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TOO MANY TDs FOR MARTIN’S LIKING

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THERE IS a particular irony in the resentment felt by many Fianna Fáil backbench TDs at the new Dáil speaking-time arithmetic, which has resulted in Michael Lowry’s backbenchers getting a great deal more speaking time than them and Fine Gael backbenchers. But the incongruity here is not simply down to the preferential share out of… Read more »

PROFILE: CONOR MCGREGOR

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE GENERAL, European and local elections in 2024 show that the audience for McGregor’s brand of right-wing populism is limited. And even within this emerging, but still small, right-wing milieu, he does not enjoy unanimous support. McGregor will not secure a nomination for the presidency but will the endorsement of US President Donald Trump and his… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: JACK KEATING

Date: April 3, 2025 -

NEOPHYTE RADIO presenter and social media influencer Jack Keating wanted to do a communications course after leaving school but sadly didn’t get the points. Happily, the 25-year-old recently managed to bag himself a Saturday afternoon radio show on yoof station Spin 1038. Entry criteria for plum jobs is possibly different when you’re a so-called ‘nepo… Read more »

BOD’S BASELAYERS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THERE WERE plenty of column inches devoted to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CPPC) pinging Irish international rugby legend Brian O’Driscoll last month for straying offside with his online marketing posts. It turns out BOD actually owns a stake in the clothing company that he was found to have been promoting outside the rules…. Read more »

JOHN MAGNIER’S NEXT RACE?

Date: April 3, 2025 -

STRANGE BEHAVIOUR at last week’s annual general meeting of the beleaguered Irish Racehorse Trainers Association (IRTA), where there were more questions than answers. The shadow of John Magnier also loomed large. The IRTA has encountered some very heavy going in recent times, most notably that devastating Court of Appeal setback in a defamation case taken… Read more »

CAROLINE O’MAHONY’S MOOLAH

Date: April 3, 2025 -

ALTHOUGH FAB fitness influencer Caroline O’Mahony was no doubt unhappy at being outed by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) for failing to clearly identify which of her videos and posts had been paid for, it is likely that the publicity will further boost her already impressive numbers – online and in the bank…. Read more »

AMBASSADOR ROBBIE HENSHAW

Date: April 3, 2025 -

RUGBY INTERNATIONAL Robbie Henshaw, who had a relatively underwhelming outing during the Six Nations, was in top form last month when it came to promoting the Uniphar-owned Aya wellness and vitamin brand for which he earns a few bob as a so-called brand ambassador. He has featured heavily in the run-up to this weekend’s European… Read more »

TOM LYONS’S SUBPOENA

Date: April 3, 2025 -

WITH THE Web Summit run in the Four Goldmines coming to an early end, there was no need for Tom Lyons, chief executive of The Currency business media website to give evidence. After his co-founder and the website’s former editor, Ian Kehoe, had found himself dragged centre stage during the RTÉ Oireachtas committee grillings, it… Read more »

MICRO-MANAGING JAMES BROWNE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

HOUSING MINISTER James Browne provided Sinn Féin’s housing know-all, Eoin Ó Broin, with enough ammo to shoot him down no less than five times in the last week of March. Severe restrictions to schemes for tenants in situ; cuts to social and affordable housing; a rise in homeless figures; record house price inflation; and a… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 07

Date: April 3, 2025 -

PÁLÁS PLOT TWIST

Date: April 3, 2025 -

WHILE IT appeared that a final ‘cut’ had been called on Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe’s bijou Pálás cinema in Galway, the desire for a surprise ending remains, even if many believe this screenplay should never have got a green light. The latest unexpected script development is that a group has formed to resuscitate the… Read more »

AZURE’S AMAZONIAN BOSS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

A RECENT Irish Times lecture about the shamefully inadequate state of Ireland’s security strategy referred to the “independent security think tank”, the Azure Forum. Independent of whom? A list of Azure’s activities, personnel and MO indicates a company very much linked to the western defence industry and also to the new Irish establishment’s demand for… Read more »

TACKLING NEIL FRANCIS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

A RECEIVER has just been installed by one of the creditors of a company called KC Property Developments Ltd (KCP), where a 50% shareholder turns out to be rugby-player-turned-journalist-turned-businessman Neil Francis. The company has, however, now applied for an examiner to be appointed instead. Franno’s partner in KCP is Co Kildare engineer Chris Wholey, who… Read more »

ANNE-MARIE O’BRIEN’S FORM

Date: April 3, 2025 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p5) Goldhawk examines the runners and riders in the recent annual general meeting of the Irish Racehorse Trainers Association. While not a lot ended up being achieved at the meeting, one Anne-Marie O’Brien had already been nominated as the association’s nominee on the board of the state funding agency, Horse… Read more »

MURDERED HACK WAS DOUBLE AGENT

Date: April 3, 2025 -

GOLDHAWK HAS for long been aware that the Sunday Times has excellent sources within British intelligence but never suspected that MI6’s top asset at the paper in the 1970s was in fact an MI5/KGB double agent. That is the conclusion of two ST writers, who have just published Murder in Cairo about the assassination of… Read more »

BANG FOR OUR BUCKS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

Tánaiste Simon Harris recently speculated that Ireland’s military spending needed to expand rapidly and could soon reach €3bn annually. So it is worth looking at how much bang the Department of Defence (DoD) plans to get from our bucks. It is also worth considering whether this level of expenditure is likely to put a strain… Read more »

JERUSALEM FAR-RIGHT FURORE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

ISRAELI PRESIDENT Isaac Herzog often refers to his Irish connections but, since the start of the war on Gaza, he has been quite vocal in criticising Irish policies and attitudes in relation to the conflict. Herzog, however, has become embroiled in a rather embarrassing fiasco due to the attendance of a large number of far-right… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

Penta Group is at the forefront of using research and analytics to make a real impact, and I look forward to contributing to its innovative approach in helping global organisations navigate complexity with confidence. Leo Varadkar on his new employer, Penta’s website For almost two years it was also the Ground Zero for fear, the… Read more »

‘LIVING IN THE REAL WORLD’

Date: April 3, 2025 -

“A victory for common sense over ideological dogma,” was Fianna Fáil MEP Billy Kelleher’s response to An Bord Pleanála’s recent decision to grant permission to Shannon LNG to build a 600MW gas-burning power station in north Kerry. Kelleher’s comment was a victory for easy soundbite over reality. Opposition to new gas infrastructure is firmly rooted… Read more »

NATURE RESERVED

Date: April 3, 2025 -

Coillte, the state forestry agency, has long been under fire for its dire environmental record and its focus on industrial conifer plantations that are biodiversity deserts. However, one part of the organisation that was doing some good work was Coillte Nature, set up in 2019 for nature restoration projects. But last week we learned that… Read more »

NÍ GHÉILLFEAR!

Date: April 3, 2025 -

NEW GRAND CENTRAL station in Belfast, which opened last year, is the biggest transport hub on the island and cost a staggering £340m. To the great annoyance of Irish-language activists, the signage is in English only. The Sinn Féin minister at the Department for Infrastructure, John O’Dowd, said it “will be fixed”. But it had… Read more »

LEFT UNITY ÁRAS CANDIDATE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE BIG question for Mary Lou McDonald and the Sinn Féin leadership in their tight, internal debate about who to run in the presidential election in November is just what outstanding-personality candidates does the party have – outside of strong front-bench TDs that are required to mount another bid for government. Alternatively, there are few… Read more »

TWO FINGERS AGAIN FROM GOVERNMENT

Date: April 3, 2025 -

SINN FÉIN’S Gaeltacht and arts spokesperson, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, has discovered that the Government’s innovative approach to political democracy has spread beyond the Pale to the Gaeltacht. The Government and Gaeltacht minister Patrick O’Donovan are proposing that the re-introduction (after 15 years) of limited democracy to Údarás na Gaeltachta boards will see six out of… Read more »

OPPOSITION SPLIT ON SPEAKING RIGHTS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

UNITY IN the opposition ranks may still be intact on the issue of speaking rights for the schizophrenic group of TDs led by Michael ‘Fingers’ Lowry – modern Parnellites of inestimable parliamentary calibre – but an issue of priority in the speaking rights of Labour and the Social Democrats is bubbling away while the main… Read more »

SECOND-GUESSING IRELAND FIRST

Date: April 3, 2025 -

WITH FURIOUS ‘debate’ recently about voting rights and the like, the Electoral Commission will have been fazed to receive a complaint from Dr Caoimhín Ó Maolchalann, a fretful observer of the new right. Ó Maolchalann told the commission he is concerned as he believes that Ireland First (IF) is out of sync with its own… Read more »

ISRAELI SOLDIERS – THE REAL VICTIMS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

THE WAVE of antisemitic terror sweeping across Ireland, which the Irish Times and other media have been courageously exposing, has reached appalling levels in Dublin City University. There, a recently formed group, Students Supporting Israel (SSI), has received an “outpouring of vile online hatred, with over 2,000 comments filled with insults of the worst kind,… Read more »

EU WARRIORS ON THE RETREAT?

Date: April 3, 2025 -

HAVE DIVISIONS among the European shock troops limbering up to confront Putin’s Russia caused some to have second thoughts? This disappointing retreat from where Hitler, Napoleon and others had to turn around and scuttle home has begun to dawn on even the bloodthirsty Irish media in recent weeks. On St Patrick’s Day the Irish Times… Read more »

VICTIMISING MUSK

Date: April 3, 2025 -

Sir, I was disappointed to read your article in the Phoenix [March 21, 2025] titled “X marks the drop in standards” because I did not expect your magazine to take the side of de-platformers and Euro-censors. I cannot stand the smarmy Elon Musk, but to call X hateful or extremist, or a threat to Irish… Read more »

NIALL DOYLE’S NEXT GIG?

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AS GOLDHAWK revealed (see The Phoenix 7/3/25), Niall Doyle, the long-time head of music and opera at the Arts Council, is one of those who has decided to exit Merrion Square in recent times. That position has now been advertised by the council but what may be of more interest to Doyle will have been… Read more »

MORE ARTS COUNCIL CONSULTANTS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AS THE Arts Council prepares for an eventual outing before the Public Accounts Committee, it is business as usual on Merrion Square. A revamped website has been unveiled, which feels a bit like painting the Titanic as it drifts towards the iceberg, while a major survey of the council’s many hapless clients is now under… Read more »

SEAN DAVIS’S DOUBLE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

PART-TIME jockey and now trainer Sean Davis had waited more than two years to train his first winner but he landed a double last month with the well-punted pair, Venetian and Porsche Lad, both here and across the Irish Sea. Having been a significant eye-catcher when unplaced at Wolverhampton just two days prior to his… Read more »

POOR PATRICK MULLINS

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AMATEUR RIDER Patrick Mullins has had a few recent setbacks in his quest to ride a winner at every UK National Hunt course. The jockey looked set for certain victory on the Harry Derham-trained Kiwi Rush in Kelso’s Racing Post Go North Jodami Series Final Open NH Flat Race, only to be collared in the… Read more »

MARY CANNON’S JOINT

Date: April 3, 2025 -

AN IMPRESSIVE looking timber-clad pile on the salubrious Claremont Road in Howth has just gone on the market with a chunky €3m price tag. The house turns out to have been acquired back in 2004 by psychiatric heavy-hitters Mary Cannon and David Cotter and Goldhawk suspects the former did not tune in to watch Apple… Read more »

KIERAN WALSH’S STYLE

Date: April 3, 2025 -

LOADED COSMETICS entrepreneur Kieran Walsh was, er, made up recently when he landed a gong at the Cork Chamber of Commerce annual dinner, posting on Instagram that he was “over the moon” to win the “coveted award”. His post was immediately liked by assorted fans, including blogger/influencer/businesswoman Lisa Jordan who gushed: “You are outstanding in… Read more »

SILVANA’S ‘HANDBAG INVESTMENTS’

Date: April 3, 2025 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO Argentinian-Italian handbag queen Silvana Landa, who landed yet another big plug in the Business Post last month, just one year after she got to tell the same story to the readers. Silvana’s company, Landa Leather, has featured regularly in the Post’s fashion rag, Irish Tatler, and for example, a few months ago under… Read more »

PAUL COULSON ROLLS THE DICE AT ARDAGH

Date: April 3, 2025 -

LAST MONTH Paul Coulson was facing the possible collapse of the whole Ardagh Group glass and metal packaging outfit and he sought to put in place a capital restructuring as over $2bn in loan notes approached maturity. Unlike the situation that played out for Denis O’Brien when he found himself facing off against the bondholders… Read more »