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CONROY GOLD SHAREHOLDERS FEEL THE PAIN

Date: September 5, 2024 -

IT MUST have come as a shock to Conroy Gold and Natural Resources shareholders that, after spending €5.65m drilling the Conroy Gold Irish properties in Cavan and Monaghan, Turkish mining group Demir Exports AS decided to pull out three months ago. It is not that the exploration programme executed under Demir was a complete failure… Read more »

LEGAL EAGLES FLY THE NEST

Date: September 5, 2024 -

LAST WEEKEND the Business Post property editor Tina-Marie O’Neill waxed lyrical about the impressive Argyle at Ballybride Manor in the Dublin mountains, which has just gone on the market with a €2.75m price tag. The “beautifully presented home with stunning garden that should tick all the right boxes for high-end buyers” turns out to be… Read more »

NELL MCCAFFERTY’S SHARE TIPS

Date: September 5, 2024 -

THERE WERE, unsurprisingly, many heartfelt tributes last month to the irrepressible Nell McCafferty, with contributors highlighting her significant impact on Irish society and the no-nonsense personality that won the Derry woman so many admirers. But Nell was not just a feminist firebrand, republican and social critic. Goldhawk was disappointed that some space was not given… Read more »

MARY ROBINSON’S MAKE-OVER

Date: August 22, 2024 -

WHO KNEW that Mary Robinson was so impressionable, as indicated in a recent all-holds barred Irish Independent interview with the former president as well as an Irish Times paean of praise that would make even Mary’s toes curl. It’s all part of the publicity campaign leading up to the release of the documentary, Mrs Robinson,… Read more »

PROFILE: MACDARA KELLEHER

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE NEWS that the 2002 Roy Keane/Mick McCarthy Saipan bloodbath is being brought to the big screen is set to bring some added attention to one of the more retiring of Ireland’s film and TV producers, Macdara Kelleher, who has been performing at the higher levels of the business for some years now and has… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: HAZEL DE NORTÚIN

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE RETIREMENT of People Before Profit TD Bríd Smith has posed an obvious question about whether her would-be successor, councillor Hazel de Nortúin, can hold the group’s Dáil seat in Dublin South Central. As with other left radical candidates, her fate is tied up with the rise or fall of Sinn Féin. In the 2020… Read more »

AIDAN CORLESS’S UNFORTUNATE TENANT

Date: August 22, 2024 -

AIDAN CORLESS is a busy man, juggling his roles as software company boss and charity chairman with overseeing a sprawling rental empire in Dublin (although he also has properties in London). Coincidentally, in recent weeks two of his concerns have ended up in front of the Workplace Relations Commission (WRC), for very different reasons. Of… Read more »

TARGETING JACK CHAMBERS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE SUITS in the Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (Digi), a lobby group for the alcohol sector, must have been delighted with the front-page story in the Irish Times this week, headlined: “Irish drinking rate falls to lowest level since 1987”. While they are busy lobbying the Government ahead of Budget 2025 to reduce excise… Read more »

‘COOL KID’ BRENDAN O’CONNOR

Date: August 22, 2024 -

RTÉ AND Sunday Independent front-page commentator Brendan O’Connor clearly felt the need to reinvent himself as a man with empathy when he moved over to his primary role of RTÉ broadcasting host following many years as the Sindo’s pitbull. But Brendan is surely pushing it if he thinks he can now come over as a… Read more »

FEMALE FINANCE PROBLEM FOR HARRIS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

TAOISEACH SIMON Harris has a serious political, financial and feminist problem on his hands with Cork City and County Fine Gael (FG) proving to be an almost female-candidate-free area as the general election nears. This statistic will send a chill down the collective spine of party financiers, as well as election organisers in other parts… Read more »

NEIL O’CONNELL’S WILD ROOTS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

WHILE ELECTRIC Picnic folded up its tents last weekend after another sell-out shindig, there was rather less to celebrate in the grounds of Hazelwood House farm in Co Sligo this year, where the debut Wild Roots “music, performing arts and adventure festival”, organised by Neil O’Connell, never got off the ground. Indeed, his company has… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 17

Date: August 22, 2024 -

BILL’S BIG HIT

Date: August 22, 2024 -

AN OLD friend of Goldhawk’s has just made quite a splash, courtesy of a whopping great judgment from those spoilsports in Nama. Like many property developers, Bill Kilmurray, with an address at 33 Upper Leeson St, D4, found himself in quite the pickle as a result of the crash and in 2015 Nama issued proceedings… Read more »

NOT SO TIDY

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE NEXT AGM of Dún Laoghaire’s Eblana Club is likely to experience a stormy session regarding unsavoury reports emanating from the club about its alleged refusal to allow refugees to be part of a planned social function on its premises. The local tidy towns committee recently planned a get-together at the club for its volunteer… Read more »

WORKING-CLASS HERO

Date: August 22, 2024 -

IRISH INDEPENDENT shock-jock columnist Ian O’Doherty is a fan of right-wing US libertarian politics. The born-again proletarian champion recently wrote how “the images from Belfast of working class loyalists joining up in a protest with working class nationalists were a sign of unity nobody could have predicted. What on earth could these two groups possibly… Read more »

SUE GRAY’S CONTROL

Date: August 22, 2024 -

PRIME MINISTER Kier Starmer’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, has for some time been accused by many in Britain as a powerful spook behind the scenes in government, especially when she worked north of the border. Now the most powerful woman in Britain has become a target for angry civil servants (former colleagues of Gray),… Read more »

MI5’S MISSING SCAPPATICCI FILES

Date: August 22, 2024 -

NO ONE familiar with the manner in which the UK has conducted inquiries into allegations of British dirty tricks over the last half century will be surprised that MI5 failed to furnish Operation Kenova with all of its Freddie Scappaticci files. Scappaticci was a British agent in the IRA and was responsible for a string… Read more »

VIRTUAL SOLDIERS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

DOES THE Government and defence minister Micheál Martin believe they have solved the recruitment crisis in the Defence Forces with pretend soldiers? RTÉ News recently ran a fluff piece on how the army is expanding its use of virtual reality (VR) simulators, with footage of a soldier driving an armoured car and the chief instructor… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

Hospitality is changing and we believe our strong work ethic is better applied to new and different opportunities. Celebrity chef Dylan McGrath explains why he has closed two of his restaurants, Instagram His Nixonian restlessness is perfect for the age. Gerard Howlin on Simon Harris, Irish Times She merely wafted across the kitchen in her… Read more »

PSEUDO SOLAR GIFTS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

It’s not unusual for an energy company to throw a lot of cash at a rural community when trying to build a big fossil fuel plant in their midst. It’s an old trick that often ends up sowing bitterness and division but a cunning new twist to this ploy has come to light in east… Read more »

WHAT A WIZZ!

Date: August 22, 2024 -

Last week Hungarian budget airline Wizz Air launched an ‘All you can fly’ annual ticket. “What’s not to love?” asked a BBC online article. Indeed. On RTÉ’s News At One, Rachel English began her interview with flying pundit Eoghan Corry by saying she could “already see the horror on the faces of environmentalists”. Corry ignored… Read more »

HOUSING WHITEWASH

Date: August 22, 2024 -

Presented as a background to the race riots in unionist districts of Belfast, there was a pretty obvious attempt in the Aawrish edition of the Sunday Times on August 11 to rewrite the history of housing in the north, including whitewashing the record of unionism and unionists. Columnist Newton Emerson claimed that the Cameron report,… Read more »

IRELAND’S MALI ADVENTURE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE TRUTH behind media reports of a Mali-Islamic motive for the knifing of Fr Murphy in Galway will have to wait for the trial of the teenager charged with the attack. But the reality of Irish military involvement in Mali is not known to many Irish people in any case due to the diplomatic gobbledygook… Read more »

DARYL BARRON’S COMMUNITY WORK

Date: August 22, 2024 -

COOLOCK SAYS NO campaigners appear to have split several ways following their alliance with British fascists and loyalist paramilitaries in Belfast, with various new names being used by those claiming the anti-immigrant ‘mantle’ in Coolock. These include the original Coolock Says No (CSN); Coolock Stronger Together and Coolock Concerned Parents, a throw back to a… Read more »

DEFENCE MINISTER DEFENCELESS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

THE NEWLY appointed junior minister for European affairs and defence, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill, has been putting herself about in the media since her assignment. This is partly down to her pique at being moved sideways rather than promoted – as she and indeed others see it – from her previous posting as junior finance minister…. Read more »

GARDA INTEL FEARS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

NATIONAL SECURITY fears were issued via the media and its supportive crime journalists late last year when the punitive pension tax bills facing those that might take the job of deputy commissioner deterred applications. Various arguments were used to support the potentially pauperised senior officers (tax bills of hundreds of thousands were talked of) but… Read more »

CATHERINE MARTIN’S ‘NUANCE’

Date: August 22, 2024 -

GOOD TO see arts minister Catherine Martin finally getting around to advertising the vacancies on the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). The procrastinating minister has managed to leave the seats unoccupied for more than a year. It will be recalled (see The Phoenix 22/9/23) that arts consultant Ali Curran was appointed… Read more »

PADDY LOU’S LOLLY

Date: August 22, 2024 -

EARLIER this month (see The Phoenix 9/8/24), when no 2024 quarterly funding decisions had appeared on the Screen Ireland (SI) website, a curious Goldhawk lobbed in a couple of queries that met with deafening silence. Subsequently, the film agency shouted ‘action’ and advised that “Q1 decisions were posted on our backend in early Q2, April… Read more »

BREEZE DOWNS?

Date: August 22, 2024 -

BRENDAN ‘BLARNEY’ Holland of Grove Stud – the newly elected chairman of the Breeze-Up Consignors Association (BUCA) – has spooked the horses over proposed new breeze-up sales at Goffs and Goresbridge in 2025. Having just been voted on to the saddle, Holland delivered a written mandate to Goresbridge and Goffs, which stated it had been… Read more »

‘AL RIFFA’S’ FRENCH ADVENTURE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

The Joseph O’Brien-trained Al Riffa was the subject of some bluster on X, courtesy of Kevin Blake, following the nag’s win at Hoppergarten in the Group 1 German Westminster 134th Grosser Preis von Berlin. Despite defeats at the Curragh, Deauville, Longchamp, Saratoga and Sandown since Al Riffa’s last victory nearly two years ago, Blake tweeted:… Read more »

DUKE DELIVERS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

POPULAR CURRAGH trainer Brendan Duke returned from the wilderness earlier this month to saddle the Liam Tougher-owned Ballysax Hank for a win in the bank holiday bumper at Cork. Ridden by top amateur Derek O’Connor, the former Katy Brown-trained five-year-old passed the post on the second anniversary of Duke’s last winner. In an emotional post-race… Read more »

REDDINGTON’S RIDE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

CONGRATULATIONS TO London-based construction magnate John Reddington, who hails from Bohola in Co Mayo. Last week, the minted part-time jockey returned west of the Shannon to give his racehorse, Love At Sea, a hell of a ride when he beat the Willie Mullins-trained Surfin USA by 20 lengths at Sligo. The punters at the scenic… Read more »

MAGNIER’S RACING ROYALTY

Date: August 22, 2024 -

FANS OF Goldhawk will know about the various private tours of horse racing establishments now being offered by top trainers and breeders, proving them with a welcome additional income stream (see The Phoenix 9/8/24). One option, however, stands out above all the others. Among those offering tours are trainers Jessica Harrington (€200 a head) and… Read more »

DISCOUNT SPECIAL IN FOXROCK

Date: August 22, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK SPIES that the sale of a Brighton Road pile called Tresillian House, sitting on an acre (and including a two-bedroom bungalow), has finally taken place, a full three years after it was put on the market with a remarkably optimistic looking price tag. At the time the Foxrock property went for sale, the Irish… Read more »

HAMMERSON DROPS €½BN ON ITS SALE OF VALUE RETAIL STAKE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

INVESTORS DON’T like surprises. The CEO since November 2020 of Hammerson plc, the largest retail property investor in this country, is Rita-Rose Gagné and she seemed a strange enough choice when she arrived mid-pandemic. Last month, very surprisingly, the CEO moved to sell off the group’s £1.1bn stake in Value Retail, which holds stakes in… Read more »

BANK OF IRELAND PROFITS FROM DUOPOLY BUT SHARES UNDERVALUED

Date: August 22, 2024 -

ALONG WITH seeking to ensure that the Irish banking system is a solid one, the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI) has a key role in facilitating a competitive banking system in this country. In this latter crucial role, the performance of the CBI has not been one that would land it anywhere the near the medals… Read more »