Affairs of the Nation Archives

AFFAIRS OF THE NATION

National Library of Ireland Catherine Martin

OVERDUE AT THE LIBRARY

May 2, 2024

WITH ARTS minister Catherine Martin under pressure to make some appointments to the Arts Council, there are other vacancies that also require her... Read more »

DECOMMISSIONING QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY

May 2, 2024
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 business has been booming at Thales UK’s weapons plants in the north. Thales designs and manufactures missiles... Read more »

BRIGADIER MACLELLAN IN DARK

May 2, 2024
WITH THE Crown’s decision last month not to prosecute the paratroopers who perjured themselves at the Saville inquiry, a number of doors slammed shut... Read more »

Budget Jack Chambers Nicki Minaj B’Tselem Phil Hogan UCD IRTA DIGI Katy Brown Rory Godson Pallonji Mistry Shark Hanlon Frances Ruane Taste of Dublin Listowel Writers’ Week Paddy Curran Harvey Norman Anton Savage Paul Hourican Enda O’Coineen PfP Red C Poll IFTA Ben Gilroy Luke Comer Sue Spence Fingleton Aubrey McCarthy Matt Cooper Parker Green Danny McConnell Gayle Killilea Maura Derivan Ed Honohan INS Arts Council EDAF Emuse Rosslare Golf Club Mairead Casey Colm O’Rourke Stephen Connolly Peter Aiken John Malone Tom Barry Anthony Halpin Ian Kehoe Kevin Bakhurst Geraldine O’Leary Dennis Horgan RUSI Gareth McAllister Ryevale House Joe Macken RUC Omagh Patrick Connolly Paddy Cosgrave The Ditch Newstalk Fake Tan Fred Logue Ian Paisley Sean O’Riordan Margaret Sweeney Jay Bourke Ellie Kisyombe Francesca McDonagh Ted Cunningham National Space Centre An Irish Goodbye Oscar Robert Quirke Ciara Kelly Executive Women Gathering Doug Taylor Florian Haufe Robbie Henshaw Bill Shipsey Breaking the Silence L’Ecrivain Ronan McNally National Lottery Michael Roche Energy Action Balls.ie Newspapers VAT Abbey Theatre Patricia Madden Irish Banking Culture Board Randox Aoife Gallagher Book Dalai Lama Trinity Trevor White RTÉ Chairperson Shane Houlihan Noel Smyth IKC Bob Geldof Landlord Ireland Neutrality Ukraine

LISA MULCAHY’S IFTA

May 2, 2024

IN TERMS of viewers, the most successful ‘Irish’ film in recent times has to be the Lindsay Lohan vehicle An Irish Wish. No... Read more »

BRITISH SPECIAL FORCES IN GAZA?

April 18, 2024
THAT BRITISH Tory politicians should call for a halt to British arms supplies to Israel is most unusual, coming as it does from those... Read more »

IAN O’DOHERTY’S BAD YEAR

April 18, 2024
LAST DECEMBER the Independent’s lovable columnist, Ian O’Doherty, wrote about what he described as “maybe the worst year of my life” but it doesn’t... Read more »

CATHERINE MARTIN’S €7M HEADACHE

April 18, 2024
ARTS AND culture minister Catherine Martin came in for (yet more) criticism this week as a result of her ongoing failure to appoint a... Read more »

JOYLESS JUNIOR JENN

April 18, 2024

IT’S A long way down from pre-breakfast delusions of becoming taoiseach to not even making it into Cabinet but that has been the... Read more »

BEN GILROY’S PORTUGUESE POSTCODE

April 18, 2024

SURPRISING TO see that, according to filings in the Companies Office for Morrigan Private Settlement Trust Operations (MPST), the colourful Ben Gilroy has... Read more »

GLENCREE’S NEW FACES

April 18, 2024

THREE MONTHS on from the appointment by the Department of Foreign Affairs of consultants to carry out a review of corporate governance at... Read more »

JOHN FITZGERALD’S DISMAL FORECAST

April 18, 2024

DESPITE ITS headline-grabbing effect, the report by John FitzGerald and Edgar Morgenroth, entitled Northern Ireland Subvention – Possible Unification Effects and predicting that... Read more »

ROBERT NAIRAC RE-VISITED

April 18, 2024
Robin ‘The Jackal’ Jackson, of the Portadown UVF, was the most notorious assassin of the Troubles. Virtually all commentators on those turbulent times believe... Read more »

GOING NUCLEAR IN IRISH SEA

April 18, 2024

In recent years much has been made by various academics, media and politicians about Ireland’s dependence on the Royal Air Force (RAF) for... Read more »

DON’T MESS WITH BIG PHIL

April 4, 2024

SIMON COVENEY’S flight from Cabinet – before he could be pushed – had as much to do with former EU commissioner Phil Hogan... Read more »

DEREK RICHARDSON’S SCRUM

April 4, 2024

THE FORMER owner of bust English rugby union club Wasps – Derek Richardson – is keeping his lawyers busy. As has been reported,... Read more »

RONAN COLLINS’S RUSSIAN CONNECTIONS

April 4, 2024

LAST MONTH a US-backed nursing home operator, which surfaced in 2016 with big plans to take a chunk of the market here, was... Read more »

JUDGING LUKE COMER JNR

April 4, 2024

THE MINTED Comer family, who made hundreds of millions of euro from the building sector, has had its fair share of stumbles in... Read more »

LEDDIN V O’DONOVAN

April 4, 2024

THE ANTICIPATION that Limerick’s first directly elected mayoral contest would be a bottomless borefest may turn out to be quite mistaken and Goldhawk... Read more »

VIRGIN’S ‘VANISHING TRIANGLE’

April 4, 2024

THE OMENS weren’t good when The Vanishing Triangle, backed with moolah from the taxpayer, failed to appear in the autumn schedule for Virgin... Read more »

BRITISH AGENTS AND DUBLIN BOMBS

April 4, 2024
May 17 next will mark the 50th anniversary of the Dublin and Monaghan bomb massacres. One of the key figures in the Dublin leg... Read more »

INTERNMENT WITH TRIAL

April 4, 2024

The wall of silence by southern media on the recent acquittal of dissident republicans Colin Duffy and Harry Fitzsimons is in marked contrast... Read more »

EU ‘WAR ECONOMY’

April 4, 2024

LAST OCTOBER The Phoenix quoted an impeccable authority on western political and military strategy – the Economist magazine – which warned that the... Read more »

DON’T MENTION THE WAR

March 21, 2024
LAST WEEKEND’S article in the Irish Times by novelist Sally Rooney represented one of the relatively few public criticisms of the US’s policy on... Read more »

RECOGNISING PALESTINE — AGAIN

March 21, 2024

WORDS MATTER. Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s statements criticising Israel’s war on Gaza have helped to muster world opinion against Israeli genocide there. But words... Read more »

Element Pictures Andrew Lowe and Ed Guiney

IN THEIR ELEMENT

March 21, 2024

“WE NEED to actually invest in developing our own stories,” declared movie producer Ed Guiney, pointing out that there “just isn’t enough investment... Read more »

TRINA VARGO’S FAILING FUND

March 21, 2024

US-IRELAND Alliance (USIA) president Trina Vargo’s statement last week on the “pausing” of the George J Mitchell Scholarship programme didn’t quite get across... Read more »

NORTH HARMONY THREATENED

March 21, 2024

THE LOVE-IN between Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill and Jeffrey Donaldson’s puppet deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, should not fool people into believing that... Read more »

SUE SPENCE’S SHORTS

March 21, 2024

THERE WAS no celebrating at Cheltenham for the well-connected businesswoman Sue Spence, whose Tranquil Sea did not make it on to the turf... Read more »

TRIPLE LOCK TO GO?

March 21, 2024
IT OCCURRED to Goldhawk on recently reading the Irish Times’s political editor, Pat ‘The Brigadier’ Leahy, that he had contracted gout on some mission... Read more »

DENTON NO-SHOW TO FOLLOW KENOVA?

March 21, 2024
OPERATION KENOVA investigated a string of murders perpetrated by Freddie Scappaticci and his associates. It did not result in a single criminal prosecution. Scappaticci,... Read more »

CORRECTION

March 21, 2024

In The Phoenix 8/3/24, it was reported that GC Aesthetics was being wound up. We have been informed that the operating company, GC... Read more »

NATIONAL PARTY ‘MODERATES’

March 21, 2024

DIVISIONS IN the far-right National Party (NP) emerged publicly last July due to a dispute over the ownership of more than €400,000 worth... Read more »

McDOWELL PLOTS NEW DÁIL FORCE

March 7, 2024

REGARDLESS OF the referendum results this week, the stand-out personality in an otherwise boring campaign was senator Michael McDowell, former justice minister and... Read more »

CATHERINE MARTIN’S NEW CAST

March 7, 2024

WITH FORMER chief KPMG number-cruncher Terence O’Rourke preparing to take charge of the RTÉ board, one of the first big tasks will be... Read more »

BILL McCABE’S BREAST IMPLANTS

March 7, 2024

IT HAS been a rough few months for veteran investor Bill McCabe, who had pumped big bucks into the listed Irish medtech business,... Read more »

FINGLETON’S FANS

March 7, 2024

THE SINDO’S Liam Collins was waxing lyrical last month in an article headlined, “Fingers Fingleton rode to my rescue: 40 years later I’m... Read more »