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AIDAN O’BRIEN’S HANDICAP

Date: June 1, 2023 -

THE DEATH of Galileo two years ago was a seismic day for the international bloodstock industry and it is now becoming apparent just what a pivotal role the former dominant stallion played in the success of Aidan O’Brien and the Coolmore/Ballydoyle axis over the past 15 years. This is especially relevant in the lead up… Read more »

JP’S ‘MYSTICAL POWER’

Date: June 1, 2023 -

JP McManus recently marked a milestone at his Martinstown Stud with the 31st birthday of his triple champion hurdle winner Istabraq. The former brilliant hurdler could easily pass for a horse half his age (thanks to the five-star treatment he and various other McManus winners receive when they retire there). It is not all about… Read more »

TIME FOR A STEWARDS’ INQUIRY?

Date: June 1, 2023 -

A FEW weekends ago there were some stewarding decisions that left punters wondering if the acting stewards were watching the same races as everyone else. It is far from the first time that the stewards appear to have been out of step. There was the much publicised Rachael Blackmore incident at Kilbeggan (see The Phoenix… Read more »

KIESWETTERS HAPPY TO STUMP UP

Date: June 1, 2023 -

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that horseracing is for those with deep pockets. The latest figures from the South African-owned Barnane Stud outside Templemore in Co Tipperary – run on the ground by Patrick Wynn Jones – reveal that accumulated losses topped €3.3m at the end of June last year, after the operation dropped… Read more »

EATHOS’S EXPANDING WAISTLINE

Date: June 1, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK SPIES from his perch that a third upmarket Eathos cafe has opened on the stretch from Lower Baggot Street to Upper Baggot Street. Clearly, this is a target-rich environment for moneybags Larry Murrin. Although the burgeoning chain is run by siblings Lisa and Peter Murrin, the moolah comes from daddy, who is best known… Read more »

RYANAIR BOOSTS PROFITS ON FOOT OF HIKED FARES

Date: June 1, 2023 -

MONEYBAGS HAS previously queried Mick O’Leary’s near obsession with growing Ryanair’s capacity for the sake of growing it, rather that seeking to optimise returns in the context of evolving demand and competition. He has now announced another major capacity expansion and, thus far, the market has reacted positively. But yet again the bottom line has… Read more »

SHAREHOLDERS WELL PLACED DESPITE FBD’S QUIRKS

Date: June 1, 2023 -

HAVING FAILED to pay out on business interruption insurance to assorted publicans shut down during the pandemic, the deadline is imminent for the release of the judge’s written ruling. Now three years on from the claims, mid-June has been pencilled in for the judgment on foot of the High Court test case successfully taken against… Read more »

TOM HIGGINS GETS READY TO BLAST OFF

Date: June 1, 2023 -

COULD MINTED Tom ‘Psychics Live’ Higgins be about to finally blast off for space, 18 years after he stumped up the equivalent of $¼m to Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic? Way back in 2005, Tom Higgins was one of 800 moneybags who splashed out for a ticket to be among the first ‘space tourists’ but, although… Read more »

MORE MILLIONS FOR MOVIES

Date: June 1, 2023 -

ARTS MINISTER Catherine Martin is currently seeking applications from “suitably qualified candidates” for two vacancies on the board of the state film funding agency, Screen Ireland (SI), created by the end of the terms of Marian Quinn and Kate McColgan. Those worried about the quality of many Irish films in recent years will be reassured… Read more »

FERGAL NAUGHTON’S SALES

Date: June 1, 2023 -

GLEN DIMPLEX heir Fergal Naughton and his missus, Rachael, are selling up their Georgian mansion in Howth, Drumleck House – with a cool €8.75m on the price tag. They have another deal to keep them occupied too. Earlier this month, celebrity ‘hospitality service experts’, Francis and John Brennan, put their Kenmare, Co Kerry, hotels –… Read more »

PIOTR SKOCZYLAS’S SOLICITORS

Date: June 1, 2023 -

MALTA-BASED Piotr Skoczylas, the man behind Scotchstone Capital, continues to battle on bravely in his decade-long campaign to secure compensation for the government’s nationalisation of Irish Life and Permanent, in which Scotchstone had a stake. It has been a long slog with many setbacks and the litigation has generated plenty of its own controversy –… Read more »

WHITE EUROPEANS

Date: May 30, 2023 -

At the Aviva Stadium last October, defence department secretary general Jacqui McCrum opened proceedings at ‘Building the ecosystem – identifying connections for collaboration in security, defence and dual technologies’. The gathering hoped to nurture the growth of an Irish arms industry by bringing together Irish industry and research institutions with leading figures from Ireland’s armed… Read more »

NORMAN’S WISDOM

Date: May 30, 2023 -

NORMAN CROWLEY’S fans in the Irish Times gave him another outing in the paper earlier this month, where the ‘energy efficient solutions’ motor mouth boasted about signing a “€50m electric trucks deal” no less. Maybe this is the deal that will make those long-promised profits finally easier to track. According to Stormin’ Norman, he has… Read more »

IN DEFENCE OF PADDY COSGRAVE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

IT WAS hardly surprising to see the ‘nwl’ Twitter account wading into the controversy over Paddy Cosgrave’s €1m in funding for The Ditch website, courtesy of a broadside against Fianna Fáil senator Malcolm Byrne, who had just lodged a complaint with the regulator. The anonymous Twitter account has long been parroting what both The Ditch… Read more »

PROFILE: ANNE HARRIS

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THE IRISH TIMES prides itself as leading debate on the big issues of the day and down the years has acted as the vanguard – for good or bad – on social issues, the peace process, EU matters, neutrality and so on. One of the most divisive such issue was, of course, the peace process,… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ANGELA SCANLON

Date: May 18, 2023 -

IT MAY once have sacked her from a high-profile gig but RTÉ has certainly shown faith in the gobby Angela Scanlon by giving her Saturday night chat show a third run. This faith may have been misplaced as, when Ask Me Anything debuted on April 15, it had an average audience of 250,000 viewers. By… Read more »

CONTENDERS CIRCLE VARADKAR

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THE FEAR of an unseemly power struggle being displayed in public is one reason for the paralysis in Fine Gael over increasingly poor poll figures since Leo Varadkar reassumed leadership of the nation last December. Another is that the reaction of coalition partner Fianna Fáil to any such change is unknown or, even worse, that… Read more »

WATT’S PUBLIC SPENDING CONTROLS

Date: May 18, 2023 -

While many politicians and commentators have been falling over themselves to characterise health department secretary general Robert Watt as “dismissive”, “cocky”, “combative” or  “arrogant”, civil service insiders have been perusing copies of the public spending code. This internal document sets out the protocols and procedures at the different thresholds that all ‘accounting officers’ – ie secretaries general,… Read more »

FAKE TAN AT NEWSTALK

Date: May 18, 2023 -

MUCH HAS been written about the Irish Times’s chatbot debacle and there are plenty of red faces on Tara Street this week. It turns out, however, that the IT is far from the only news organisation that got carried away. The Newstalk Breakfast team of Ciara Kelly and Shane Coleman was quick to jump on the… Read more »

RITA CROSBIE’S BATTLES

Date: May 18, 2023 -

GOOD NEWS for Rita Crosbie (Harry’s missus), with Dublin City Council having given the thumbs up for two retail kiosks on Grand Canal Square, despite significant local opposition from the likes of the Marker Hotel and the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre. The planning hurdle that was overcome was only the latest step in a process… Read more »

PADDY KEHOE’S ROUGH RIDE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

HORSERACING PUNTERS have been enjoying the incendiary online spat between one Paddy Kehoe, the owner of racehorse Princess Zoe, and her former trainer, Tony Mullins (brother of superstar Willie). Kehoe’s name may ring a bell with readers with long memories given his central role in a high-profile lottery coup three decades ago. Despite a long… Read more »

ÁINE MORIARTY’S ACADEMY REBOOT

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THE IRISH Film and Television Academy (Ifta) production directed by Áine Moriarty was back from the Zoom wilderness for an in-person event this month, hosted by Deirdre O’Kane, to mark the 20th anniversary of the annual bash. What people who were awarded Iftas in the years before 2003 make of this dateline is unclear, although… Read more »

CREATIVE DIFFERENCES

Date: May 18, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK WAS struck by the rather glossy-looking Beginnings, a book commissioned by the Art Council to mark 40 years of artists’ organisation Aosdána, where the current membership of the toscaireacht (the management committee) includes the likes of poet Theo Dorgan, painter Eamon Colman and composer Gráinne Mulvey. Beginnings is not a cheap production, with the… Read more »

CORKERY LEADS DATALEX INTO TURBULENCE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THIS IS not the first time that the accounts for airline software outfit Datalex have left Moneybags scratching his head. This time, the outturn is so bad that it borders on the inexplicable. Meanwhile, the company’s largest passenger, 40% shareholder Dermot Desmond, has started to really turn the screws and a possible plan by CEO… Read more »

CLEAN SWEEP – RTÉ ONE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

HAVING ENJOYED an unusual level of critical and audience appreciation for gangster series Kin, RTÉ is back on familiar territory with Clean Sweep. The plodding ‘thriller’ stars Peaky Blinders’ Charlene McKenna as housewife Shelly Mohan, whose past life as a killer is in danger of being uncovered by her Galway garda detective husband Jason (Barry… Read more »

VOL 41 NO 10

Date: May 18, 2023 -

LIGHT TOUCH GARDA RESPONSE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THE POLICY of light-touch policing that gardaí have used to deal with far-right protests and provocations in recent months was again evident last week. This is despite statements from Messrs Simon Harris and Drew Harris, justice minister and Garda commissioner respectively, who claim that the force has adequate resources to deal with those right-wing extremists… Read more »

FR MCMANUS’S PRESS RELEASE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

The Belfast Telegraph has excommunicated the Irish National Caucus (INC). Fr Sean McManus, founder of the INC – which lobbies the US Congress in Washington and which was responsible for creating the MacBride Principles — set out to perform a public service by circulating a press release last week to various newspapers around the globe…. Read more »

WILL THE NATO CAMPAIGN WORK?

Date: May 18, 2023 -

IF THE Born-Again-Redmondites (BARs) in Government fail to deliver Irish neutrality up to the dogs of war in Nato and Brussels, it will not be the fault of a willing media that has never asked serious questions about Government foreign and security policy. But the rush to arms in recent weeks, as the Consultative Forum… Read more »

MI6 SEEN BUT NOT HURD

Date: May 18, 2023 -

Sir Simon McDonald, the former boss of the British Foreign Office, has just released his memoirs, Leadership: Lessons from a Life in Diplomacy. Unfortunately, he has landed himself in hot water because he did not first submit it to Whitehall’s censors. UK readers may now advert their eyes: in the volume, McDonald exposes Tom Hurd… Read more »

GOOD ENERGY NEWS?

Date: May 18, 2023 -

It’s almost 20 years since Ireland’s first offshore windfarm came into operation. By today’s standards, the 2004 Arklow Bank windpark is a tiddler, generating just 25MW of electricity, but then it was among the world’s biggest. It was supposed to be part of a much larger array; in 2002, Airtricity had secured an offshore lease… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: May 18, 2023 -

If a good newspaper is a nation talking to itself, the Opinion section is where much of that talking happens. Irish Times editor Ruadhán Mac Cormaic in his apology about the AI article controversy Leo likes media outings. When I served in his government, we… Read more »

FRONTEX TOOLS UP FOR ACTION

Date: May 18, 2023 -

Recently the 2023 budget of Frontex, the European border and coast guard agency, was released and lay bare the hundreds of millions of euros to be spent not only on border surveillance but also to fund contracts for deportation flights this year. Ireland’s involvement with Frontex has been deepening so, while our financial contribution is… Read more »

STORMONT TO RETURN?

Date: May 18, 2023 -

VOTERS IN the north elect 462 councillors to 11 councils this week. There are 807 hopefuls, the vast majority from the main orange and green parties. Independents don’t do well in the north, which accounts for the small number of candidates to choose from. Councils’ powers are very limited: emptying the bins, burying the dead,… Read more »

LEO SWINGING TO THE LEFT?

Date: May 18, 2023 -

Fine Gael’s staunch defence of the publicly owned Irish rail system against the EU’s Railway Directive continues to raise eyebrows in many quarters. For a party ideologically dedicated to market competition and the invisible hand of the market, the Government’s decision to continually derogate the demand to privatise public rail transport might be mystifying. The… Read more »

SINN FÉIN ‘UNITY’ IN CORK EAST

Date: May 18, 2023 -

THE CORK EAST constituency was the scene of one of the triggers that provoked a rash of stories about ‘bullying’ by sensitive Sinn Féin members who found themselves competing with the new, career-minded culture in the party. A casualty of this process was ex-SF councillor Melissa O’Brien, who was accused of being beastly to sitting… Read more »