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ARISE LAZARUS O’DONNELL

Date: January 12, 2023 -

THE PROMOTION of long-time Fine Gael backbench TD Kieran O’Donnell to the post of junior minister for local government and planning was described by the Irish Times as not widely anticipated. However, one source said it was for recognition of “many years of hard work”. That’s one way of putting it for a man whose… Read more »

BRENDAN GRIFFIN’S AMBITIONS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

FINE GAEL TD and former junior sports minister Brendan Griffin walked off the pitch in what looked like a sulk as he was offered a junior ministerial post that was apparently beneath him just before Christmas. Griffin in fact cited family reasons for refusing the offer but his Kerry colleague, Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae, taunted… Read more »

MARTIN’S PAYROLL VOTE CAPPED

Date: January 12, 2023 -

THE WEEKS leading up to the most uneventful ministerial reshuffle in memory saw repeated references to a possible expansion of junior ministers by two. In the event, no such ministerial additions were made. Why was this kite-flying exercise carried out and why was it rejected? The ostensible reason for the proposal was the need to… Read more »

‘IRISH TIMES’ CRITICS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

“SPECIAL CONSIDERATION shall be given to the reasonable representation of minority interests and divergent views,” according to the “principles of the Irish Times”. However, with political debate nowadays tainted by populists and extremists (ie those who disagree with the IT’s right-of-centre liberalism), the paper of reference cannot allow just anybody to sully its opinion columns… Read more »

MEDIAHUIS RETREAT

Date: January 12, 2023 -

EFFORTS BY Mediahuis, publishers of Independent titles and others north and south, to colonise the Sunday market in the north via the Sunday Independent have failed and the Belgians have fallen back to Dublin. This follows a previous and similarly unsuccessful effort to seize the northern Sunday market some years ago when the then neo-unionist… Read more »

RTÉ’S MILITARY ‘EXPERTS’

Date: January 12, 2023 -

TWO DAYS after Christmas RTÉ’s Morning Ireland interviewed the Atlantic Council’s Nicholas Blanford, an expert on the Middle East. Listeners were told that the council was a “US think-tank” and Nicholas Blanford spoke about the detention of an alleged suspect in the recent fatal shooting of Private Seán Rooney in Lebanon. The “US think-tank” is… Read more »

BRIGHT RED FLAGS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

GOLDHAWK WAS browsing the lobbying register during the Christmas break and was intrigued to see that a board member of Oxfam Ireland has been lobbying minister Eamon Ryan on behalf of a power-generation company. Deirdre Grant, a former special adviser to ministers Ruairí Quinn and Ged Nash, was seeking to “create better understanding of challenges… Read more »

NOTEWORTHY EMISSIONS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

AN INVESTIGATION by the excellent Noteworthy website has revealed that data centres’ on-site carbon emissions are 35 times higher than a decade ago. This is about to get much worse. Last year regulators finally imposed some restrictions on how much these vampires can suck from the electricity grid but data centres are circumventing this by… Read more »

DÉSIRÉE’S IN-TRAY

Date: January 12, 2023 -

THERE IS no sign of a plot twist at Screen Ireland (SI) when it comes to publishing its annual reports. Successive head honchos, including current chief executive Désirée Finnegan, have presided over a release schedule that they clearly believe is building suspense. At the time of writing, the most recent accounts available are for the… Read more »

CATHERINE MARTIN’S UNJUST TRANSITION

Date: January 12, 2023 -

WITH THE Arts Council planning to significantly expand its scale, maybe one of the new hires could keep an eye on the activities of Creative Ireland, the slush fund established within the arts department a few years ago. Shortly before Christmas, arts minister Catherine Martin and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan launched a €3m fund… Read more »

LIMERICK’S MYSTERIOUS CROWDS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

FORMER JUMP jockey Tom Rudd took over as the manager of Limerick racecourse late last year amid hopes that the track would see some continuity among the senior management after a turbulent few years. Former manager Patrick O’Callaghan vacated the role in autumn 2021 and was succeeded by Emma White, who had relocated from a… Read more »

AMO KEEPS OPTIONS OPEN

Date: January 12, 2023 -

ONE MAJOR flat owner who likes to keep his trainers guessing is Kia Joorabchian of Amo Racing. The football club investor and tech entrepreneur upped his spending again last year, including buying the Michael O’Callaghan-trained Crypto Force for £900,000 at the Goffs London sale during the summer, and now has upwards of 100 horses in… Read more »

COMERS’ CHRISTMAS PLAN

Date: January 12, 2023 -

EIGHT YEARS after the Comer brothers, Luke and Brian, acquired the Kilternan sports and leisure complex in south Co Dublin for €7m – 96% less than the €171m spent on the site by the late Hugh O’Regan – a planning application has been submitted to help regularise development that has taken place at the so-called… Read more »

AN ENEMY OF THE CROWN – DAVID BURKE, MERCIER

Date: January 12, 2023 -

DAVID BURKE’S An Enemy of the Crown provides essential reading on British disinformation and smears, bringing readers up to speed on what is sometimes referred to as the ‘seamier side’ of the conflict in the north. The term implies that sleaze was peripheral to the hostilities and mainstream political activities. In fact, it is central… Read more »

MOLTEN VENTURES INVESTMENTS EXPOSED TO THE DAYLIGHT

Date: January 12, 2023 -

IT IS far from obvious just what has gone wrong at Molten Ventures, the investment fund previously known as Draper Esprit. What is clear, however, is that on foot of certain fundraising exercises a number of the company’s investments are awfully less valuable than shareholders may have suspected. This has been bad news for the… Read more »

CAN FD TECHNOLOGIES DELIVER ITS SECOND ACT?

Date: January 12, 2023 -

NEWRY WOULD not be known to most people for its prominence in the high-finance technology sector, courtesy of Brian Colon, who developed what is the world’s biggest financial derivatives software house in his home town. From nothing, Conlon managed to grow a phenomenally successful business resulting in the first Newry ‘unicorn’, with his First Derivative… Read more »

JOHN MAGNIER’S BEDROOMS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

WHILE MONEYBAGS John Magnier has tended to be seen as something of a deity in south Co Tipperary, where he has been splashing the cash for decades, the locals in part of the county also have a particular soft spot for the Rock of Cashel. While the businessman has attracted plenty of praise for his… Read more »

WILL PRENDERGAST’S PREDICTIONS

Date: January 12, 2023 -

AFTER TWO years in situ as a director on Advisable.com, venture capitalist and member of the Society of Kauffman Fellows Will Prendergast has stepped down from the board. Having recently divined that the investment market is in a tricky spot at the moment, he may be taking time out to plan for the next chapter…. Read more »

RICK EARLEY’S LATEST SETBACK

Date: January 12, 2023 -

A LOW-PROFILE Co Longford company called Profill Ltd was wound up immediately before Christmas. Having started life as a mattress manufacturer in Tralee with a different name and under different ownership, Profill ended up going into liquidation having managed to build up millions of euro in losses. The main player here is Dún Laoghaire-based Rick… Read more »

DESMOND BOUNCES BACK

Date: January 12, 2023 -

ACCOUNTS HAVE just been filed by LN-Gaiety Holdings Ltd (LNGH), the joint venture between loaded concert promoter Denis Desmond and the Live Nation behemoth. It is clear that, post-pandemic, business is well and truly back on track. LNGH is owned by the London-headquartered Live Nation and Desmond’s Dublin-registered Gaiety Investments Unlimited, where the other director… Read more »

WINDHOIST HOISTED

Date: January 12, 2023 -

THE WEEK before Christmas, a business involved in providing services to wind farms – Windhoist Ireland Ltd (WIL) – was wound up by the High Court on foot of a petition from the directors, following the liquidation of its UK-registered parent company. It turns out that the collapse came as quite a shock to all… Read more »

NEW REGIME IN ROSSLARE

Date: January 12, 2023 -

DESPITE THE hectic social calendars of members of Rosslare Golf Club, they somehow found time to squeeze in an extraordinary general meeting on December 27 to install a new chairman. This last-minute action was required as a result of the unusual outcome of its annual general meeting a couple of weeks earlier, when the incumbent… Read more »

KISS AND TELL?

Date: December 15, 2022 -

THE MEDIA handling of that video showing incoming Taoiseach Leo Varadkar kissing a man in a nightclub combined a mixture of fear, ethical simplicity and conservatism. But in the end, forward-looking Mammon triumphed and the story was published, ironically, in two Sunday newspapers — the Sunday Independent and the Irish edition of the Sunday Times… Read more »

PROFILE: MALACHY STEENSON

Date: December 15, 2022 -

TO SOME, Malachy Steenson is a political buffoon who careers around Dublin’s north inner city posturing as a modern James Connolly and other republican icons while crashing and burning at various elections over the years. To others, he is the real deal – a self-educated, working-class hero who stands up for his community. Right now… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: JOHN CUMMINS

Date: December 15, 2022 -

WHILE MAJOR attention focuses on whether the establishment parties can fend off the Sinn Féin challenge, a more intriguing battle is that between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as to which will speak for that establishment. Opinion polls suggest it will be FG (which has a consistent lead over FF in the polls) but what… Read more »

BIO-BOYCOTT

Date: December 15, 2022 -

THOUGH YOU would struggle to find a mention of it anywhere across Ireland’s media, the most important international conference on nature and biodiversity this decade is currently taking place in Montreal. Known as COP15, this is a once-in-a-decade intergovernmental conference that will set out the key targets for protection of global biodiversity until 2030. Experts… Read more »

PLOT THICKENS AT LISTOWEL WRITERS’ WEEK

Date: December 15, 2022 -

GOLDHAWK HAS been struck by coverage of the Arts Council-inspired restructuring of the Listowel Writers’ Week (LWW) organisation, including the disbanding of the long-standing volunteer committee. Front and centre has been Fianna Fáil senator Ned O’Sullivan, who has appealed to the LWW board to “turn back from this disastrous course”. Presumably his wife, Madeleine, is… Read more »

LAURA WHITMORE’S MUFF MOVE

Date: December 15, 2022 -

AN IRISH lass who has been making waves in London in recent weeks is TV presenter Laura Whitmore. Having fronted the insanely popular Love Island for three seasons, she has called it a day over “conflicting projects”, with the red tops making it very clear that this was a “shock announcement”. Also surprisingly, it turns… Read more »

LINDA STINSON’S COMPETITION

Date: December 15, 2022 -

RTÉ HAS been keeping the red tops suitably topped up with the drip-feed of details about the array of ‘talent’ set to feature on the latest series of the Larry Bass-produced Dancing with the Stars (DWTS), which kicks off in the new year. One of the celebs set to feature large is the minted cosmetics… Read more »

A LOTTO MONEY

Date: December 15, 2022 -

IRELAND’S NATIONAL Lottery has been in the spotlight recently as a result of the introduction of legislation relating to gambling and on foot of significant criticism of the manner in which unclaimed prizes have been spent. What nobody has bothered to point out is that its Canadian, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board (OTPPB) owners… Read more »

ELLIOTT’S FRONT NINE ADVANTAGE

Date: December 15, 2022 -

THE IRISH national hunt season has provided entertainment over the last few weeks and viewers of RTÉ’s coverage of the sport every Sunday for several weeks in a row have had plenty to get their teeth into as Gordon Elliott loosens the reins. Fans have also voted with their feet, with decent attendances and vibrant… Read more »

ROCHE BELOW PAR

Date: December 15, 2022 -

THE AGM of Rosslare Golf Club last week proved rather eventful, with former senior newspaper man Michael Roche finding himself ousted as chairman. Roche was a no-nonsense exec at Independent News and Media and was sent Down Under to oversee the publishing end of the then Australian subsidiary, APN. When he returned, however, he found… Read more »

VOL 40 NO 24

Date: December 15, 2022 -

MCNALLY’S NAGS

Date: December 15, 2022 -

CONTROVERSIAL HORSE TRAINER Ronan McNally is planning heavy going for the stewards of the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) when his punishment is dished out in the new year. McNally has been hit with multiple findings by the Judge Brian McGovern-chaired referrals committee, dating back a number of years. These include running his horses in… Read more »

RENA MAYCOCK’S MANY HATS

Date: December 15, 2022 -

THE MULTI-TALENTED Rena Maycock was celebrating last week when she was informed that the state had become a major backer of her fledgling child-protection tech company. There is, however, still the small matter of securing a million or so spondoolicks from private investors. It also turns out that the dating site founder has now become… Read more »

NOT-SO-RICH FOOD

Date: December 15, 2022 -

ALTHOUGH IT was announced nearly three years ago that high-profile Michelin-starred restaurant L’Ecrivain in D2 was to close down for good, it was only this week that a creditors’ meeting was held for the company behind the famous dining establishment. It may come as a surprise to former clients that the business ended up in… Read more »