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BIG PHIL’S LAMENT

Date: January 23, 2025 -

THE MOST original – contrarian even – critique of Michael Lowry’s central role in the creation of the new government came in the Sunday Independent from Mediahuis Ireland editor Fionnán Sheahan, whose article on the controversy positively dripped with sarcasm. Fionnán wrote an analysis of the first opinion poll of 2025, which covers all the… Read more »

TIMES SUBVERSIVES?

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HAS THE Irish Times editor’s office been infiltrated by those Sinn Féin subversives? Last week the comparison was uncanny between the newspaper’s editorial outpourings on the new programme for government and the more predictable onslaught from SF senior front-bench figures. On January 15 the opening paragraph of SF health spokesperson Dave Cullinane’s statement said the… Read more »

FOREIGN SPIES IN IRELAND

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ANOTHER CORKER from Sunday Times security correspondent John Mooney recently told of the “United Front Work Department (UFWD), a shadowy Chinese agency” that has “cultivated connections across Ireland”. UFWD activities, the story went, include the recruitment of people doing sensitive research, spying and intimidation of dissidents. This information has come to MI5’s favourite Irish newspaper… Read more »

NIALL GUNNE’S BUS CORRIDOR

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ONE OF the juicier-looking properties to arrive on the market is a large house on Rathgar’s leafy Highfield Road, which got a glowing review in the Business Post at the weekend. The seller here is looking for no less than €3.95m and he turns out to be a chap who knows a thing or two… Read more »

ARCHIVES COUNCIL IN STORAGE

Date: January 23, 2025 -

JUST OVER a year on from a leak, which started on the top floor of the National Archives premises on Bishop Street in D8, a number of changes have been introduced by director Orlaith McBride et al. Obviously, however, the National Archives Advisory Council (NAAC) had no input whatsoever. While the leak could have proved… Read more »

GATHERING FEEDBACK

Date: January 23, 2025 -

LAST MONTH Jessica Drum’s Screen Guilds of Ireland (SGI) – an association of technicians’ guilds in film and TV – announced it would be “gathering feedback” from personnel in all film and TV production departments, with an online survey launched two weeks ago. The SGI is chaired by former Anglo Irish banker Peter Fitzgerald, who… Read more »

HUSBANDS’ CUSTOMERS

Date: January 23, 2025 -

LEOPARDSTOWN BOSS Tim Husbands and his team have decided it’s time to “improve customer experience” by making the 2025 Dublin Racing Festival (DRF) a pre-booked, ticket-only event. Certainly, the track could do with a good result next month. The thinking behind the Leopardstown move is that the executive can anticipate the volume of attendance and,… Read more »

LONDONOFFICECALLIN FLIES HIGH

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HIGH-FLYING racehorse Londonofficecallin – a 23-times-raced maiden when leaving Evanna McCutcheon’s yard – won his seventh race from a dozen starts at Punchestown’s opening meeting of 2025 for his new owners, the In Bounds Syndicate. Winning for the second time in three starts for trainer Gavin Cromwell, the grey gelding had been successful five times… Read more »

HAYES BACK ON TRACK

Date: January 23, 2025 -

FOLLOWING HIS 15-month suspension for failing to take proper care of a horse, Patrick Joseph Hayes has trained his first winner since being re-issued with a training licence by the Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB). Hayes’s licence had been suspended by the regulatory body following his conviction in Naas Circuit Court for animal neglect after… Read more »

UNDERVALUED TULLOW OIL NEEDS NEW ENERGY

Date: January 23, 2025 -

The International Chamber of Commerce announced on January 2 that Tullow Oil is not liable to pay the $320m branch profit remittance tax (BPRT), which the Ghanaian government was seeking to levy, on the grounds that BPRT falls outside the tax regime provided for in the petroleum agreements. This is obviously good news for Tullow… Read more »

BOTSWANA DIAMONDS FAILING TO SPARKLE

Date: January 23, 2025 -

There are three main areas for diamonds in the world – southern Africa, Canada and the Karelian Craton in Finland and Northern Russia – and Irish-connected companies have a presence in all three. The largest of these is the Dermot Desmond-linked Mountain Province Diamonds in the northern territories in Canada. The second is Karelian Diamonds,… Read more »

VISUAL’S QUARE OLD LOSSES

Date: January 23, 2025 -

HAVING JUST celebrated 15 years in operation, the well-funded Visual arts centre in Carlow – the largest visual arts space in the country – has started off 2025 with a pretty minimal offering to tempt in the arty-farty brigade, but presumably the coffers did get a boost before Christmas from Freezin’ – The Quare Cold… Read more »

DAVID STONE’S POP FLOP

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ANOTHER SETBACK for hapless businessman David Stone, whose efforts to rescue one of his many companies has just fallen flat. For many, it is not Stone’s eclectic mix of investments that would be recognised but rather the headlines he made in 2023 as a result of his conviction for allowing the euthanasia drug pentobarbital to… Read more »

KOREAN POWER PLAY

Date: January 23, 2025 -

A JUDGMENT for a whopping €3m has just been registered by a South Korean energy giant against an Irish-registered company called Instant Upright Ltd (IUL), which was actually incorporated by the Stowe family in the sunny Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean. No doubt Donegal property developer Pat Doherty is keeping one eye on… Read more »

WINDMILL LANE’S FADE-OUT

Date: January 23, 2025 -

ON FRIDAY there will be a creditors’ meeting held for Windmill Lane Pictures Ltd (WLP) – the audiovisual post-production business established under James Morris’s leadership – at which Nicholas O’Dwyer and Paul Walsh of Grant Thornton are to be appointed as joint liquidators. The collapse has sent shockwaves through the sector given the company’s high… Read more »

BONO BENDS TO BIDEN

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BONO’S FAWNING behaviour towards US presidents and other powerful western leaders while simultaneously crying peace and freedom have become too much even for many U2 fans. But his latest blessing – Joe Biden’s award of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom – as well as his cloying response of gratitude to the US president is… Read more »

PROFILE: OLIVER SEARS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

DESPITE IRISH people’s revulsion at Israel’s continued slaughter of Palestinian children and other civilians in Gaza, the ‘paper of reference’, the Irish Times, has given a repeated platform to the Zionist rhetoric of art gallery owner Oliver Sears. London-born Sears claims that Ireland is suffused with antisemitism, the standard argument or diversionary insult of apologists… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ALBERT DOLAN

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IS THE success of 26-year-old Albert Dolan in taking Fianna Fáil’s seat in Galway East – displacing incumbent Anne Rabbitte in the process – a harbinger of a new attractiveness of the party to the younger generation? While FF is preening itself after coming top in last November’s general election, opinion polls remain consistent in… Read more »

WUFF JUSTICE

Date: January 9, 2025 -

WITH HEATHER Humphreys’ regulations banning the breeding and resale of XL bully dogs coming into force next month, it is not surprising that the ongoing rearguard action by animal charities has picked up pace. Their case has, however, not been helped by a shocking incident at the ISPCA’s National Animal Centre in Longford. Shortly before… Read more »

NOT SO MAGNIFICENT €7M PROJECT

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THERE IS no sign of the Arts Council’s 2023 annual report, which was supposed to have been laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas by arts minister Catherine Martin months ago. It remains unclear exactly what is the cause of the delay but Goldhawk understands it relates to a multimillion-euro write-down of assets that has… Read more »

DEIRDRE VELDON’S FUNERAL NOTICES

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THERE HAS, not surprisingly, been a fair deal of whingeing about the impact of the takeover of RIP.ie by the Irish Times, on foot of the hefty €100 charge for funeral notices that kicked in this month. IT managing director Deirdre Veldon may have been as surprised as anyone else by the move. Certainly, the… Read more »

BIG BUDGET PÁLÁS FLOP

Date: January 9, 2025 -

THE LATEST plot twist in the tortuous tale of Galway’s Pálás arthouse cinema (controlled offshore since 2020) is the decision of Ed Guiney and Andrew Lowe to call ‘cut’ on the business at the end of next month, claiming it is haemorrhaging money at the rate of €¼m a year. It appears to be a… Read more »

NORMA FOLEY’S POOR HOMEWORK

Date: January 9, 2025 -

EDUCATION MINISTER Norma Foley is expecting to either retain her current role or be moved sideways in Cabinet and with party leader Micheál Martin likely to have eight Cabinet places, an increase of two, the Tralee woman will surely not be axed. But that’s not necessarily the view of all Fianna Fáil decision makers, especially… Read more »

SIMONE’S ‘SUBVERSIVE WORLD’

Date: January 9, 2025 -

FASHION DESIGNER du jour Simone Rocha will be hard-pressed to top her performance in 2024, which started with her outfits on show at Jean Paul Gaultier’s haut couture show in Paris back in January and ended with a major gong at the British Fashion Awards and a high-profile boost for the brand courtesy of one… Read more »

VOL 43 NO 01

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BERNARD MCNAMARA’S CREDITORS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

BOOM-TIME BUILDER extraordinaire Bernard McNamara has slowly but surely been building back up his business despite the odd setback. Now a couple of his firms are set to be liquidated. McNamara was one of the biggest casualties of the property crash, having been hugely backed by Anglo Irish Bank, with well over €½bn still outstanding… Read more »

NIGEL FARAGE’S IRISH ALLY

Date: January 9, 2025 -

REFORM UK leader Nigel Farage may have lost the support of Elon Musk but his ally in the north appears to be rock solid. Farage’s policy on Ireland is influenced by Jim Allister of the Traditional Ulster Voice (TUV), with whom he concluded a formal ‘partnership’ last March. Farage’s Scottish organiser, Craig Campbell, was starting… Read more »

ENTRAPMENT STORY A POLITICAL TRAP

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Last October the Sunday Times published an article asserting that ‘Cobalt’, a serving member of the Oireachtas, was a Russian agent. Cobalt denies this. Within days, the country was consumed with gossip about the sexual entrapment of the enigmatic Cobalt. A closer analysis of the original ST piece, however, reveals there is no evidence that… Read more »

‘IRISH’ RACISM

Date: January 9, 2025 -

ONE OF the most prolific publishers of antisemitic books in Europe is Omnia Veritas Limited (OV), which has been based in Ireland for over a decade. OV has a modern online shop where one can search its catalogue of 645 books through 10 language options. It also has many of its titles available through a… Read more »

‘STINKING STATUS QUO’

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Huge traffic congestion each evening in Belfast’s rush hour in the run up to Christmas seemed an appropriate metaphor for the north’s politics. Buses didn’t turn up, delivery drivers couldn’t deliver, taxis couldn’t pick up and people missed appointments. No one was going anywhere. The relevant Stormont minister, Sinn Féin’s John O’Dowd, was powerless and… Read more »

MURKY DEPTHS OF IRISH MILITARY

Date: January 9, 2025 -

MicheÁl Martin and Dame Louise Richardson’s Forum on International Security Policy in June 2023 did not allow for unbiased debate and was widely seen as such. This has resulted in a return to factory settings for the coalition Government. They are looking to steadily increase Irish Defence Forces engagement in the EU’s Common Security and… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: January 9, 2025 -

I spend a lot of time working in Zurich, and Kronenhalle is just about the best place to have smoked salmon blinis and a glass of Champagne while soaking up the work of Chagall, Miró and Braque. Sonya Lennon, Irish Independent Magazine There was a narrative satisfaction in the turn of events, that I had… Read more »

DRILL, BABY, DRILL!

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Just before Christmas Donald Trump ordered the EU to step up imports of US oil and gas. “Otherwise, it is TARIFFS all the way!!!” he warned. The US president-elect’s ultimatum is part of his payback to big oil, which donated at least $75m to his election campaign. This fell far short of the $1bn he… Read more »

NIGEL’S ‘ENERGY INDEPENDENCE’

Date: January 9, 2025 -

Last summer Tullamore company Lumcloon Energy drummed up widespread community support in Coolpowra in east Galway for a supposed solar farm but then caused great upset by instead applying for planning permission for what would be the biggest fossil fuel power station ever built on this island. (See The Phoenix 23/8/24.) This track record made… Read more »

JIMMY CARTER’S IRISH POLICY

Date: January 9, 2025 -

IN THE second public reference recently to his stewardship of Anglo-Irish policy at home and abroad, Seán Donlon wrote in the Irish Times about the late US president Jimmy Carter’s Irish policy. This, of course, necessitated Donlon recounting the splendid role that his embassy played in this ever-so-positive development by the US president, guided by… Read more »

INDEPENDENT SUPER JUNIORS

Date: January 9, 2025 -

LITTLE OR NOTHING was discussed between the two big Government parties and Independent TD groups over Christmas, despite insinuations and hints to media of serious policy negotiations. But Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are aware of what the two different groups – one led by Michael Lowry and the other by Michael Healy-Rae – want… Read more »