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BILL MCCABE’S IMPLANTS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

A FEW months after the liquidation of the heavily indebted breast implant manufacturer Global Consolidated Aesthetics Ltd (which was backed by the likes of veteran investor Bill McCabe), another company in the group has been wound up, this time as a solvent liquidation, which appears to be part of a restructuring involving Tim Flynn’s London-based… Read more »

9TH IMPACT’S TAX GAME

Date: August 22, 2024 -

DIGITAL GAMING is big business and an Irish company that has been at the forefront in recent years is 9th Impact, which was set up a decade ago by pals Finn Krewer and Mark Quick. It turns out that the company is not too hot when it comes to the game of paying the taxman…. Read more »

KITE MEDICAL’S TURBULENCE

Date: August 22, 2024 -

A YEAR and a half after collapsing into liquidation, the final wind up meeting has been held for Kite Medical Ltd (KML). While there was a few bob to be shared with the unsecured creditors, the backers of HBAN Medtech Syndicate might be scratching their heads over an oddly timed investment by the angel investment… Read more »

WORKCOMPASS LOSES ITS WAY

Date: August 22, 2024 -

ELSEWHERE IN this issue (see p5) Goldhawk looks at the adventures of Dundrum-based businessman, landlord and philanthropist Aidan Corless, who is now in situ as CEO of a software outfit called Cognito HRM Ltd, following a €200,000 investment in the troubled company that trades as WorkCompass. He came on board last year when the business… Read more »

NEW RIGHT (DIS)UNITY

Date: August 22, 2024 -

EFFORTS BY disparate new right groups to translate anti-immigration sentiment into unified electoral success have been seriously undermined by a section of the anti-immigrant movement in the south recently lining up alongside Ulster loyalists and British fascists in Belfast.  Before the racist riots in Belfast, the National Party (NP), Ireland First (IF) and Irish People… Read more »

‘IRISH TIMES’ CENSORS

Date: August 22, 2024 -

COVERAGE OF the recent conviction of prolific child abuser Derry O’Rourke in the Irish Times was a commendable, warranted catalogue of outrage against O’Rourke and empathy with his victims, expressed over a week in thousands of words. Every word was the truth, but not the whole truth. For many years the IT has published reams… Read more »

HUW EDWARDS AND MI5

Date: August 8, 2024 -

HOW DID Huw Edwards, the former face of BBC News, maintain virtual immunity for so long given the evidence of his crimes involving sexual pictures of children? Police presented evidence at Westminster Magistrates’ Court last week of Edwards sharing indecent images of children as far back as December, 2020. Yet the extent of MI5 surveillance… Read more »

PROFILE: AENGUS Ó SNODAIGH

Date: August 8, 2024 -

WITH SINN FÉIN under pressure after a disastrous local election, the promotion of 60-year-old Dublin South Central TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh is being seen as a gesture of reassurance to the membership that the leadership means what it says about reverting to basic left-republican politics. So, in addition to his long-standing responsibility for SF policy… Read more »

YOUNG BLOOD: ESME DUNNE

Date: August 8, 2024 -

ESME DUNNE has been making waves in activist circles these past few years as founder of the Dublin branch of Empower The Voice, a non-profit organisation dedicated to raising awareness of the issue of sexual harassment. Apparently unafraid of – even welcoming – controversy, Dunne’s group has amassed thousands of followers on social media and… Read more »

ANNE DAVY’S CHILD’S PLAY

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THREE MONTHS after agreeing to settle High Court proceedings involving 41 children, creche operator Hyde & Seek Childcare is clearly well able to afford the payouts and legal costs. The Hyde & Seek group, owned by Anne Davy, hit the headlines after a 2019 RTÉ Investigates documentary showed children being roughly handled in secretly recorded… Read more »

CAN MARY LOU BOUNCE BACK?

Date: August 8, 2024 -

PUBLICATION LAST week of the revised housing policy of Sinn Féin (SF) – originally scheduled for next month – is part of a concerted effort by Mary Lou McDonald, Eoin Ó Broin et al to reset the political debate away from immigration and back to housing, where the party has its strongest hand. For eight… Read more »

BACHELOR FESTIVAL BLUES

Date: August 8, 2024 -

A COUPLE of high-profile names found themselves with a free Friday night in the run-up to the August bank holiday weekend, having originally committed to being judges in the one and only Westmeath Bachelor Festival. The hooley, however, never made it to the altar this year. Having bounced back on to the scene after Covid-19,… Read more »

PUTIN’S IRISH GUN SLINGERS

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE TABLOID-reading British public is losing sleep over an alleged disinformation operation being directed by Vladimir Putin to subvert the United Kingdom. Britain has been reliably informed by undisclosed security sources that the Kremlin is responsible for sparking the recent riots in the UK. Last week the Mail reported: “Russia linked to fake news that… Read more »

MIKE ORMONDE’S RESCUES

Date: August 8, 2024 -

ALMOST TWO YEARS on from the approval of a rescue plan, the company behind Mike Ormonde’s media content and production outfit, Packed.House (formerly Electric Media), is the subject of a winding-up meeting next week. Packed.House has a number of online sites, including Entertainment.ie and Beaut, and also offers sponsored content as well as graphic and… Read more »

KATY BROWN’S HANDICAP

Date: August 8, 2024 -

FANS OF The Phoenix will be familiar with outspoken racehorse trainer Katy Brown, who started last month with a second win in two runs for Petrol Head, in the €50,000 Bia Energy handicap at Bellewstown (see The Phoenix 26/7/24). What makes this horse interesting is that the gelding had previously been trained by no less… Read more »

PETER AIKEN’S NEW GIG

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE ADVERTISING blitz right up to the kick-off of the All Together Now festival in the grounds of Henry de la Poer Beresford’s Curraghmore Castle in Co Waterford reflects the increasing competition for the festival-goers’ dollar. It is clear that for the co-promoters here, Pod Festivals Ltd (PFL), every ticket counts. Now centre stage is… Read more »

VOL 42 NO 16

Date: August 8, 2024 -

IRELAND SAID ‘NO’ TO PINOCHET

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE CHILEAN Supreme Court demanded Irish government co-operation in establishing the alleged guilt of the two Shannon sisters, Dubliners Frances and Christine, in a helicopter jail break of four anti-government guerrillas in December 1996. This was allegedly organised by the pair in an IRA gesture of solidarity with the Chilean resistance. It led to diplomatic… Read more »

TOM’S TROUBLES

Date: August 8, 2024 -

GOLDHAWK’S OLD friend, Tom Ryan, has just had a judgment registered in Stubbs Gazette against him in London for no less than €3m by the dreaded taxman. He first popped up on this side of the Irish Sea with his Ryan’s Irish Cream liqueur business, where he was joined at various stages by other familiar names… Read more »

LEYDEN AT LARGE

Date: August 8, 2024 -

AFTER MANY years of ducking and diving and not a little in-fighting in Roscommon politics, as well as 43 years in the Dáil and Seanad, former Fianna Fáil junior minister Terry Leyden has not in fact retired from public life but has segued into the world of international diplomacy. Members of the Oireachtas recently received… Read more »

BRITISH AND IRISH FAR RIGHT

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THAT A section of the anti-immigrant movement in the south was prepared to line up alongside Ulster loyalists and British fascists in racist attacks in Belfast last weekend indicates extreme stupidity as much as extreme politics. When the ‘Coolock Says No’ banner was brought to an anti-immigrant demo at Garda HQ two days later, some… Read more »

MARTIN LIVING IN INTERESTING TIMES 

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE RECENT public unveiling of the prototype for a new armoured combat vehicle by the Taiwanese Army might prove embarrassing for the Irish Government. The 8×8 armoured vehicle is designed for Taiwan by Timoney Technology Ltd from Navan at a time when Ireland is deepening its economic ties with China. Given that there are also… Read more »

THE HOT AIR BRIGADE

Date: August 8, 2024 -

Beyond the velvet rope at the world’s greatest nightclub. Barry Egan chats to Robbie Fox about the long-gone Pink Elephant, Sunday Independent Opening a new book by poet Paul Muldoon is like breaking through the floor of an unopened catacomb. Nothing can prepare you for the panoply of riches, the mummified pets, the indecipherable runes… Read more »

RTÉ’S CLIMATE ‘STRATEGY’

Date: August 8, 2024 -

FOR YEARS RTÉ’s coverage of the climate emergency has vacillated between lukewarm and non-existent. It reached such a low point that in July 2021 its then managing director of news, Jon Williams, was forced to admit how dire its performance had been. Jon Williams promised the immediate establishment of a team “working across RTÉ News… Read more »

MCCONALOGUE’S MANURE

Date: August 8, 2024 -

Slight reductions in emissions from agriculture in 2023 have been attributed to cuts in the use of chemical nitrogen and was celebrated by farm advisory agency Teagasc as proving the sector was on the right track at last. What then to make of agriculture minister Charlie McConalogue recently urging farmers to use more nitrogen? “My… Read more »

PSNI SNOOPS

Date: August 8, 2024 -

The plot thickens in the ongoing saga of the PSNI snooping on journalists and lawyers. Investigative journalist Barry McCaffrey and film maker Trevor Birney finally dragged the PSNI, as Birney said, “kicking and screaming” before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London in April for unlawfully trying to find the journalists’ sources for their film,… Read more »

BUTTIMER V MULLINS AND COVENEY

Date: August 8, 2024 -

RUCTIONS AT Fine Gael’s Cork South-Central general election convention have only increased since the meeting a fortnight ago, which saw members react angrily at a head office ‘diktat’ telling them to vote for two candidates, including one that had to be from Carrigaline. This meant that the only Carrigaline candidate, councillor Úna McCarthy, was duly… Read more »

IVEAGH HOUSE OLD-BOY DIPLOMACY

Date: August 8, 2024 -

GOOD TO see the Irish Times maintain the high diplomatic style for which the paper of record is famous, with former Irish ambassador to Britain Bobby McDonagh recently giving a critical analysis of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who also happens to be the current EU Council president. With masterful tact, the man described as… Read more »

FF/FG CIVIL WAR IN KERRY

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE DELIGHT of handlers in Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil at the transfer pattern in the local elections has led to mutual and optimistic assumptions about a repeat at the general election and the return of the two Civil War parties to government with a small requirement of either Green or Independent TDs. There is… Read more »

THE ‘CURRENCY’ AND ‘WEIRD’ INM REPORT

Date: August 8, 2024 -

THE ENORMOUSLY expensive (€5.67m) and lengthy (six years) High Court inspectors’ report into various goings-on at Independent News & Media (INM) has laboured to produce not even a mouse. But while the Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) thanked the two inspectors for their work – commissioned at the instigation of the CEA’s parent body in 2018… Read more »

FIONNUALA ON EDNA O’BRIEN

Date: August 8, 2024 -

IRISH TIMES columnist Finn (Fionnuala) McRedmond wisely decided to choose the New Statesman rather than her weekly Irish platform for a treatise on Edna O’Brien that contained the usual Punch cartoon images to describe Ireland in the 1960s as “a country fully captured by the papacy”. One Nation Tory Fionnuala reminded British liberals of the… Read more »

AFTER SUSAN BERGIN

Date: August 8, 2024 -

TEN WEEKS after Screen Ireland (SI) chairwoman Susan Bergin resigned three years into her four-year term “due to other commitments”, there has been no sign of arts minister Catherine Martin moving to replace her. It is unclear if the role will be advertised but a selection from one of the remaining board members seems more… Read more »

WELD’S GRIM GALWAY

Date: August 8, 2024 -

SURELY THE biggest surprise in Galway last week was that Dermot Weld failed to have a single winner, despite having been the champion trainer there on many occasions. It is not as if the seasoned handler arrived with a lightweight squad and among the flops were two well-fancied favourites from Eva Maria Bucher-Haefner’s Moyglare Stud… Read more »

DAVID DUNSDON DELIVERS

Date: August 8, 2024 -

PROPERTY MONEYBAGS David Dunsdon dusted off his riding boots to make a winning return to race riding when landing Galway’s €110,000 Connacht Hotel (QR) Handicap on his own mare, Sirius. Purchased on his behalf by Harold Kirk at Arquana in 2022, the Willie Mullins-trained winner had suffered a setback when being trained for last year’s… Read more »

BAILING OUT RUSSBOROUGH HOUSE

Date: August 8, 2024 -

AS THE annual Heritage Week at Russborough House in Blessington kicks off this weekend, visitors will encounter new pathways created courtesy of a €200,000 grant from Wicklow County Council. Meanwhile, the trustees of the Alfred Beit Foundation (ABF) face a seriously difficult path to get this operation back on track. The chief executive of the… Read more »

LE BROCQUY’S COTTAGES

Date: August 8, 2024 -

INTERESTING TO see a property on Eglinton Road in Donnybrook, D4, going on the market with a €2.75m price tag. It is owned by one Julie Le Brocquy, niece of painter Louis, who was rather better known in the arts world. But Julie has been no slouch when it comes to producing her own art…. Read more »