Affairs, 14 June 2019

THE ANNUAL Dalkey Book Festival gets under way this weekend with its founder, the one and only David McWilliams, sharing the spotlight with the likes of Stephen Fry and David Puttnam. Hopefully, the floppy-haired economist will not be distracted by the growing shadow of floundering rock star fund manager and one-time idol of McWilliams, Neil… Read more »

Affairs, 13 June 2019

NOT SURPRISINGLY, there has been increased media focus on all politicians’ compensation claims since the Maria Bailey affair. This should ensure there is a healthy public appetite for a High Court case being taken by newly elected Fianna Fáil councillor and barrister Deirdre Conroy. The FFer had a fall on a press junket to a… Read more »

Affairs, 13 June 2019

MEDIA COMMENT on the dangers facing Mary Lou McDonald’s leadership of Sinn Féin after the recent elections was predictable. However, and unusually, the political correspondents – normally so utterly uninformed about SF politics – have actually underestimated just how embattled McDonald’s leadership is. There is war inside the party and, while Mary Lou is not… Read more »

Affairs, 13 June 2019

Saoirse McHugh, the 28-year-old genetic scientist from Achill Island, stormed into public consciousness with an impressive display in the Midlands North West constituency European election debate. And the possibility of a Dáil seat for the Greens in inhospitable Mayo is now being seriously canvassed. In the television debate, McHugh took on the perceived racism of… Read more »

Affairs, 13 June 2019

WHILE MARY Robinson took significant flak earlier this year for her intervention in a feudal Emirate royal family row, another former Irish president, Mary McAleese, has developed ties to the region courtesy of her involvement in the Bussola Institute. This Brussels-based think tank and lobbying operation was set up to promote ties between the EU… Read more »

Affairs, 12 June 2019

FANS OF Goldhawk will not be surprised that John Leahy has stepped down as leader of Renua. It was a case of another election and another flop for the party as it failed to pick up any new seats with all but one of its 27 candidates seeing an early exit. In Birr, Leahy retained… Read more »

Affairs, 12 June 2019

MARY LOU MCDONALD had no forewarning of Sinn Féin’s electoral catastrophe in the opinion polls. Red C had SF consistently around the 13%-14% mark, while other polls put them closer to 20%. In the event, the party scored less than 10% in the locals and not much over 10% in the Europeans. There are some… Read more »

Affairs, 12 June 2019

WHAT A deafening silence there has been from foreign minister Simon Coveney on the Middle East “deal of the century”, produced by Donald Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner. The tánaiste, normally so voluble on the subject, has remained mute on the plan, despite referring in the Dáil last November to his “good relationship” with… Read more »

Affairs, 11 June 2019

PASSPORTS at the ready for young Arthur O’Mahony who is jetting off to the West Bank where he will “experience at first hand the effects of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement”. A propaganda trip arranged courtesy of Goldhawk’s old pals at the Ireland Israel Alliance. O’Mahony is ‘National Secretary and Director of Campaigns’ for… Read more »

Affairs, 11 June 2019

IT WAS a close-run thing in the end for Fine Gael EU candidate Maria Walsh in Midlands North West and her gung-ho military-style soundbytes certainly boosted her campaign. But despite her “Steyr rifle in one hand and Rose of Tralee sash in the other” quote and her demand for further EU integration of the Defence… Read more »

Affairs, 11 June 2019

LAST MONTH, minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, published long awaited draft regulations on short term lettings and Airbnb have been extremely busy lobbying Government in its efforts to fend of any threat. While representations had, in the main, been handled by the company itself until recently (see here), the company has now drafted in the… Read more »

Affairs, 11 June 2019

MINISTER OF STATE for Defence, Paul Kehoe, has brushed off concerns about the Royal Navy training in Irish waters. Fingal TD, Clare Daly (now an MEP), was alarmed to find three British vessels off the coast of her constituency back in April and put a number of questions to Government asking who authorised the incursion… Read more »

Affairs, 10 June 2019

REACTION to the news that uniformed members of An Garda Siochana will take part in this year’s Dublin Pride has been mixed. The issue of police participation is contentious globally as parades increasingly embrace corporate sponsorship and stray from protests roots. The matter has particular significance in Ireland where marching began in reaction to the… Read more »

Affairs, 10 June 2019

The underwhelming response to the selection of Simon Byrne as the PSNI’s new chief constable shows that the media missed two bigger stories in relation to the appointment. Firstly, as an Englishman and former head of Cheshire Police, Byrne is one of the few outsiders to become PSNI supremo. So, despite the caterwauling about her… Read more »

Affairs, 10 June 2019

AS PREDICTED, if Alliance leader Naomi Long got ahead of SDLP leader Colum Eastwood and/or the UUP’s Danny Kennedy, she would be elected MEP. Secondly, the election in the north would be about Brexit. So it turned out, but in much more spectacular fashion than anyone imagined. Long polled 105,928 first-preference votes, 18.5% of the… Read more »

Affairs, 7 June 2019

NOW FOR the real election. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil (along with desperate pleas from Labour leader Brendan Howlin) posit the prospects of either big party cobbling together a government majority along with Labour, Greens, Social Democrats and Independents. But a glance at the likely arithmetic of the next Dáil shows that such a… Read more »

Affairs, 7 June 2019

THE CAMPAIGN to sanitise the reputation of British Army undercover operative Captain Robert Nairac, shot dead and disappeared by the IRA in 1975, continues. The Irish Times recently reported assurances from the head of the commission for recovery of ‘disappeared’ Troubles victims, Geoff Knupfer, that Nairac had not been involved in a catalogue of collusion… Read more »

Affairs, 7 June 2019

As Blueshirt MEP Seán Kelly returns to Brussels for a third term, he might want to reconsider his zealous support for Shannon LNG, the enormous gas import terminal in north Kerry that would turn Ireland into a pipeline for US fracked gas into Europe (see The Phoenix, 21/09/18). This fossil fuel behemoth is looking evermore… Read more »

Affairs, 7 June 2019

YOU CAN see why An Garda Síochána and the justice department want rid of the Policing Authority – chaired by the formidable Josephine Feehily – which is to be subsumed (handcuffed) into a new Policing and Community Safety Oversight Commission (PCSOC). Justice minister Charlie Flanagan gave an unqualified endorsement to the Commission on the Future… Read more »

Affairs, 7 June 2019

LIKE A promising football team that falls short of winning promotion to the top flight, the Sunday Business Post is having its starting line-up picked apart by its deep-pocketed rivals. The latest star player to be poached from Merrion Road is political correspondent Hugh O’Connell (31), who will join the Irish Independent next month under… Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

THE DONALD is due to land back at Shannon Airport this afternoon as he bookends his European tour in the west, but he’s far from the first yank to use the midlands airport as a stopover. 750,000 foreign troops, mostly from the US, have either passed through Irish airports or Irish airspace over the last… Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

DESPITE the efforts of the Trump regime, the international consensus on stepping up action to tackle climate change remains largely intact. In some areas, the pace of change is surprisingly quick. France has announced a complete ban on all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040. Car manufacturer Volvo will only produce electrics or hybrids from… Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

FINE GAEL senator Catherine Noone has defended her appearance at a security meeting in Coolock after claims that it was, according to the Indo, a “shameful publicity stunt.” The area has been plagued by a series of gangland murders in recent weeks. The senator is on the Blueshirt ticket for the next election as Richard… Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

AT 1km long, Donald Trump’s Irish wall doesn’t enjoy quite as much global infamy as his Mexican wall. However, Clare County Council’s decision on December 21, 2017 to grant permission to the Trump Doonbeg golf resort to build a 38,000-tonne wall to keep out the raging sea did provoke a storm of outrage from environmentalists…. Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

There was much to cringe over Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s lame attempt to curry favour with US president Donald Trump during his 2018 Paddy’s Day visit to Washington by bragging about having personally lobbied to have planning permission for a windfarm near Doonbeg in Co Clare blocked. That Varadkar had to finally admit he was in… Read more »

Affairs, 6 June 2019

FIANNA FÁIL’S local election results in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown will have given Micheál Martin much to consider as it has put a question mark over two strong female candidates at the general election for Dún Laoghaire and Dublin Rathdown. Cllr Shay Brennan may have put down a marker, perhaps temporarily, against the intended parachuting of ex-Fianna… Read more »

Affairs, 5 June 2019

IF RHETORIC could reduce emissions, Ireland would by now be a world leader rather than laggard. The ‘green wave’ hype of recent days meant that politicians used to tagging on platitudes about ‘the environment’ at the end of interviews have found themselves under sustained attack from a media, which has, suddenly and in unison, found… Read more »

Affairs, 5 June 2019

WITH THE summer cycle of superstar rock gigs and music festivals set to kick off next month, MCD will be the biggest act by some way. Fronted by Denis Desmond – who controls the Irish concert promotion juggernaut along with his estranged wife Caroline Downey Desmond – MCD will dominate the sector as always. However,… Read more »

Affairs, 4 June 2019

SINN FEIN are still reeling from the elimination of Lynn Boylan in the Dublin Euro constituency, but there is still hope of sitting MEP and former presidential hopeful, Liadh Ní Riada, nabbing a seat in Ireland South. A full recount in the constituency was called by the party when it looked like the former presidential… Read more »

Affairs, 4 June 2019

SEAMUS MALLON’S “parallel consent” proposal for a United Ireland – aka a new, super-unionist veto – is the political love child of his fraught relationship with St John Hume. As Squire Hockey, Sir Garret Fitzgerald and all the Anglo-Irish players since the 1980s knew, Mallon’s malevolence towards Hume was what always informed his political choices…. Read more »

Affairs, 31 May 2019

OOZING sympathy for his ex-parliamentary colleague, TD Maria Bailey, former justice minister Alan Shatter criticised the ‘public stoning’ of poor Maria whose Dun Laoghaire constituency adjoins Shatter’s constituency of Dublin Rathdown — before he lost his seat, that is. But another, more closely situated TD received the equivalent of 50 lashes from the spikey Shatter… Read more »

Affairs, 31 May 2019

HOW INTERESTING to see Labour Party leader Brendan Howlin sitting down for a chat with Jeremy Corbyn when he was in Dublin during the week. Howlin was enthused to hear that Labour will block any no-deal Brexit, however, Corbyn has found little solidarity from his Irish comrades over the years. Like much of their Blairite… Read more »

Affairs, 31 May 2019

DÚN LAOGHAIRE TD Maria Bailey and Fine Gael have pretty much talked themselves into inevitable suspension of the Dáil deputy, which will lead to a dilemma if the general election is held in the next few months. The next meeting of the Fine Gael executive council will most likely set up a sub-committee to inquire… Read more »

Affairs, 31 May 2019

WILL THE green wave translate into more Green TDs? And if Eamon Ryan leads the party into another coalition with a right-wing party, can that bring about the ‘system change’ demanded by the radical movement that set this wave in motion? A cautionary little detail is that, despite the initial hype, the Greens actually polled… Read more »

Affairs, 30 May 2019

IT WAS a very close shave for Mannix Flynn in Dublin who retained his seat by just 8 votes. Tensions during a recount with People Before Profit’s Annette Mooney even had the councillor likening the party to “ISIS”. This election was so far his worst as Flynn saw his vote drop by around 300 on… Read more »