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FLORIAN HAUFE’S CRIME ACADEMY

Date: February 9, 2023 -

ON VALENTINE’S Day, a creditors’ meeting is to be held to wind up an entity called the Financial Crime Academy Ltd. This was set up here to deliver lectures on fighting corruption and is fronted by a German financial superhero named Florian Haufe. According to the webpage for Florian Haufe, he is “a compliance and… Read more »

NORMAL PEOPLE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

PEOPLE ROUTINELY accept risks associated with motoring that they would find intolerable in almost any other walk of life, according to new research. These unconscious biases in turn have major impacts on policy, leading to what the researchers describe as, er, “motonormativity”, which, in simple terms, means a huge blind spot when it comes to… Read more »

TWITTER’S EMERALD ISLE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

POLITICAL AGREEMENT was reached on the Digital Services Act (DSA) by the European Commission after much haggling in April 2022. The legislation aims to guarantee a safer digital space, where the rights of EU citizens are respected. With companies such as Facebook, Google, Apple and Twitter having their European headquarters in Ireland, however, this legislation… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

“I’d go absolutely mental sitting in the [Phoenix] Park with nothing to do.” Irish voters may be devastated to learn that the presidency is not a gig that would suit Panti Bliss, Mail on Sunday Zoomers are “radically inclusive”. They’re also curious. Where previous generations defined themselves through traditional stereotypes, Zoomers experiment with different ways… Read more »

DUP: NO END IN SIGHT

Date: February 9, 2023 -

THE BBC radio show Any Questions was broadcast from Bangor on February 4, with three politicians and a journalist making up the panel. The politicians were Chris Hazzard, Sinn Féin MP for South Down; DUP MLA Emma Little-Pengelly; and Simon Hoare, Conservative chair of the Commons Northern Ireland Committee. Naturally Brexit and the Northern Ireland… Read more »

EXPENSIVE TDs’ EXPENSES

Date: February 9, 2023 -

THE HASTE with which Government parties and a concerned media seized on Sinn Féin’s election expenses errors to bury the saga of Paschal Donohoe’s embarrassment meant that exchequer funding for political parties came briefly into focus. This will not have been welcomed by many around Leinster House, where there is a virtual omertà concerning the… Read more »

‘IRISH TIMES’ V IVANA

Date: February 9, 2023 -

LABOUR LEADER Ivana Bacik has been getting out and about recently, mainly in the media, in an effort to drag her party back into political contention. But the Irish Times is singularly unimpressed with the performance of one of its favourite political children and gave the party a good talking to as well as an… Read more »

RARE SPORT AT THE ‘EXAMINER’

Date: February 9, 2023 -

BORN-AGAIN HACK Ian Mallon, formerly a senior editorial exec with Independent News and Media (INM) and then a public relations pro with the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) and Union of European Football Associations (Uefa), has enjoyed one of the most interesting career curves in Irish journalism. He is currently working for the Irish Examiner… Read more »

FAR-RIGHT ECO MILITANTS

Date: February 9, 2023 -

“BUILDING RESILIENT communities” is the tagline for Think Local, a one-day conference at the Shearwater Hotel in Ballinasloe later this month that claims to be “Ireland’s first community-led sustainability conference”. It all sounds wholesome and progressive, but a closer look at some of the people involved paints a more troubling picture. Speakers include Cynthia Chung,… Read more »

ED BROPHY’S LOBBYING

Date: February 9, 2023 -

IT’S SURELY a sign of a very persuasive lobbyist if the person being lobbied ditches their government job and steps through the revolving door to join the lobbyist’s firm. In 2020, in his capacity as chief adviser to then finance minister Paschal Donohoe, Ed Brophy was lobbied by Niamh Gallagher of AWS, Amazon’s data centres… Read more »

ELLIOTT’S STRATEGY

Date: February 9, 2023 -

MICK O’LEARY’S re-engagement as an owner of national hunt horses has been welcomed by trainers and breeders and, given the significant clear out of many of his older horses over the past two years, the moneybags will be keen to unearth a few high-class youngsters to take him to the big festivals. To this end,… Read more »

BOLGER’S BIG GUNS

Date: February 9, 2023 -

DESPITE A slowdown in winners and representation in the major races last year, octogenarian handler Jim Bolger has no plans to bow out any time soon, judging by his new crop of two-year-olds for the 2023 flat season. Bolger recently registered names for 42 two-year-olds with Horse Racing Ireland, which gives him some serious ammunition… Read more »

WHIPPING UP A STORM

Date: February 9, 2023 -

FEBRUARY 13 sees the introduction across the Irish Sea of new, more stringent rules regarding the use of the whip. Given Cheltenham is set to take place four weeks after this, the impact of the move by the British Horseracing Authority will be closely watched. Jockeys have already kicked up over the new rules, which… Read more »

REDDINGTON’S RIDE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

LONDON-BASED Irish property developer-turned amateur jockey John Reddington has become well known in recent years for his particular style in the saddle when riding his own horses. The enthusiastic 50-something-year-old taught his younger, professional colleagues something of a lesson when winning a race in enterprising fashion in Newcastle last week. Having utilised his chopper to… Read more »

CATHERINE KEANE’S €7.5M PILE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

ONE OF the most expensive houses to come on the market lately is Lonsdale on leafy Temple Road in Dartry. This is an area of the capital that would have been most familiar to property magnate Matt Keane, who made a mint out of acquiring and developing a substantial number of properties in the Dublin… Read more »

NATIONAL GALLERY’S NEW FACES

Date: February 9, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK HAD been getting curious about whether arts and culture minister Catherine Martin was ever going to get around to appointing the four new directors to the board of the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI). Happily, after he bunged in a query about the status of the appointment process, it was announced that the seats… Read more »

DAVID HARVEY’S FULL SQUAD

Date: February 9, 2023 -

ARTS MINISTER Catherine Martin has a tendency to take her time to fill board vacancies but the good news is that she has finally managed to fill four seats at IMMA. Remarkably, three of these have existed for two years! In late 2020, Martin reappointed chairman David Harvey, Dermod Dwyer and Mary Apied, while Eva… Read more »

UPLIFT LETDOWN

Date: February 9, 2023 -

APPOINTMENTS TO the forthcoming Media Commission, two Dáil committee hearings, and related media policy reports and press releases all jostled for public attention in mid January. Some items fell through the cracks. On January 18, media minister Catherine Martin announced a “new action plan” to implement the Future of Media Commission recommendations, while the joint… Read more »

PENNYS OWNER ABF UNDERRATED BY THE MARKET

Date: February 9, 2023 -

THE WESTON family, George Weston in particular, pulled off quite the coup when they sold off their Selfridges/Brown Thomas/Arnotts department store group for £4bn last year. These operations were acquired not because they are really big earners but rather as trophy assets. The remaining retail business in the Associated British Foods (ABF) group, based around… Read more »

LORETTA DIGNAM’S HEALTHY OUTLOOK

Date: February 9, 2023 -

IT HAS been a mixed few weeks for Loretta Dignam’s Menopause Hub, which announced the opening of its first clinic in Cork at the end of 2022 but then had to make a settlement in the Four Goldmines. Dignam was ahead of the curve when it comes to tackling the attitudes to menopause, particularly in… Read more »

ANNE ROSSI’S LIQUIDATION

Date: February 9, 2023 -

DUBLIN BEAUTICIAN Anne Rossi came a cropper in Dublin District Court this month as a result of an action taken by the Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA). This was not her only setback, however. Rossi, who runs the Anne Rossi Clinic at Vernon Avenue in Clontarf, north Co Dublin, was prosecuted by the HPRA for… Read more »

CRANE POWER

Date: February 9, 2023 -

STILL NO sign of the €5m being dished out to some lucky grant manager on behalf of a body called the Crane Foundation. The name may not ring too many bells but that is because it was better known as the National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) for the 14 years it managed that operation, which… Read more »

GEORGE DUNNE’S BIG HOUSE

Date: February 9, 2023 -

A HOUSE in Bray, Co Wicklow, has just come on the market with the vendor seeking a hefty €3.4m. The Irish Times write-up noted that the owner of the sprawling Mount Herbert is builder George Dunne but unfortunately there wasn’t room in the article to include all his adventures. Mount Herbert, which is located on… Read more »

VOL 41 NO 03

Date: February 9, 2023 -

VOL 41 NO 02

Date: January 26, 2023 -

MEEK MEDIA AND PASCHAL DONOHOE

Date: January 26, 2023 -

THE INITIALLY tardy attitude of most media to allegations that Paschal Donohoe’s breached election expenses rules is hard to explain (see p3). Surely the January 1 deadline for the implementation of the public expenditure minister’s budget gift to Big Media – zero VAT rate on newspapers – was not an inhibiting factor? When the main… Read more »

PROFILE: ROSSA FANNING

Date: January 26, 2023 -

THE LATEST hot-shot lawyer to be appointed Attorney General is Rossa Fanning SC, one of the top commercial barristers in the Four Courts and someone who has earned millions from this trade – as did his predecessor, Paul Gallagher. Also like Gallagher, Fanning is not a member of any political party, although neither man would… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: UNA HEALY

Date: January 26, 2023 -

Reports that Una Healy is in a ‘throuple’ relationship with former heavyweight boxing champion David Haye and model Sian Osborne certainly helped to boost showbiz hacks out of the post-Christmas doldrums. But as it transpires, having the attention of two suitors is not an unusual situation for Healy to find herself in. Although she rose… Read more »

GARDA AND HARD RIGHT

Date: January 26, 2023 -

GARDA COMMISSIONER Drew Harris OBE grabbed the headlines this month when he described some of those involved in the anti-refugee protests as having a “sinister agenda… their motives are not good. Their motives could be described as far right.” It came just after the protests outside the Travelodge Hotel in Ballymun, which is accommodating refugees…. Read more »

HANDICAPPING MICHAEL HALFORD

Date: January 26, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK WAS surprised to spot that a company called Copper Beech Racing Ltd has just collapsed into liquidation. This is the business established by well-known racehorse trainer Michael Halford, who has trained for the likes of the Aga Khan. It represents the latest setback for Halford, who, until November last, was in the saddle as… Read more »

AMNESTY FOR BILL SHIPSEY?

Date: January 26, 2023 -

INTERESTING TO see that Art for Amnesty (AfA), fronted by ex-legal eagle Bill Shipsey, has advised the Companies Office of a name change to Art for Human Rights. This is clearly a reaction to a legal action lodged last year. Shipsey found himself caught in the crosshairs back in September when Amnesty International (AI) commenced… Read more »

ROBBIE HENSHAW’S VITAMINS

Date: January 26, 2023 -

RUGBY INTERNATIONAL Robbie Henshaw, who is set to return from injury, featured heavily at the weekend in the run-up to the start of the Six Nations. Most happy with the coverage was surely pharma giants Uniphar, which recently signed him up as a brand ambassador for one of its supplements. There were two pages, no… Read more »

THE SINGULARITIES – JOHN BANVILLE

Date: January 26, 2023 -

THROUGHOUT HIS career, John Banville has specialised in creating characters who don’t quite fit into their surroundings and whose time is spent struggling to understand themselves, and The Singularities is no exception. While he has never been much interested in conventional plots, his books usually excite extremes of critical appreciation and fans often appear to… Read more »

NO BONE FOR NOEL SMYTH

Date: January 26, 2023 -

REGIME CHANGE came to the Irish Kennel Club (IKC) earlier this month and this could be bad news for Goldhawk’s old pal, Noel Smyth. The board elections saw long-term president Sean Delmar lose out to HSE exec Pat O’Boyle, who recorded a significant majority when becoming the first woman president in the club’s 100-year history…. Read more »

HUSBANDS’S HEADACHE

Date: January 26, 2023 -

LEOPARDSTOWN BOSS Tim Husbands may still be basking in the glow of a successful Christmas festival, when over 60,000 race-goers attended over the four days, but the focus has moved swiftly to the Dublin Racing Festival and it is clear there is much work to… Read more »

DONOHOE: HOLD THE BACK PAGE!

Date: January 26, 2023 -

THE EFFORTS by Paschal Donohoe, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil to resist an exposé of his dodgy election returns was initially supplemented by a remarkably nonchalant response from the media, especially the Irish Times but also from the Sunday and Irish Independent (see p12). That the Indo should, six days after it first reported the… Read more »