor Framework deal with the EU on the Irish Protocol. That’s as near unanimous a vote as possible in the House of Commons. It put a… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: May 3, 2023 -

The king will travel in the Gold State Coach. This is splendour played out on an epic canvas. It’s extraordinary how Britain has changed since the last coronation. Don’t expect to see Charles and Camilla holding hands, Harry and Meghan-style. Éamon de Valera and President Seán T O’Kelly said no thanks. Leo Varadkar and Michael… Read more »

HATE-FREE SPEECH

Date: May 3, 2023 -

As far back as November 2019 Garda Commissioner Drew Harris told the Policing Authority that Ireland was beginning to see a rise in right-wing extremism. He stated: “The difficulty with it is that it’s spread through the web and spread through social media… We now… Read more »

NEW YORK’S FINEST

Date: May 3, 2023 -

A SHORT and largely unnoticed announcement last week on the website of the American Irish Historical Society (AIHS) signalled an emphatic victory for over 40,000 Irish New Yorkers led by the formidable trio of former NYPD Manhattan homicide squad supremo Brian McCabe; New York attorney general Letitia ‘Tish’ James; and Ireland’s consul-general in New York,… Read more »

POLLUTERS PARADISE

Date: May 3, 2023 -

The polluter’s paradox is the term given to the fact that the more polluting a company or sector is, the more it has to spend on both politics and advertising to ensure it evades being properly regulated. In the US, fossil fuel companies have invested heavily in buying up politicians as well as bamboozling the… Read more »

LIZ TRUSS FOR SECRET COURT CASE

Date: May 3, 2023 -

THE BRIEFEST of British prime ministers, Liz Truss, could find herself called in a dramatic court case that her government is trying to have heard in secret as it concerns allegations about British diplomatic misbehaviour and indiscretion in the US. An Irish passport holder and British civil servant, whose father hails from Galway, is suing… Read more »

SEND HIM VICTORIOUS!

Date: May 3, 2023 -

A SIGN of ‘how far we have come’, as some modernists put it, is the invite to its members from the Kildare Street & University Club this weekend. There they will repair to the drawing room of their club for champagne and fine wine in order to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III over… Read more »

THE MOUSE THAT ROARS

Date: May 3, 2023 -

MEDIA SPECULATION about the appetite of Tánaiste Micheál Martin for the post in foreign affairs – something that became very apparent in the months before the changeover with Leo Varadkar as Taoiseach last Christmas – was muted and polite, preferring not to mention the elephant or even the mouse in the room. But Martin’s Skibbereen-type… Read more »

VOL 41 NO 09

Date: May 3, 2023 -