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FOREIGN minister Charlie Flanagan was not best pleased to see Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan rip apart his softy-softly strategy on Ibrahim Halawa – held now for nearly 900 days in an Egyptian jail without trial – in an Irish Times spread recently. Boylan had assailed IT foreign affairs correspondent Ruadhán Mac Cormaic on Twitter,… Read more »

FINE GAEL and Enda Kenny’s’ target of three seats in the Taoiseach’s revised four-seat Mayo constituency will be even harder to achieve than their triumph in taking four seats out of the five available in 2011. And while it is almost inconceivable that a sitting Taoiseach would lose his seat, Kenny’s relative unpopularity locally has… Read more »

DOES environment minister Alan Kelly know what the Mahon Tribunal’s been up to since he nodded through, last February, its disposal of crucial documentary evidence that underscored its inquiries? If he ever gets around to enquiring, he’d better ensure he asks relevant questions if he wants frank answers. Last April, Susan Gilvarry, the tribunal’s solicitor,… Read more »

IT PROBABLY did not come as too much of a surprise to observers of the goings on in Dublin 8 that the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is among the five academic institutions that are considered by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) to be financially vulnerable. The hunt for a new chief is… Read more »

THE RETICENCE of Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan to issue a statement condemning the execution of 47 people by the King Salman bin Abdullaziz regime in Saudi Arabia at the start of this month, confirms the concerns expressed by human rights organisation Front Line Defenders (FLD) when publishing its annual report on January 6…. Read more »

THIS weekend’s Fianna Fáil ard fheis will resonate to thunderous attacks on the ‘right wing, uncaring, Thatcherite’ etc Fine Gael, as Micheál Martin finally defines his party as being left-of-centre in the FF tradition. The political ripples from this will affect virtually every other party and could lead to some surprises at the general election…. Read more »

THERE WAS at least one red face in Nama last month following the outcome of a High Court case concerning the developer, Garrett Kelleher, in which a Nama official named Peter Malbasha was found to have given “positively misleading” evidence. Malbasha is a poacher-turned-gamekeeper who was involved with a property development company during the boom,… Read more »

ATTORNEY GENERAL Máire Whelan made the interesting suggestion recently that the defamation laws should be reformed to allow more latitude to court reporters. Whelan floated the idea that no unwitting mistake in a court report should be actionable unless there was proof of malice, and that a simple “error” should not be punished by damages… Read more »

HOW can an ex-garda get himself involved in legal proceedings against a newspaper in Sark, a small island in the Channel Islands (population 600)? Former garda Denis O’Sullivan has just secured High Court leave to sue the Sark Newsletter and Sark Newspaper, for alleged libels against him published over the past year. According to Kevin… Read more »

THE four main political parties are lying through their teeth about their coalition options or non-options and the post-election scramble for power will prove it. But for sheer Machiavellian bluster Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin takes the prize. Fine Gael’s director of elections, Brian Hayes, came over like Conor McGregor this week, lacerating FF for being… Read more »

JUDGE CORMAC Dunne has had his fair share of scrapes, but the good news is that at least he doesn’t have to pay the legal costs associated with a High Court Judicial Review of one of his decisions. The case related to a fall-out between barrister and Joycean scholar Brendan Kilty and auctioneers, Campion Property…. Read more »

HOW IRONIC it was to see Mick O’Leary popping up at the annual Dublin Chamber of Commerce Christmas lunch last week claiming that Ryanair will be cutting fares in response to the plummeting oil price. This is the same man who has overseen a drastic oil hedging policy that is costing Ryanair hundreds of millions… Read more »

ARE Fine Gael and sport minister Paschal Donohoe having a laugh with the minister’s recent statement that he was handing over responsibility for submissions on the anti-drinks legislation to his junior, Michael Ring? Donohoe said his wife had once worked for Diageo and so Ring would instead take over consideration of the legislation. Reports are… Read more »

ALMOST FORTY years after the magazine first appeared, these are interesting times at Image Publications. There has been a complex restructuring of the shareholders at the magazine publishing house that has led to a major dilution in the stake held by long-time director Ann Reihill. In 2011, Dalkey-based moneybags Robert Power took over as the… Read more »

“CRAZY” and “frankly not sane” were among the words used by Alan Kelly in Paris last week in relation to Ireland’s beef sector in the context of climate change. Anyone unfamiliar with the surreal world in which our farming and agri-food lobby exerts an iron grip on the Government might assume that an environment minister… Read more »