Affairs of the Nation

Charles Haughey

Affairs of the Nation

MI5/UVF HAUGHEY MURDER PLOT

Why would a notorious loyalist killer gang like the UVF write to then Taoiseach Charlie Haughey in 1987 informing him of an MI5 plot to kill him two years previously... Read more »
Olga Shajaku

Affairs of the Nation

Olga Shajaku’s interesting friend

IT WAS interesting to see Bertie Ahern and other familiar faces pop up on a trade mission to Moscow and St Petersburg in November. The Russians are anxious to promote... Read more »
Judge Peter Kelly

Affairs of the Nation

BEADES VEXES HIGH COURT PRESIDENT

FOUR COURTS rules introduced last year to curtail lay litigants have not prevented barrack room lawyer extraordinaire, Jerry Beades, from continuing to challenge judge Peter Kelly’s appointment as President of... Read more »

Affairs of the Nation

Eoghan Harris

Affairs of the Nation

REWRITING THE TROUBLES

THE revisionist Ultras of last year’s West Cork History Festival (smart-ass Republicans have dubbed it the West Brit Festival) have received predictable praise from the Sindo’s Eoghan Harris for their... Read more »
Peter Sutherland

Affairs of the Nation

Suds’ Critics

IN THE midst of all the breast-beating and hair-pulling following the death of ‘Sir’ Peter Sutherland, one former Fine Gael tánaiste went against the grain – or at least her... Read more »
stephen-schwarzman

Affairs of the Nation

Steven Schwarzman’s scholarships

ONE person who will be delighted with the US Republicans’ new tax plan is CEO of private equity giant Blackstone Steve Schwarzman, who enjoys a warm relationship with Irish third-level... Read more »
Anne Harris

Affairs of the Nation

BUGGERS AT INM

WHAT is it about the repetitive hacking and surveillance in and around Independent News & Media (INM)? INM chairman Leslie Buckley has told the Office of the Director of Corporate... Read more »
rte-logo

Affairs of the Nation

RTÉ Houses

DUBLIN CITY chief executive Owen Keegan hit out at the decision of RTÉ to offload a large part of its Montrose site to private developers without insisting on a significant... Read more »

Affairs of the Nation

Dermot Desmond’s new house

JUST HOW many houses can Dermot Desmond buy in Dublin 4? Dermo originally lived on leafy Ailesbury Road and today no 89 is the address given by his wife, Pat... Read more »
Ruairí Quinn

Affairs of the Nation

CRYING HALT TO EUROMANIACS

THERE’S no better man than former Labour minister Ruairí Quinn when it comes to squeezing serious amounts of taxpayers’ money from government departments for his favourite hobby horse, the Institute... Read more »

Pillars of Society

Catherine Noone

Pillars of Society

Profile: FG’s Catherine Noone

CURRENTLY feted as a modern day Countess Markievicz for her performance chairing the Oireachtas Committee on the eighth amendment, Senator Catherine Noone has come... Read more »

The Young Bloods

Ali Ryan

The Young Bloods

Young Blood: Ali ‘Goss.ie’ Ryan

With the news that Irish-American investor Liam Lynch is looking to acquire her entertainment and lifestyle website, Alexandra ‘Ali’ Ryan (28) and The Goss.ie... Read more »

Fit to Print?

Sgt Maurice McCabe

Fit to Print?

Michael Clifford’s book

A strange silence surrounds the release last September of Irish Examiner hack Mick Clifford’s book, A Force for Justice: The Maurice McCabe Story. The resignation of Garda commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan... Read more »
Sean Gallagher

Fit to Print?

Miriam’s Fans

FAILED presidential candidate Seán Gallagher’s six-figure sum in compensation for the ‘Tweetgate’ incident on RTÉ’s 2011 Presidential debate programme shows what a small world the media/political bubble really is. The... Read more »
Garda-Logo

Fit to Print?

dystopian visions

PERCEIVED wisdom among whining liberals – you know the type – is that the root cause of Garda scandals is more cultural than structural. A warning from the Garda Review’s... Read more »

Last Refuge

Eoghan Murphy

Last Refuge

NIMBY: NOT IN MURPHY’S BACK YARD

FRESH from the PR blunder of Conor Skehan’s reappointment as chair of the Housing Agency, the minister for housing, Eoghan ‘Tory Boy’ Murphy, has revealed a set of priorities that... Read more »
Miriam O’Callaghan

Last Refuge

Taking on Michael Twee

THERE will be a presidential contest, regardless of current incumbent Michael D Higgins’ agenda, and Fianna Fáil will face unbearable pressure from its members to run a candidate. Independent senator... Read more »
James Collins

Last Refuge

MICHAEL NOONAN’S LEGACY

DESPITE Fine Gael’s national poll lead, Fianna Fáil apparatchiks claim that polls on the ground in various constituencies show seat gains for the party all around the country. An interesting... Read more »
Barry Cowen

Last Refuge

MARTIN TO PULL PLUG?

THE chances of an early election have been dismissed by all and sundry in the media/political bubble, but the debate inside Fianna Fáil still rages with one faction arguing that... Read more »

Bog Cuttings

Bog Cuttings

Bog Cuttings

Bog Cuttings

“I Think I Killed your Mother” A YOUNG Kerrywoman who suffered post traumatic stress disorder after being told her mother had been killed has been awarded €27,750 at Tralee District... Read more »

Fowl Emissions

Jim Daly

Fowl Emissions

COASTING TO DISASTER

AT 1km long, Donald Trump’s Irish wall doesn’t enjoy quite as much global infamy as his Mexican wall. However, Clare County Council’s decision on December 21 to grant permission to... Read more »

Bird's Eye View

Theresa May

Bird's Eye View

NEVER IN A POLITICAL LIFETIME

HERE WE go again. You could write the script. The new northern secretary invites the parties to Stormont. Desultory talks ensue. An artificial deadline – the end of February for... Read more »

The Hot Air Brigade

Bono

The Hot Air Brigade

The Hot Air Brigade

The person who wrote best about love in the Christian era was Paul of Tarsus, who became Saint Paul. He was a tough fucker. Bono interviewed by Jann Wenner for... Read more »

High Society

High Society

Patrick Annesley

High Society

Patrick Annesley’s “gift”

INTERESTING TO read an interview in The Irish Times at the end of last month with the UK-bound Patrick Annesley. It was noted that... Read more »

High Society

Ingrid & Markus Jooste

High Society

Magnier and Jooste

THE DRAMATIC fall from grace of South African billionaire Markus Jooste should come as no surprise to fans of Goldhawk, who were previously made... Read more »

High Society

Dominick Chilcott

High Society

ARISE SIR DOMINICK

CONGRATULATIONS are due to former British ambassador to Ireland Dominick Chilcott, who was given a gong in the New Year’s honours list last month. Chilcott landed the Knight Commander Order... Read more »

Behind the Scenes

Sheila Pratschke

Behind the Scenes

ARTS COUNCIL’S ART ATTACK

THE 2016 annual report of the Arts Council was published recently and includes some rather interesting figures, especially regarding the multi-million euro art collection. Given the tensions that have been... Read more »

Behind the Scenes

Pálás Programmes

GOLDHAWK has reported on the tortuous (torturous?) development of Galway’s bijou art-house cinema, Cinema Palace. It was originally promoted by Lelia Doolan’s Solas group, now in liquidation. Like Windscale, the... Read more »
Bill Shipsey

Behind the Scenes

BILL SHIPSEY’S PRODUCTIONS

TOP BARRISTER Bill Shipsey avoided some embarrassment last month when his Art for Amnesty (AfA) vehicle was taken off the Companies Office strike-off list thanks to some last-minute filings. Meanwhile... Read more »

Sport of Kings

John Hales

Sport of Kings

BIG MONEY MISTAKES

GIVEN THE eye-watering sums being lashed out at auction houses in Ireland and England for the perceived cream of the racing crop, it can be well worth charting the progress... Read more »
Ross Doyle

Sport of Kings

BAD NEWS FOR THE DOYLE BOYS

THE PUBLIC fall from grace of South African business tycoon Markus Jooste was bad news for many of his countrymen who had their pension funds invested in Steinhoff, but it... Read more »
article default

Sport of Kings

SHORT ODDS AT THE TOTE

WHEN Killahara Castle popped up at 200/1 in a mares hurdle at Thurles before Christmas, her connections – the Burke family (trained, ridden and owned by siblings John, Martin and... Read more »
Rich Ricci

Sport of Kings

RICCI’S LEOPARDSTOWN WOES

LEOPARDSTOWN’S 2017 Christmas Festival will be remembered for many of the wrong reasons. The four-day festival threw up some downright bizarre results and provided a series of dramatic thrills and... Read more »

Reviews

MRS OSMOND -JOHN BANVILLE (VIKING)

Books

MRS OSMOND -JOHN BANVILLE (VIKING)

IN HIS latest novel, John Banville picks up where Henry James left off at the close of The Portrait of a Lady (1881). James’s story concluded with the young American... Read more »
Tommy Bowe and Vogue Williams

Reviews

GETAWAYS – RTÉ 1

IT BEING January, holiday shows are a TV staple along with the get-fit programmes. RTÉ’s offering is Getaways, produced by Waddell Media, which is guilty of such treats as Francis... Read more »
HERE AND GONE - HAYLEN BECK (HARVILL SECKER)

Books

HERE AND GONE – HAYLEN BECK (HARVILL SECKER)

HAYLEN BECK is the pen name of Northern Irish crime writer Stuart Neville, who has been capturing the mean streets of Belfast in a series of thrillers since 2009. His... Read more »

Moneybags

Moneybags

Bernard Byrne

Moneybags

AIB’s high share rating will be hard to maintain

AGAINST THE background of a successful IPO in June last year, which raised €3.4bn for the state through the sale of a 29% stake... Read more »

Moneybags

Bertrand Gautier

Moneybags

Taxpayer piles into Greencoat Renewables

AN IPO last year that broke new ground was Greencoat Renewables, which raised €270m in July 2017 and launched the first quoted Irish vehicle... Read more »

Brief Cases

Dervla Kenny

Brief Cases

Dervla Kenny’s planning win

HARD LUCK to Caroline and Veitch McCombs who have had a planning appeal rejected by An Bord Pleanála (ABP), despite the inspector giving a thumbs-up for the development to go... Read more »
Greg Kavanagh

Brief Cases

Greg Kavanagh’s Globe hangover

INTERESTING to see that one of Arklow developer Greg Kavanagh’s pub companies was taken to the High Court by the dreaded taxman just before Christmas. Isotonic Taverns Ltd – where... Read more »
Westbourne Direct Provision Centre

Brief Cases

Kenny group’s asylum centre

A RAFT of companies in Limerick developer Martin Kenny’s property group have had receivers appointed to them by Howard Stanley Marks’s Oaktree Capital in the last few weeks. Once upon... Read more »
Declan Ryan

Brief Cases

Declan Ryan’s tough medicine

JUST BEFORE Christmas, the directors of a company called Growcorp Group voted to wind up the company and appointed Bryan O’Neill as liquidator. It looks like moneybags Declan Ryan may... Read more »
Joan Rowland

Brief Cases

Joan Rowland’s roof collapse

IT’S BEEN a bad start to 2018 for Castlebar couple Joan and Paul Rowland, who were landed with matching judgments for nearly €1.4m just before Christmas. KBC Bank registered the... Read more »
Roger Woolman

Brief Cases

Koger over and out

THE FINAL chapter in the winding up of software company Koger (Dublin) Ltd has now been written with the High Court greenlighting the discharge of liquidator Declan Taite and ordering... Read more »
article default

Brief Cases

Mary Donnelly’s fraudulent payments

A 71-YEAR-OLD former company director in Limerick pleaded guilty recently to generating false invoices after an investigation by the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE). Limerick woman Mary... Read more »
article default

Brief Cases

Tax ‘Alignment’

A DUNDALK soft drink wholesaler has been slapped with a €1.4m tax judgment for his part in a VAT fraud scheme. Michael Martin had previously pleaded guilty to involvement in... Read more »