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PRESUMABLY, THE chief executive of Bank of Ireland, Francesca McDonagh, knew she was in trouble when Joe Duffy dismissed her “blasé” comments about the bank’s customers being responsible themselves for falling victim to the recent ‘smishing’ fraud. Apparently, Joe had nearly choked on his porridge. Certainly, there was no contest in the PR battle between… Read more »

WHILE MUCH of the focus relating to the midlands lockdown has been on the meat plants, clusters in direct provision centres have also featured, as is the case with the Montague Hotel outside the sleepy village of Emo in Co Laois. This turns out to be just one of a number of operations controlled by… Read more »

THE LATEST political poll – by Behaviour & Attitudes for the Sunday Times – was headlined, “Varadkar and Fine Gael soar in polls”. It added that Sinn Féin had “climbed in the polls”, but that the figures were disappointing for Fianna Fáil. This is a somewhat sketchy account of the trend in the polls since… Read more »

A RIVETING judgment emerged out of the High Court last month when Judge Richard Humphreys ruled that a food company, CGI Food Services, must continue to pay ex-financial controller John Clarke, who was deemed to have made a protected disclosure about alleged wrongdoing. The judgment highlights some explosive claims (denied by the defendants) that are… Read more »

MUCH HAS been made of the two ‘big beasts’ of the SDLP, John Hume and Seamus Mallon, both now dead, whose perseverance helped to enable the peace process. In fact, the rivalry between the two was epic and bedevilled the party for 40 years or so. ‘Uniting people instead of territory’ was not a message… Read more »

NEARLY A year ago – following a joint request by ICTU, SIPTU and the lobby group Screen Producers Ireland – an audit of the independent film and TV drama production sector was instigated by the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC). There is still no sign of the report and, meanwhile, some film workers continue to find… Read more »

JOHN HUME Jnr, a public relations and lobbying consultant, is hardly in the same line of business as his late father, to whom he paid tribute at his funeral recently. However, Hume Jnr has certainly made his mark on governments and in the world of corporate affairs using the same honeyed tones as his dad…. Read more »

LAST YEAR’S crash-landing of Datalex – a company that supplies ticket-booking software to airlines around the world – was one of the more controversial episodes in the history of the Irish Stock Exchange, with the shares being suspended at the start of May 2019 (see business profile, pg 24). Given the presence of Dermot Desmond… Read more »