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AFTER BUYING the defunct Galway Airport at Carnmore in June 2014, Galway city and county councils sought views, commissioned reports and generally agonised over what to do with the place. The one option that wouldn’t go away was to turn the hangars into a “creative hub”, this being the default response of local authorities anxious… Read more »

GER COLLERAN has been editor and managing director of the Irish Daily Star and was at various times tipped to be editor of the Sunday Independent, Irish Independent and the Sunday Business Post. Now he has taken a job as editor of Kerry’s Eye in Tralee with the imminent retirement of current editor Colin Lacey…. Read more »

WHAT A surprise to see the name of Brian Kingham surface as one of two parties (along with Blessington Sailing Club) taking a High Court challenge against Wicklow County Council over a recent decision to allow a track for pedestrians and cyclists be developed around Blessington Lakes. The publicity-shy millionaire private security boss Kingham certainly… Read more »

US SINGER, record producer and all-round internet phenomenon DJ Khaled is a rather well-known character, at least among the yoof. But his popularity clearly extends across the generations, which must explain why the 57-year-old Lucy Gaffney – chair of Denis O’Brien’s Communicorp radio station group and director of DOB’s mobile phone group Digicel – sidled… Read more »

WHAT an exciting, not to say dangerous, sequence of events Powerscourt PR boss Rory Godson endured last month in just 48 hours. On October 12, Godson hosted a private dinner for a group of PR and prospective business clients at the Cliff Townhouse, Stephen’s Green, where the PR executive presented the UK’s recently retired top… Read more »

LAST MONTH, Lynsey McGovern, independent councillor in the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown constituency, tweeted: “Great to see real progress made in healthcare.” It was in reply to a post from Leo Varadkar’s press unit concerning the new children’s paediatric outpatients centre at far off Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown. This marked the end of the phoney war… Read more »

A JUDGMENT mortgage has been registered against Slaneygio Ltd, a company controlled by some members of the wealthy Germaine family of Baltinglass, Co Wicklow. The plaintiff was a barrister, Elaine Morgan, who owns a property in Carlow town, adjacent to one demolished “speedily and unsafely” over a bank holiday weekend last year by Slaneygio. The… Read more »

DENIS O’BRIEN and INM chairman Leslie Buckley still await the Office of the Director of Corporate Enforcement (ODCE) inquiry into Robert Pitt’s complaint about that proposed Newstalk deal, but they will also be worried about the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland’s (BAI’s) inquiry into Communicorp’s blacking of Irish Times journalists. Will the BAI scrutinise the (non)… Read more »

THE BOARD of the Irish Refugee Council (IRC) is involved in a spat with the European Commission over alleged “illegible” expenditure of grant aid on a two-year European project. This comes at a time when the lobbying organisation is struggling to maintain its income, with its core benefactor, Atlantic Philanthropies, having now ended the handouts…. Read more »

AT LEAST the incoming Director of the National College of Art And Design, Sarah Glennie, won’t have to worry about the ridiculously overdue annual report for 2013-2014. The document has finally appeared on the website of the college. Glennie landed the €140,000 pa job at the start of the summer, although she will not be… Read more »

THE Military Police Corps were mobilised recently on a special mission to identify the source of insubordinate and seditious sentiments from the ranks of the Defence Forces. A recent post on Wikipedia explains to military buffs that the term Bravo Zulu (BZ) signifies congrats on successful actions or operations and is commonly used by US… Read more »

THE Spanish Tourism Office in Ireland, oblivious perhaps to the political significance of some of their own leading artists, advertised last week “a different trip around Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Madrid. This time your guide will be the painting and sculptures of Joan Miró … his works full of colour, imagination and surrealism …… Read more »

WITH exquisite irony, the Irish government is running scared of a request by northern Unionist Raymond McCord to support his legal challenge to the failure of the British government to implement a policy for holding a border poll. Dublin ministers have maintained a frozen silence in face of a report last August on how to… Read more »