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An Bord Pleanála

DAVID BARNIVILLE’S LIST

Date: November 15, 2023 - Brief CasesThe Hot Water Brigade

WITH THE deadline having now passed for applications for the €230,000-a-year job as chair of An Bord Pleanála (ABP), minister Darragh O’Brien will be anxious to get a permanent player installed. Certainly, the incoming head honcho – who will replace current interim chair, legal eagle Peter Mullan – will have plenty on his or her… Read more »

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Jessica Harrington Breeders’ Cup

EXPENSIVE TRIP FOR HARRINGTON

Date: November 15, 2023 - Sport of Kings

THERE WAS plenty of Irish interest at the Breeders’ Cup in Santa Anita, California, and while most of it centred around Aidan O’Brien and the impressive win of Auguste Rodin in the $4m Breeders’ Cup Turf race, there was also plenty of chat about a few horses that didn’t even make it to the starting… Read more »

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Willie Mullins Vauban

STREWTH!

Date: November 15, 2023 - Sport of Kings

THERE WERE some long faces in the parade ring from team Mullins after Vauban trailed home in 14th place in the Melbourne Cup under Ryan Moore. Confidence was high before the race that the horse would give Willie Mullins a first victory in the €5m race and everything seemed to go to plan in the… Read more »

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Ger Lyons Colin Keane

COLIN KEANE’S EDGE

Date: November 15, 2023 - Sport of Kings

THERE WEREN’T too many surprises among the names at the top of the tables in the leading flat categories as the season wound to a close in November. Colin Keane added a fifth champion jockey title to his CV and, given he has yet to turn 30, he could yet match or exceed Mick Kinane’s… Read more »

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Leo Varadkar General Election

ANNUAL 2023: GOVERNMENT – VARADKAR TO CALL EARLY ELECTION?

Date: November 15, 2023 - Last Refuge

THE POLITICAL debate right now – public and private – is not simply who will win the next general election but when it will be called and will that make a difference. Two scenarios exist, with the first of these frightening the life out of Fianna Fáil TDs as suspicion grew over the past year… Read more »

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Bono Book Award Gold trophy Award

ANNUAL 2023: GOLDHAWK’S AWARDS FOR THE PASSING PARADE 2023

Date: November 15, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

DEE FORBES THERE WAS only ever one real contender for the 2023 Where’s Wally TV Drama Award. The biggest hit show this summer was without doubt Montrose, which was streamed daily to a gobsmacked public (formerly known as licence fee payers) starring ‘top talent’ Ryan Tubridy and a host of RTÉ extras. The nation became… Read more »

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Mary Lou McDonald has said SF’s place is at the heart of the ‘European project’, which is in contrast to Gerry Adams’s previous opposition to the EU.

ANNUAL 2023: OPPOSITION – SINN FÉIN: LEFT OR RIGHT?

Date: November 15, 2023 - Last Refuge

Can the forward march of Sinn Féin be halted? Will the party be left like Peri at the gates of paradise gazing on the promised land but unable to get past the door? Or will it put together a coalition for change that will make… Read more »

Soc Dems leader Holly Cairns will be hoping her party can reap some benefit from disillusioned Labour voters. Polls

ANNUAL 2023: INDEPENDENTS/TROTS – NON-REPUBLICAN LEFT SQUEEZED

Date: November 15, 2023 - Last Refuge

READING HEADLINE coverage of political opinion polls, things could hardly be better for opposition parties and for the left in general. The conventional parties (Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael) are in retreat and the combined parties of the left have around 50% support. In the past, that’s been enough to assemble an overall majority. What… Read more »

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DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson made clear at his party conference in October that he wants to return to Stormont but the majority of the DUP’s eight MPs are opposed to that happening.

ANNUAL 2023: NORTHERN IRELAND – NORTH’S COMA

Date: November 15, 2023 - Northwind

The British government’s best effort at making political progress in the north was the Windsor Framework, which was agreed with the EU on February 27. In the words of the DUP’s Ian Paisley MP, it “did not cut the mustard”. The DUP has refused to join an executive at Stormont since collapsing it last year…. Read more »

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Michael D Higgins has faced accusations of over-stepping his role following comments he has made on a range of topics during his presidency.

ANNUAL 2023: PROFILE – MICHAEL D HIGGINS

Date: November 15, 2023 - Pillars of Society

In recent years supporters of the state of Israel in the US, UK, Germany and France have attempted to conflate criticism of its ruling ideology, Zionism, with anti-Semitism. They use anti-racism to justify a racist message. After Hamas launched its October 7 attack, Israel supporters… Read more »

Noirin Hegarty Newspaper

ANNUAL 2023: PRINT MEDIA NOT YET ON THE ROCKS

Date: November 15, 2023 - Fit to Print?

IRELAND’S PRINT media resembles the Titanic. With print revenues falling and digital income insufficient to make up the difference, disaster seems pre-programmed. But, while the Titanic’s collision with an iceberg came as a terrible surprise, the slow strangulation of the Irish newspaper and magazine industry has been under way for a long time. Every year,… Read more »

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When Ryan Tubridy finally acknowledged his part in the payments scandal that rocked the national broadcaster it was too late – the public, his colleagues and politicians had already lost faith and his career in RTÉ was over.

ANNUAL 2023 – AIRWAVES – 2023: RTÉ’S END GAME?

Date: November 15, 2023 - Air WavesBehind the Scenes

AFTER YEARS of dire warnings about incompetent management, waste and dubious work practices, the scandal surrounding secret payments to Ryan Tubridy finally laid bare the whole decaying edifice and the end of RTÉ, as we know it, is coming fast. In March Tubridy made the… Read more »

Mary McAleese again criticised the Church’s ‘out-dated internal structure of governance’ based on canon law’s ‘embedded inequality’.

ANNUAL 2023: CLERICAL ERRORS – McALEESE FIGHTS ON

Date: November 15, 2023 - Clerical Errors

THE MONTH-LONG Synod on Synodality convened in Rome by Pope Francis to update world Catholicism ended in anti-climax on Sunday October 29. This means that unresolved issues – such as same-sex unions and the ordination of the 600 million women who constitute half of Church membership – have been deferred until next autumn, when the… Read more »

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Gerry ‘the Monk’ Hutch walked free from the Special Criminal Court after being cleared of the murder of Kinahan gang member David Byrne in the Regency Hotel in 2016. Legal

ANNUAL 2023: WIGS ON THE GREEN

Date: November 15, 2023 - Wigs on the Green

THE THEME of the legal system this year was very much a religious one so the end of year round-up fits very nicely. For example, a monk was in court – and then he wasn’t. The legal system is really all about hierarchies, temporal or spiritual — someone is at the bottom and someone is… Read more »

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Norma Foley kept parents happy with the announcement of free school books for the first three years of secondary school but she was criticised by third-level institutions over Leaving Cert grade inflation. TUs

ANNUAL 2023: ACADEMIA – ACADEMIC ‘ARSE COVERING’

Date: November 15, 2023 - AcademiaStudent Life

It hasn’t been a great year for the university sector. The glitz began to come off the new technological universities (TUs), while a couple of the longer-established unis ran into heavy weather over governance issues. They also earned a rebuke from education minister Norma Foley over their generosity in issuing honours degrees. They had criticised… Read more »

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EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen has come under intense criticism for her remarks in support of Israel, comments that followed a similar vein to those of Tánaiste Micheál Martin. Foreign Affairs

ANNUAL 2023: FOREIGN FROLICS – IRISH FOREIGN POLICY REVERTS

Date: November 15, 2023 - Foreign Frolics

Foreign affairs have been dominated for most of the year, as they were last year, by the ongoing war in Ukraine. Now, however, the horrors of that war have been added to by the savage Israeli assault on Gaza, supposedly in retaliation for an astonishing assault by Hamas militants within Israel itself. The Israeli assault… Read more »

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Taylor Swift Award

ANNUAL 2023: BEHIND THE SCENES – BONO, BANSHEES AND BRENDAN BEHAN

Date: November 15, 2023 - Behind the Scenes

ONCE AGAIN, Bono, Larry Mullen Jr, Adam Clayton and The Edge were the subjemuch of the entertainment media’s focus in 2023, notably thanks to their effectively hyped Las Vegas stint, which has seen the boys in receipt of an award greater than any prize – oodles of cash. The band did have some competition for… Read more »

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Moya Doherty Property

ANNUAL 2023: HIGH SOCIETY – 2023: MONEY AND INFLUENCE

Date: November 15, 2023 - High Society

AS ALWAYS, the year features an awful lot of people spending an awful lot of money and, in many cases, a large chunk ended up in the coffers of the legal eagles as parties fell out for assorted reasons. When they weren’t slugging it out… Read more »

Colin Hunt Interest Rates

ANNUAL 2023: MONEYBAGS – WHO WILL OVERCOME THE INTEREST RATE AND GEOPOLITICAL CHALLENGES IN 2024?

Date: November 15, 2023 - Moneybags

AFTER A decade of unprecedented low interest rates, the market is not finding it easy to cope with the very hefty 5% increase in ECB base rates, from a minus 0.5% to the current positive 4.5%. Combined with inflated energy prices, which have not returned to pre-Ukraine war levels, and the disruption to supply lines,… Read more »

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Yamin ‘Mo’ Khan Share

ANNUAL 2023: MONEYBAGS – WINNERS AND LOSERS IN 2023

Date: November 15, 2023 - Moneybags

THESE ARE pretty uncertain times courtesy of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, inflation, and interest rates. Different sectors have dealt with the challenges in different ways but it is surprising that the top of both the winners and losers share tables were companies in the health sector. WINNERS TOPPING THE winners table for 2023… Read more »

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Brendan McDonagh NAMA

ANNUAL 2023: MONEYBAGS – NAMA AND THE HOUSING CRISIS

Date: November 15, 2023 - Moneybags

AS HOUSING continues to be the domestic political issue of the day, with the Government sweating that it will be the one that effectively decides the next election, it is time to take a serious look at the single most important player in the crisis, the National Assets Management Agency (Nama). Its fingerprints are all… Read more »

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Dylan McGrath Court

ANNUAL 2023: BRIEF CASES – 2023: A YEAR OF COURT CASES AND SOUR DISHES

Date: November 15, 2023 - Brief CasesThe Hot Water Brigade

IT’S BEEN a tough end to 2023 for Paddy Cosgrave, who for years has got away with spouting all sorts of nonsense online (dead nurses, anyone?) but had the dreadful misfortune of sending his Web Summit into a spiral over some rather banal truths about Israel’s campaign of brutalising the Palestinian people. But, of course,… Read more »

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Sean Clancy Livex

‘A EUROPEAN ARMY — GETTING CLOSE’

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

A DEAFENING silence from the media and its normally enthusiastic security correspondents surrounds the European Union’s first ever live military exercise – near Cadiz in southern Spain – that included the Irish Defence Forces. The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence, Micheál Martin, has had much to say about the conflict in Palestine… Read more »

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Terry Prone

PROFILE: TERRY PRONE

Date: November 2, 2023 - Pillars of Society

THE QUEEN of public relations in Ireland, Terry Prone, has just published a select compilation of events amounting to an autobiography entitled Caution to the Wind — A Memoir. Does this suggest that 74-year-old Terry is nearing retirement or even the winding down of her career, fuelled by a prodigious work rate, as a media… Read more »

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Conor McGuinness

YOUNG BLOOD: CONOR MCGUINNESS

Date: November 2, 2023 - The Young Bloods

WITH Sinn Féin continuing to ride high in the opinion polls, the party is now getting down to the serious business of preparing candidates and constituencies for a second TD (even three in some constituencies), with Dungarvan councillor Conor McGuinness high on its list of winnable seats in Waterford. SF TD David Cullinane, who is… Read more »

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Siofra O'Leary

SIGHTS SET ON STRASBOURG

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

THE FIRST ever female president of the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR), Síofra O’Leary, was the subject of a glowing profile in the Business Post last month, with the paper noting that she has “presided over some of the most historic cases of our time”. What is of rather more interest, at least to… Read more »

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Paul Williams

‘DISAPPEARED’ HACK

Date: November 2, 2023 - Fit to Print?

THERE WAS much revelry and mutual congratulation at Dublin’s Sugar Club to mark the 50th anniversary of the Sunday Worst in conjunction with Nicola Tallant’s Crime World event. “To celebrate we are looking back over some of the front page stories, scandals with the big… Read more »

Kaz and Sophie Balinski-Jundzill

COUNT KAZ AND THE REFUGEES

Date: November 2, 2023 - High Society

THE LOW-profile loaded Count Kazimierz ‘Kaz’ Balinski-Jundzill raised his head last week to challenge a plan by the state to house 950 Ukrainians on his Glendalough estate in Co Wicklow for 32 weeks, saying he will deny access to the lands, which he believes to… Read more »

Moore McDowell

MOORE McDOWELL’S ‘CONFLICT’

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

THERE WAS quite a setback last month in the High Court for private hospital entrepreneur Shay Sweeney in his (very) long-running case against health insurer VHI, which has been in train for the best part of a decade. One big factor in the delay was the proposed role in affairs of one Moore McDowell, brainy… Read more »

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Jimmy Savile

JIMMY SAVILE AND TED HEATH

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

Steve Coogan has earned plaudits for his unnerving portrayal of the late Jimmy Savile, the notorious BBC celebrity and child sex abuser. The late Ted Heath, the former UK prime minister (1970-74) who died in 2005, was another child sex predator. In 2017 after a… Read more »

Alan Dillon

ALAN DILLON KEEPS TABS ON TUBS

Date: November 2, 2023 - Last Refuge

THE NEW chairman of the Fine Gael parliamentary party, Alan Dillon, is also leas chathaoirleach of the joint committee on media and a member of the Dáil Public Accounts Committee. One expects, therefore, that he would keep well up to speed on financial developments in… Read more »

Eoghan Harris

EOGHAN HARRIS IS BACK

Date: November 2, 2023 - Last Refuge

DUBLIN UNIONISTS are called to a small room in Buswell’s Hotel on November 8 to discuss ‘Irish Protestant minority experiences’. There, northern unionists and Eoghan Harris, a faithful southern friend, will instruct them on how Protestants never had it so bad. Contributors to Protestant and Irish, the definitive book with a different opinion, have not… Read more »

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VOL 41 NO 22

Date: November 2, 2023 -

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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

NOT EMUSED

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

THE FINAL page has been turned on the story of the multimillion-euro collapse of Irish TV tech outfit Emuse. Liquidator Joseph Walsh has called the final creditors’ meeting for the company, which has featured some familiar faces down the years. Emuse was set up at the end of 1998 by former college lecturer Patrick Rainsford… Read more »

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Leo Varadkar Irish Foreign Policy

DEMOCRATIC WEST

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

A FAVOURITE argument of Leo Varadkar and Micheál Martin is that the Russians have a stranglehold over Irish foreign policy because they can block any motion on the UN Security Council with their power of veto. The triple requirement for sending Irish troops abroad is… Read more »

Peter Vandermeersch Mediahuis Newsbrands Ireland

MEDIA WAR ERUPTS

Date: November 2, 2023 - Affairs of the Nation

PHOENIX READERS will be familiar with the secession of Belgian multinational Mediahuis – the biggest media group in Ireland by far – from Newsbrands Ireland, the newspaper lobby group that for many years also organised an annual journalism awards contest. Mediahuis Ireland boss Peter Vandermeersch was mightily peed off at the “unfair” treatment meted out… Read more »

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