The Phoenix Vol.38 No.13

VOL. 38, No. 13 July 3 — July 16, 2020 3.35 (incl. VAT) Sterling £2.95

What’s your

poison?

A little bitter

DRUNK ON POWER?

The shafting of Dara Calleary

Who’s afraid of Daniel Kinahan?

Profile: Gary McGann

Young Blood: Finn McRedmond

RTÉ burnt by the sun?

Also: John Gormley’s screenplay; Rose McHugh’s good

news; Leo Varadkar’s Seanad choices; Jed Dowling’s Pride

headache; Mary Irvine gets busy

www.thephoenix.ie

THE SHAFTING OF

DARA CALLEARY

MICHEÁL MARTIN’S ruthless

dispatch of Dara Calleary, his deputy

leader and policy director (not to

mention a long-time aspirant leader),

was not something that occurred

overnight. Its genesis goes back

some time, a

decade in fact,

when Calleary

became one of

two leadership

challengers (along

with Michael

McGrath) to

Martin from the

day he was made

party leader in

2011. That’s the

backdrop; the

more immediate

stimulus to

Dara Calleary

Martin’s excision of Calleary from the

front ranks of government was Senator

Lisa Chambers’ loss of her Dáil seat

last February – that’s Lisa Chambers as

in Martin’s favoured frontbencher and

deadly rival to Calleary in their shared

Mayo constituency.

Almost four years ago to the day,

Goldhawk pointed out that Calleary and

McGrath were “regarded with suspicion as

they are seen as an anti-leadership cabal,

each harbouring their own ambitions” (see

The Phoenix 1/7/16). That both men saw

themselves as a potential leader helped

to limit their capacity for mischief. But a

constant drip of media leaks and backstage

manoeuvring, as well as contrarian policy

positions taken up by both of them, had

identified them as dissidents in Martin’s

eyes.

Despite both men’s conservatism, they

had for some time been railing against

Martin’s softly softly confidence and supply

approach to the Fine Gael-led government

and had advocated a run to the country

when polls were relatively favourable to FF.

Martin saw all of this, with good reason, as a

slow-motion leadership challenge.

In March 2018, Martin pulled off two

clever manoeuvres with his frontbench

reshuffle. The first saw Chambers elevated

to the position of Brexit spokesperson,

underlining her status as the most favoured

one of all in Martin’s new line-up of liberals

– female liberals where possible. The second

stroke was the ‘promotion’ of Calleary –

Lisa’s constituency ‘colleague’ – to the

vacant position of deputy leader and also

director of policy development.

This latter move divided the loose

alliance of putative leadership challengers,

Calleary and McGrath (who remained

as finance spokesperson) and situated

Calleary close to the boss, locking him in

to the leadership’s electoral and opposition

strategy. It also meant that Calleary

would have little or no leeway to continue

fomenting parliamentary party discontent,

briefing the media or generally positioning

Continued on page 4

THERE WAS a sense of a new wind

blowing through the personal injuries (PI)

neighbourhood of the legal world when

Mary Irvine got the nod to be the new

president of the High Court. Much of her

experience as a barrister was in PI cases,

mainly defending medical negligence

actions, and observers believe she will

accelerate the ‘clampdown’ on awards that

has been observed in recent years.

Last week Irvine issued a statement to

legal eagles and other players in the PI

game requesting them to start negotiating

with each other as quickly as possible

in order to settle as many of the cases in

the backlog built up since the March 18

shutdown.

Of more interest to solicitors, barristers

and insurance companies is Irvine’s own

track record and she has issued a number

of significant judgments. One of these,

in March 2016 in the Court of Appeal,

related to a claim by two parties who were

injured in a car accident, resulting in High

Court judge Aileen Donnelly awarding one

plaintiff €131,000 and the other €91,000.

When it got to the appeal court, Irvine

questioned in detail the methods adopted by

Judge Donnelly to justify the scale of the

awards – setting the bar significantly higher

than before – and slashing the sums to

€65,000 and €40,000 respectively.

THE PHOENIX JULY 3, 2020 3

RTÉ’S PROPERTY

PROBLEM

FANS OF Irish property porn were left

scratching their heads on April 6 when

part two of the heavily promoted RTÉ

series Burnt By The Sun failed to air,

replaced instead by the ubiquitous Claire

Byrne and a programme about Terry

Wogan. Goldhawk can reveal that the

dreaded legal eagles had been called in.

The two-parter, produced by independent

production house Cornelia Street Productions

(where Sandymount-based Bernard Rogan

is the main shareholder), was hyped by

RTÉ for weeks ahead of its airing, with

references to the “national obsession” with

property. Apparently “we tried to quench

our insatiable appetite abroad and a veritable

frenzy of buying overseas properties began”.

Not surprisingly given the title, the first

episode focused on battered and bruised

investors who felt scammed by dubious

business practices, while the programme

also highlighted the involvement of criminal

types in the overseas property game. One of

those who presumably dipped in to look at

the programme was estate agent Alva Gunne,

sister of Fintan. (She originally worked with

her high-profile brother in the 1980s and into

the 1990s before setting up on her own.)

Alva would have spotted herself giving

a sales pitch at the Four Seasons hotel in

D4 in relation to the upmarket Palm Tiara

residential development in Dubai. Why this

clip was shown is unclear, but Goldhawk

understands that there have been no

complaints raised about this project (or Alva

Gunne) and that properties continue to find

buyers. Given the tales of misery and dodgy

dealings highlighted in the programme,

Gunne was quickly on the blower to her

solicitors (Smith Foy & Partners) and part

two was duly parked for around six weeks

before airing in mid-May, while the first

episode disappeared from the RTÉ Player.

High Court proceedings have now been

initiated against both RTÉ and Cornelia

Street Productions. Hopefully, nobody gets

too burnt.

C ONT ENTS

Affairs of the Nation 3. Environment 8.

Last Refuge 10. Print 12. Pillars of Society

14. Young Blood 16. Scenes 17. High

Society 18. Funnies 20. Moneybags 24.

Sport of Kings 27. Hot Water 28.

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4 THE PHOENIX JULY 3, 2020

Continued from page 3

himself as an alternative leader. Martin

had ensured that Calleary’s talents would

work for him rather than his own leadership

ambitions (see The Phoenix 6/4/18).

On reflection, Calleary’s acceptance

of his wordy but empty title (he had been

spokesperson on public finance) was a

big mistake as he had no heavyweight

or departmental responsibility to rely on

when it came to ministerial appointments.

However, Lisa had a very real responsibility

– Brexit – to feast on politically, although

it can hardly be said that she took full

advantage. The Irish Times tipped

Chambers, wishfully, as the next FF leader,

but Goldhawk warned that Lisa ought to

be wary of such a premature and artificial

scenario.

Come the general election in February

and the expectation was that Chambers

would be a senior cabinet minister and that

Calleary would surely receive a similar

reward also. However, Chambers lost her

seat to Sinn Féin’s Senator Rose Conway-

Walsh and suddenly the political landscape

in Mayo and FF nationally had changed

dramatically. Instead of Lisa facing into

several years as a senior minister and

presenting as Martin’s possible successor

as party leader, and Calleary looking

increasingly like yesterday’s man, the reality

was that Calleary was the last man standing.

Chambers made it into the Senate, but she

would have to wait several years before even

attempting to regain her Dáil seat. It looked

as though the grand plan for her ascent to

power had self-destructed.

Meanwhile, Calleary would surely be

made a cabinet member and would be

THE party minister in the West. This was

an appalling vista as far as Chambers and

Martin were concerned.

And so, Martin politically executed his

deputy leader last weekend.

ONE OF the more bizarre responses to

the American police killing of George

Floyd recently was a statement from

ine aels fie s. eirdre lune,

rances itgerald, ean elly, irad

cuinness and aria alsh ased the

s igh eresentatie on oreign

ffairs, ose orrell, to establish if any

arms eorts hae been used against

ciilians.

he imlication of this awward,

contried effort to get onside with the

lac ies atter moement is that it

is uite all right to slaughter ciilians in

countries other than the of . nd

certainly states – ie ermany, ritain

and rance – are resonsible for such

carnage in countries around the world ia

the eort of literally billions of euro worth

of sohisticated weaonry. he death toll in

emen is currently fuelled ia audi arms

NEW MAYOR IN TOWN

Eamon can’t

be too happy

I’m

devastated!

urchased from these countries.

hree of the aboenamed s –

lune, elly and cuinness – demanded

two years ago that

reland reise

its attitude to

neutrality and

called for increased

eenditure on

arms by Ireland

acting in concert

with EU states

(see The Phoenix

.

uring the

elections last year,

alsh caught u Maria Walsh

with her colleagues

aetite for gunsnbombsnstuff by

demanding further integration of the

efence orces.

THE MOUSE THAT

ROARS

LEO VARADKAR, foreign minister

Simon Coveney and diplomats like our

ambassador to the UN Geraldine Byrne

Nason made much of our commitment

to disarmament and to the Middle East

(code for Palestinians) in our latest,

successful bid for membership of the UN

Security Council (UNSC). But that was

ages ago, since when Ireland has become

a willing prisoner of the EU’s Common

Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP),

which enables the government to claim

inability to break with an EU consensus.

Over 50 years ago, the minister for

external affairs, Frank Aiken, campaigned

relentlessly at the UN for the nuclear Non-

Proliferation Treaty (NPT). In recognition

of his efforts, he was invited to be the first

signatory to the treaty in 1968 in Moscow.

And in June 1998, Ireland – along with

Australia, New Zealand and other states –

attempted to reboot the flagging NPT with

a declaration, Towards a Nuclear Weapons-

Free World: The Need for a New Agenda.

Ten years on, the then foreign minister,

now taoiseach, Micheál Martin, sold out

Ireland’s reputation on disarmament. The

Fianna Fáil government acquiesced in an

agreement by the Nuclear Suppliers Group

(NSG), of which Ireland is a member, to

allow India to engage in nuclear trade for

the first time in three decades. India had

previously been barred from such nuclear

trade because of its refusal to sign the Non-

Proliferation Treaty.

The US administration had been most

anxious to secure this waiver for India

because that country was poised to secure

multi-billion dollar contracts with the US, as

well as Britain, Germany, Russia and France

– four of the five permanent members of the

UNSC – for the sale

of nuclear fuel and

equipment. These

countries placed

enormous pressure

on Ireland, Australia

and New Zealand to

drop their objections

to the agreement;

which we did

(see The Phoenix

19/9/08).

This says much

about the efficacy Geraldine Byrne Nason

of smaller countries

like Ireland when it comes to serious

global issues and the interests of permanent

members of the security council.

Time was when Ireland’s pro-Palestinian

sympathies were reflected in a live,

meaningful policy, as in the 1980 Bahrain

Declaration when another FF government

recognised the legitimacy of the PLO

(Palestine Liberation Organisation). These

days, the Irish government hides behind

the CFSP when declining to offer concrete

support to the Palestinians.

The government’s UNSC election pitch

declared that Palestinians were at “the heart”

of its foreign policy and a fortnight ago this

pro-Palestinian rhetoric helped Ireland to

get over the line in the UNSC vote. Just two

days earlier, in back-room negotiations on

government formation, Fine Gael’s foreign

minister, Coveney, refused point blank to

yield on the government’s opposition to the

Occupied Territories Bill.

A study entitled Small States in the UN

Security Council, by University of Iceland

academic Baldur Thorhallsson, argues that

Ireland was successful on the council in

2001/2 “because of its pragmatic approach to

prioritising workloads”, ie it did not attempt

to challenge the big powers’ priorities. Thus,

“while the security council was caught

up in 9/11, Ireland (during its presidential

period on the council) managed to maintain

focus, attention and support for the peace

processes… of the Congo, Burundi and

Somalia”.

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JOHN GORMLEY’S

SCREENPLAY

ONE OF the more urgent decisions

to be made by newbie arts and media

minister Catherine Martin is whether

the government should underwrite any

of the uninsurable Covid-19 risk that is

preventing the live-action film and TV

drama business from getting back to

work. Pressure has been mounting via

Desiree Finnegan’s Screen Ireland, Ibec

and producers’ lobby operation Screen

Producers Ireland,

where one John

Gormley happens

to be the chair.

Film and TV

production is

characterised by an

expensive form of

insurance, called

completion bonding,

which covers the

financial backers

and ensures projects

are completed

in the event that

John Gormley

production has to shut down. Most of the

larger productions that were stopped by the

pandemic will have had this insurance and

will restart, but Covid-19 has now been

excluded on new policies and completion

bond insurance is currently near impossible

to obtain.

In a Radio One interview last month,

Andrew Lowe of Element Films (Normal

People, Room, etc) was wearing his chair of

Ibec’s audiovisual section hat and intimated

that his company’s follow-up production of

Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends,

due for the green light this year, is at risk if

the uncertainties around insurance are not

dealt with pretty damn quick.

According to Lowe, “The film and

television drama insurance market… has

unfortunately seized up. Because so many

productions came to a halt, with huge

knock-on costs, there are hundreds of claims

being processed by insurers and they’ve

announced they’re not open for business at

the moment.”

Lowe claimed that government

interventions as “insurers of last resort” are

in the works or “under consideration” in

France, the UK and the US. It was, he said,

“essential” that Irish taxpayers join the cast.

Paschal Donohoe will be keeping a

particularly close eye on this lobbying

campaign given that insurance concerns in

recreational, childcare and other businesses

previously resulted in closures when public

liability insurance costs became prohibitive.

If the government gets into the insurance

business, where does it draw the line and, in

exchange for the risk, should it profit from it

like private companies?

Presumably, former Green Party leader

Gormley will be able to provide Catherine

Martin with a detailed analysis of the

benefits of the government bailing out film

producers.

FACED WITH new national

responsibilities, super junior minister

Hildegarde Naughton will be anxious to see

a local party issue resolved speedily given

that it involves a long-time party councillor

in Mayo and a former member of her own

Galway West staff.

Patsy O’Brien, a Fine Gael councillor

since 2004 and a party member since

1978, failed to get on the general election

ticket in Mayo this year, but recently ran

as a Seanad candidate on the industrial

and commercial panel. He was eliminated

following the 13th count but, given that he

ran as an Independent candidate, he did

not do so badly, especially as this panel is

known as the group

of death.

O’Brien

topped the poll

in Claremorris at

the local elections

last year, with a

ery large first

preference vote of

2,955, the largest

in Co Mayo. He

is seen by some,

including himself,

to be a natural Hildegarde Naughton

successor to

Michael Ring when he retires from the

scene.

The reason O’Brien ran as an

Independent is that he has been suspended

from the party following an allegation

by someone who was an employee of

Hildegarde before she became a minister.

The investigation now under way is one

of Tom Curran’s last responsibilities as

general secretary in one of those messy,

internal affairs that is the lot of party

apparatchiks.

A curt statement from the FG press

office just before the eanad elections

simly stated that the arty had not ratified

O’Brien’s candidacy as he had been

suspended pending an investigation into an


allegation made against him.

Meanwhile, those close to O’Brien have

been muttering about the councillor’s

intention to take legal action against his

party as it had got it wrong about the

allegation.

Goldhawk will monitor events here in

the latest internal party political spat in the

west.

JED DOWLING’S

HEADACHE

WHILE SOME party-poopers will

have been happy enough that the

overblown Dublin Pride Festival was

relegated to virtual status last week, the

company behind the annual jamboree

– Jed Dowling’s

Dublin LGBTQ

Pride Company

– will be more

concerned with

any hit to the

financial bottom

line given the

steps that have

been taken to put

the organisation

back on a firm

footing.

Clicking on

the Dublin Pride

Jed Dowling

website leaves the visitor in little doubt

about the extent of the corporate input into

the annual event, with a lengthy list of

sponsors ranging platinum, gold and silver to

“community sponsors”.

Tesco remains on board as a platinum

backer, while gold sponsors include the

likes of Sky, An Post and (natch) The

George, while in the silver category there are

corporate players like Bank of America, Axa

and Facebook.

The presence of Facebook may prove

complicated for Dublin Pride, given the

intensity of fire the social media giant is

coming under from all sides, including

from big-name corporate advertisers, over

concerns about control of ‘hate speech’ on

the platform. It will be interesting to see if

there is any move by the Pride crew here

to distance themselves from this particular

sponsor, which had upped its profile from

last year when it was a mere ‘Pride partner’.

This latter category today features an

array of business heavyweights, including

Google, Aer Lingus and Mastercard, which

are joined by an army of suitably woke

corporates such as ebay, Kerry Group, Ikea,

Bank of Ireland, Amazon etc.

The good news for Pride fans is that the

2018 accounts show a slight reduction in the

accumulated deficit to €30,000, as efforts

have been made to rein in costs since the

hugely expanded 2015 Pride festival (linked

to the same-sex marriage referendum), when

the company’s accumulated losses reached

€60,000, having previously been in the

black.

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EOGHAN MURPHY’S

REHABILITATION

EOGHAN MURPHY’S Gethsemane is

at an end, but it looks like he will have

to wait a little longer than three days

before his resurrection take place.

Murphy knows

that his close ally,

Vlad, cannot put

him in cabinet and

that even a junior

ministry would

create problems in

the febrile media

atmosphere of the

parliamentary party

and a media eager

to present political

villains to their

readers. A career Eoghan Murphy

break spent in some

anonymous back room of the Fine Gael

organisation or, even worse, constituency

AGMs listening to party members whining

into his ear long into the night now beckons.

But this is where he can be Varadkar’s

eyes and ears and also re-build his credibility

as a team player – just what Dr Vlad ordered.

This is likely to be a two-and-a-half year

period as he waits for Leo to resume normal

service as taoiseach again, following which

Murphy will be reappointed to high office.

There are two other players that matter in

this long-term scenario and both have been

dealt hands that indicate where their futures

lie. One is former Dublin Bay South (DBS)

TD Kate O’Connell, Murphy’s running mate,

who lost her seat last February and did not go

forward for the Senate – she realised too late

that she was a marked woman as far as the

party leadership and machine was concerned.

Unsurprisingly, Kate was not among Vlad’s

FG nominees for the Seanad and it looks as

though Murphy’s retreat from the front line

does not mean that the garrulous ex-TD can

simply walk back into the party’s front line

any time soon, if ever. Kate and her retinue

seemed to believe that the verbal assaults on

Varadkar during the leadership contest with

Simon Coveney (Vlad’s “choir boys” etc) as

well as the digs at her running mate, Murphy,

were going to be forgiven.

Then there is smooth, loquacious legal

eagle Cllr James Geoghegan, who has the

most impressive legal pedigree (see The

Phoenix 28/6/19) and who took a seat in

Pembroke at the local elections last summer.

Geoghegan did not make it into the Senate

and, in fact, did very poorly in a crowded and

competitive industrial and commercial panel.

However, failing to get into the Senate after

a wet week in electoral politics says little at

this stage.

Geoghegan will likely be running for

FG in DBS at the next general election,

whenever that may be, but it will be

alongside Murphy not O’Connell.

THIS WEEK’S settlement of the

long-running (ie expensive) legal spat

between German movie producer Winni

Hammacher and his fellow shareholders in

Octagon Films – James Flynn and Morgan

O’Sullivan – could be an expensive one

for the two Irish boys behind hits such as

Vikings, Love/Hate and Peaky Blinders.

he two film industry eterans

shareholders in Octagon) strenuously

denied Hammacher’s claim that they had

dierted business and rofits from Octagon,

thereby enriching themselves at a loss to

Octagon and its erman shareholder.

The terms of the settlement require Flynn

and O’Sullivan to buy out their partner’s

shareholding. significant element of the

tortuous mediation process would have

related to putting an agreed value on those

shares.

Some aspects of the whole affair

warrant their own drama series and fans

of Goldhawk will recall (see The Phoenix

that a year into the igh ourt

proceedings, Flynn and O’Sullivan sought

to have Octagon wound up. Indeed, they

were facilitated in this move by Screen

reland, with the state film board clearing

the way for the transfer of charges –

relating to its loans to Octagon – to Flynn

and O’Sullivan’s own, separate, companies

in the event of the winding up taking place.

Hammacher managed to stymie the attempt

just before the credits rolled.

COUGHLAN’S PALS

BURSTING WITH pride, TCD

Professor Emeritus Anthony Coughlan

has circulated widely the news of

his life honorary membership of the

Campaign for an Independent Britain

(CIB), awarded to him by British/

English anti-

EU nationalists

recently.

Coughlan has

been the primary

intellectual

inspiration behind

successive anti-

EU referendums

in Ireland and has

also been involved

in republican and

left-wing politics

for over 60 years.

However, his

Anthony Coughlan

dalliance with anti-immigrant campaigner

Justin Barrett during the EU Nice Treaty

referendum nearly 20 years ago earned him

much opprobrium from former comrades.

Undeterred, Coughlan attacked Sinn Féin

two years ago for opposing Brexit, arguing

that the party had sold out its opposition

to the EU. He asked rhetorically how SF

could justify its effective Brexit alliance

with British prime minister David Cameron

in “an abandonment of republicanism and

democratic principle”.

The charge of cosying up to British

Tory PM Cameron is rich indeed given

the assorted Tories, Little Englanders and

hard-line unionists in the group that has now

honoured Coughlan.

CIB chairman Edward Spalton is a

former UKIP EU election candidate, while

vice-president Lord Vinson of Roddam was

a co-founder with Margaret Thatcher of the

Centre for Policy Studies.

Ten “Peers of the Realm” are included

in the list of CIB patrons, as is the DUP’s

Sammy Wilson MP and Tory MP Andrew

Rosindell, who once expressed his “huge

admiration” for Chilean general and

dictator Augusto Pinochet. Rosindell has

long campaigned against immigration and

LGBT rights. Another CIB patron and

Tory is Philip Davies MP, whom former

House of Commons speaker John Bercow

once described as a “troglodyte” due to

his opposition to women’s rights. Another

patron, former Labour MP Kate Hoey,

publicly supported Boris Johnson and the

DUP at the last UK general election.

What next for Tony – a British gong?

WILLIE FRAZER’S

RECORD

CHARLIE FLANAGAN’S final act

as justice minister last week was to

warn the Dáil of the continued threat

from republican

paramilitary

organisations in

advance of TDs

approving the

renewal of the

Special Criminal

Court. Flanagan

may also have

noted last week

that the Victims &

Survivors Service

(VSS) in the north

briefed journalists

Charlie Flanagan

that its investigation into its funding of a

group linked to the late Ulster Resistance

figure, Willie Frazer, is still ongoing.

Frazer, who died just a year ago, had been

involved with a number of alleged support

groups for loyalist and security force victims

of the Troubles. Five members of Frazers

family in the security forces had been killed

by the IRA over a 10-year period during the

Troubles.

His first group was FAIR (Families

Acting For Innocent Relatives), which was

set up in the late 1990s. However, even back

then, it was an open secret, at least amongst

police and certain ‘Troubles’ journalists,

that Frazer was actively involved with

loyalist murder gangs. Near the end of 2010,

FAIR’s substantial funding channel from

the cross-border Special EU Programmes

Body (SEUPB) was frozen due to “major

failures in the organisation’s ability to adhere

to the conditions associated with its funding

allocation”.

Frazer then helped to set up the Families

Research and Policy Unit, which was funded

by the VSS until May last year. At this point,

the VSS initiated an investigation with a

view to a possible clawback of funds, just as

the SEUPB has done.

In March this year, The Phoenix wrote

of Frazer’s close relations with former RUC

man and Ulster Resistance quartermaster

James Mitchell (see edition 27/3/20). It was

Mitchell who initially managed the Glenanne

Gang arms dump, from which Frazer

distributed assault rifles and grenades to

both UDA and UVF figures across the north,

with the UDA’s Johnny ‘Mad Dog’ Adair in

Belfast being a primary beneficiary.

Despite all this, Frazer still had the

ear of judges (he was an instigator of the

Smithwick Tribunal), the mainstream media

and politicians in the Republic. Flanagan

demonstrated this last year by tweeting a

praiseworthy obituary soon after Frazer’s

death, extolling Frazer’s “relentless and

unstinting campaigning for victims”.

Flanagan referred to the suffering of Frazer’s

family, but simple research on the part of

his legal eagles or a phone call to Garda

Commissioner Drew Harris would have told

Flanagan all he needed to know about the

other side of Willie Frazer.

More questions will now be raised about

Frazer, with the imminent publication of

Ombudsman reports into loyalist killings,

like the 1992 Ormeau Road bookies attack,

and a renewed investigation into the murder

of Donegal Sinn Féin councillor Eddie

Fullerton in Buncrana in 1991. These attacks

are believed to have emanated from Ulster

Resistance guns supplied to Johnny Adair for

further distribution.

‘THE KAISER’, Dermot Desmond, and

his missus, Pat Desmond, are certainly

exhibiting high anxiety about the housing

crisis, as it affects the nation as well as their

own little neck of the woods in Ailsebury

Road, D4.

Mrs Desmond joined with neighbours

Chris Comerford and John Gleeson in

lodging an objection to the government’s

fast-track planning process (see The

Phoenix 13/3/20). Simultaneously, hubby

Dermo poured forth with a dissertation on

the nation’s housing problems, published by

a helpful Irish Times. There was a certain

conuence of argumentation between

both sets of polemics, with each claiming a

regressive distortion of the housing market

and institutional inestors rofiteering at

the expense of ordinary Irish people.

According to the carefully written IT

article, Mrs Desmond’s legal action was not

directed at Cairns Homes’s proposed 611

apartment development in Donnybrook,

adjacent to and within eyesight of the

Desmonds’ pied-à-terre. But more recently,

Dermo has, according to an equally helpful

Irish Independent, made a ery definite

connection with his housing arguments and

Cairns Homes’s plans for Donnybrook.

You may still be

wet and rainy, but

Ireland, you’re

buff now. You’re

hot. Gina London

on Ireland getting

a UN Security

Council seat,

Sunday Independent,

submitted by

reader


I’m a big believer

in democracy.

Gina London

Micheál Martin

won’t shirk from

unpopular opinions, RTÉ News, submitted

by reader

Actress Eve Hewson’s career may be teetering

on the edge of greatness. Irish Mail on Sunday

spots the new Meryl Streep

Drugs smuggler Daniel Kinahan is to

step back from boxing “to focus on other

interests”, the president of the management

company he co-founded has said. Irish Times

reports on Daniel Kinahan’s next move

The 33rd Dáil crossed the Liffey. Today,

Irish politics crossed the Rubicon. Onwards.

Paschal Donohoe, Twitter, submitted by

reader

There’s something about a face mask that

gets in the way. It’s impossible to read other

people’s faces and it’s impossible for them

to read mine. Michael Harding’s astute

observations, Irish Times, submitted by reader

By invoking The Terminator, The Lord of the

Rings and Seamus Heaney, Leo Varadkar

successfully made us feel connected and

engaged with the national effort in response

to the coronavirus pandemic. Orla Muldoon,

Irish Times, submitted by reader

All of a sudden I feel VERY pregnant! Vogue

Williams apparently getting more pregnant,

Irish Mirror, submitted by reader

That day was Ireland’s Walt Whitman

moment. Keith Duggan evokes the American

poet when recalling Ireland’s defeat of

Romania in Italia ‘90, Irish Times, submitted

by reader

Those youngsters do be asking things like

‘would you not have gotten Venetian blinds

there instead of curtains?’, like really sensible

questions. Francis Brennan on the wisdom of

youth, Irish Mirror

Ultimately, a force of polarisation in Irish

society is not necessarily at either end of the

“left” or “right” spectrum; it’s the gaslighting

that centrism perpetrates and perpetuates.

Una Mullaly, Irish Times

€15 for suitable contributions, send to: The

Hot Air Brigade, The Phoenix, 44 Lr Baggot

St, Dublin 2 or email: hotair@thephoenix.ie


ALLIANCE ON BIKES

IT HAS surprised a lot of people

that the first all-Ireland party to be in

government in Dublin is the Green

Party rather than, as many expected,

Sinn Féin. Until last week, the media

in the south switched from attacking

SF to obsess on the tussles between

Eamon Ryan and Catherine Martin: talks

or no talks, coalition or no coalition,

leadership contest or no contest? Martin

was the bad girl because the media had

decided that the Greens had better go

into government or else, but she was

playing hardball.

It was with some annoyance, not to say

outrage, that the same media discovered

another bad girl – Clare Bailey – the Greens

leader in the north. It turned out that the

Greens in the north could vote on whether to

enter a coalition and Bailey had the nerve to

oppose it as “the most fiscally conservative

arrangements in a generation”.

Kathy Sheridan in the Irish Times said the

Greens in the north “may have overreached”.

Senator David Norris complained that “a

group of 800 UK citizens in the north of

Ireland… have the right to dictate what

government we have here in the Republic”.

He obviously forgot he is elected to the

Seanad with the help of northern graduate

voters.

In the event, only 195 of the northern

Greens bothered to vote – a figure that may

be revealing in more ways than one. The

Green Party, like the Alliance

Party in the north, has always

steered clear of border politics.

Indeed its policy document,

Principles and Values, doesn’t

even mention the dreaded

constitutional issue. It talks about

social justice, sustainability,

grassroots democracy, and

promoting non-violence and

peace.

Its support comes from the

two most affluent areas in the

north, South Belfast and North

Down, known as the Gold Coast.

As one wag described North

Down, “It’s divided between the yachts

and the have-yachts.” Both Green assembly

members and all eight councillors except one

come from these two areas. They average

about a 2% share of the vote in the north.

Many people suspect that the party has

become a refuge for young (under 35),

liberal, highly educated unionists who

can’t abide the DUP or UUP and see the

Alliance Party as too staid, old-fashioned

and uninterested in climate change. There

has certainly been a switch from Alliance to

the Greens in well-off districts in and around

Belfast. As one southern cynic put it, the

Greens in the north are “the Alliance Party

on bikes”.

Such a composition of membership

would account for the lack of interest

in the outcome of coalition talks in the

south and explain why three-quarters of

the membership didn’t even register to

vote. Anyone of a nationalist

complexion would have jumped

at the chance to vote in the

circumstances, whereas unionists

in South Belfast or North Down

feel no connection whatsoever

with Dublin politics.

Nonetheless, to the irritation

of nationalists, the Greens in

the north do have an input now

into government policy. It’s no

coincidence that the so-called

unit promised for the Taoiseach’s

Clare Bailey Office will seek “to work towards

a consensus on a shared island”

– a pipe dream if ever there was

one. Gone is any reference to Irish unity

or the means to achieve it laid out in the

Good Friday Agreement, namely a border

poll. Eamon Ryan said last December that a

border poll would be “divisive and counterproductive”.

So, if people in the south were concerned

about a small unrepresentative group of

Greens in the north unduly influencing

government formation, northern nationalists

are equally annoyed about the same small

unrepresentative group unduly influencing

government policy in the north.

RYAN VS MARTIN

IT SEEMS oddly appropriate that,

as the heated internal debates within

the Green Party on entering coalition

approached boiling point, a wave of

extreme heat was sweeping

through the Arctic Circle,

bringing temperatures in the

region to almost 40ºC.

Bearing in mind that the

hottest temperature ever

recorded on the island of Ireland

was 33.3ºC, to have far more

extreme heat sweeping deep into

the once-frozen Arctic region is

a horrifying premonition of the

rapid climate breakdown that

scientists have been warning

about for decades.

For many Greens, the battle

to avoid the hellish consequences of climate

collapse is their overarching reason for

being in politics. For others, however, the

issue is a lot less black and white.

What emerged during weeks of

arguments over entering government was

that a sizeable rump of the Green Party

believes you can’t separate social justice

issues from a political movement based on

Eamon Ryan

climate change. The Covid-19 lockdown

precluded public meetings, which saw

debate switch to social media, where the

atmosphere is much more febrile and prone

to toxic escalation.

Ahead of the vote on entering

government, a wave of attacks designed to

undermine the leadership of Eamon Ryan

came from party colleagues like councillor

Daniel Whooley, who lambasted him for

his clumsy, albeit unintentional, use of the

N word.

In most parties, such bald-headed attacks

on the leader would be met with swift

retribution but, luckily for the hot-headed

young Whooley, the Greens claim to have a

different, more emollient culture.

In any case Ryan’s supporters

had the entire mainstream media

on their side to make these

points for them.

This media uniformity helped

and the rebel Greens – notably

Neassa Hourigan, Hazel Chu,

Patrick Costello, Francis Noel

Duffy and Lorna Bogue – got

their answer when a thumping

76% of party members backed

entering coalition.

A particularly strong, if

exaggerated, media line is that

Ryan led his party back from

zero-seat oblivion to arguably being in

the ideological driving seat in the new

government in terms of big-ticket items

such as the commitment to 7% average

emissions cuts this decade.

However, Ryan could yet find himself

ousted as leader. Despite both now being

Cabinet colleagues, the leadership challenge

from Catherine Martin (who can claim

credit for driving a harder bargain on the

programme for government than Ryan was

willing to fight for) is still going ahead.

Of course, almost irrespective of

how they perform, the most likely future

electoral reward for the 12 Green TDs

now entering government could be another

wipeout. If securing their seats was the

priority, they would have been far safer

joining other left-wing groups on the

Opposition benches.

With that in mind and with the spectre

of climate breakdown drawing ever closer,

there has never been a more important

time than right now to have a party in

government that actually grasps the

imperative to act on climate change while

that is still even possible.

WHILE FEW in environmental circles

will have mourned the departure of

Michael Creed from the agriculture

ministry, the appointment of Offaly TD

and former greyhound stadium manager

Barry Cowen to the role puts down the

clearest possible marker that the cosseted

agri-industry remains ‘off limits’. Cowen

immediately thundered his defence of the

high-emissions and highly polluting dairy

sector by parroting (twice) about its, ahem,

“strong environmental credentials”.

Cowen went on to say on RTÉ radio that

the agricultural sector “could not suffer an

undue burden on meeting its [emissions]

targets”.

Greenhouse gas emissions from dairy

have spiralled by 18% since 2012, with

the average dairy farm now producing

the equivalent of a massive 502 tonnes of

emissions annually.


VARADKAR’S SENATE

CHOICES

WHAT IS it about former taoiseach

Leo Varadkar’s general election

running mates in Dublin West that

sees them a) bombing in

elections and b) entering the

subsequent Seanad? His four

latest Fine Gael choices for

the taoiseach’s 11 Seanad

nominees include three that

are sensible from a strategic

viewpoint in a future general

election, but the selection

of a fourth – failed general

election candidate, Cllr Emer

Currie – looks more like a

gesture of gratitude than a

tactic for the future.

Former minister Regina

Doherty has been nominated in a logical

move as she would be a serious Dáil

candidate in more than one possible

constituency next time out. Councillors

Mary Seery-Kearney and Aisling Dolan

are both well placed to bid for Dáil seats

in Dublin South-Central and Roscommon-

Galway respectively, constituencies where

the party now has no seats. But given the

dismal history of Vlad’s electoral strategy in

Dublin West, use of the Seanad to promote

Currie seems like a forlorn tactic.

In the 2007 general election, Varadkar

was allowed to run unaccompanied and

took a seat. However, in 2011 he ran

with Cllr Kieran Dennison, who polled a

respectable 3,190 first preferences with

Varadkar taking the sole FG seat. In the two

subsequent Dublin West by-elections (2011

and 2014), Vlad managed to unearth two

utterly hopeless candidates, Eithne Loftus

and athlete Eamonn Coughlan. These polled

14% and 12% respectively, and it looked

as though the coming man in FG nationally

was not exactly a successful party strategist

locally (whatever about his individual

record).

Leo Varadkar

When Dennison, by then a stronger

candidate, went for the two-candidate slate

in 2016, Vlad opposed his nomination,

instead proposing Senator Catherine Noone

– a gender-quota candidate, he explained

to party members. Noone went on to poll

a derisory 1,074 first-preference votes

(Vlad took 8, 247), but Catherine later

strolled back into the Seanad with the party

leadership’s imprimatur and gratitude for her

token female candidacy in Dublin West.

Come the selection convention for

the 2020 candidates in the constituency,

Dennison came again, only to be told that

HQ – independently of the party leader and

then taoiseach, of course – had decided to

run a one man, one woman slate. And so Cllr

Emer Currie – daddy Austin Currie was once

a SDLP Assembly member, a former FG

junior minister and presidential candidate for

Alan Dukes – was selected to run

with Vlad.

Emer came seventh in the

four-seat constituency with 1,870

first preferences, but she has now

been nominated for the Seanad

by Vlad and, unlike Noone, will

not have to even contest a seat

in the upper house. There are

few who believe FG will take

a second seat in Dublin West

any time soon given the relative

strengths of Sinn Féin, Fianna

Fáil, the Green Party and the

left generally. But as Goldhawk

remarked (see The Phoenix 13/7/18), there

were indications back then that Emer’s

consolation prize for a no-hope, token

female campaign would be a Seanad seat.

Vlad is now the only taoiseach that

Goldhawk can recall who has failed to

bring in a running mate with him at a

general election. And leaders of the main

opposition party nearly always managed to

carry their running mate over the line with

them. Failure by Vlad to do so would be

bad enough were it down to poor campaign

strategy or other factors. But what if it is

deliberate?

MAYO FINE Gael voted against the

government formation deal and so did

Kerry Blueshirts, but what has provoked

widespread anger in the party is not just the

actual deal (strenuously opposed by Mayo’s

outgoing minister, Michael Ring), but also

the voting process.

That the lowly Blueshirt foot soldiers,

who tread the byways and boreens at

election time and provide funds for the

party, should have just 25% of the vote

on the ‘historic, grand coalition’ proposal

was galling to many. (The parliamentary

party has 50%, councillors 15% and the

executive council 10%.) But even this faint

brush with democracy was exercised not by

the members but by constituency delegates

made u of local arty officers and

chairpersons of constituency districts.

he bafement

of members who

rang party HQ to

inquire how they

could vote quickly

changed to anger

when informed that,

well, they did not

actually have a vote.

The leadership

contest rules

are slightly

different, with

members having

Michael RIng

25%, councillors

10% and the

parliamentary party 65%. Thus, Leo

Varadkar’s parliamentary putsch easily

beat the members’ vote, which went 65%

to 35% in favour of Simon Coveney – a

remarkable statistical outcome.

Now, members in Mayo and in several

constituencies in Munster and elsewhere

are preparing motions to the next party

ard fheis that would revise those rules in

FG’s constitution that govern elections.

They can expect vigorous opposition from

TDs and senators, who currently hold the

real power in vital policy-making areas as

well as leadership contests. Councillors,

too, are unlikely to relinquish easily their

significant share of the ote in such olls.

Tánaiste and losing leadership contestant

in 2017 Simon ‘Covetous’ Coveney is

also expected to take a keen interest

in any proposal to change the party’s

voting procedures; in the interest of party

democracy and to set good example to the

general populace, of course.

WHAT WILL

O’CALLAGHAN DO?

THE EXCLUSION of Jim O’Callaghan

from cabinet was hardly unexpected – at

least not to Phoenix readers (see edition

22/5/20) – and, by the same token,

neither was the appointment of another

barrister, Paul Gallagher SC, as attorney

general. But O’Callaghan’s absence

from the top table is an indication that

Micheál Martin is prepared to risk

O’Callaghan peeing into the tent rather

than out of it.

Martin might have been prepared to be

more emollient, philosophic even, if he

planned to simply leave the stage when his

term as taoiseach ends in December 2022.

However, despite a disastrous election

campaign and result, and despite also a

serious mishandling of negotiations (by

ruling out Sinn Féin he disarmed himself

against Fine Gael), Martin now finds himself

in total control of the party and taoiseach

for the next two-and-a-half years. He will

by then be a fit, young (62) politician when

his term ends and it would be a foolish TD

that bet against him wanting to stay on and

fight another election. But he knows that,

as the clock ticks down, there are various


factions in the parliamentary party that will

expect him to depart before New Year’s

Day 2023. Not even the minor reward of

junior ministries

will induce most

TDs to stay onside

with Martin if there

is a sniff of foot

dragging by him.

Martin’s critics

are impotent right

now and the likes of

Éamon Ó Cuív and

John McGuinness

are isolated.

However, TDs

like John Lahart,

Niall Collins and

even new cabinet

Micheál Martin

member Barry Cowen (promoted because

the new Biffo would definitely pee into the

tent if he were not inside it) are the embryo

of a new faction inside the party. And the

man they will likely look to in the event of a

heave is O’Callaghan.

The tale of O’Callaghan’s alienation from

Martin’s leadership goes back at least two

years to the latter’s insistence in renewing

the confidence and supply (C&S) agreement

with FG. O’Callaghan had been on the

Fianna Fáil team that agreed the original

C&S deal, but was absent from the team

that renegotiated it in 2018 for the simple

reason that he thought it was time to pull the

plug on an agreement that made the party

look weak and subordinate to FG. And he

was also absent from the team that recently

negotiated the government formation deal,

an absence that underscored the split with

Martin – as did O’Callaghan’s criticism of

Martin’s negotiating tactics in those talks.

O’Callaghan may not have the stomach

or patience for a protracted leadership battle

that would only reach fruition in January

2023. And he may also believe that his

own seat is vulnerable given SF TD Chris

Andrews’s appropriation of the entire

working-class vote in Dublin Bay South (ie

in the Ringsend area), while a resurgent FG

could threaten his middle-class base. Also,

the plummy barrister does not have a serious

base or pedigree in the party, a weakness

that will be used against him in any battles

ahead.

If O’Callaghan does decide to stick it

out, his intellectual calibre compared with

most of the frontbench will mark him out

as alternative leader. But the real danger for

Martin is a political control freakery that

has grown with the years in opposition and

which has annoyed many in the party. If the

new taoiseach gives the impression early on

that he is intent on outstaying his welcome,

then the party membership will not have to

wait two years for a leadership debate.

AN TAOISEACH Micheál Martin gave

expression to his modern, inclusive new

world last weekend with the appointment

of Traveller activist Eileen Flynn to

the Seanad. And just to underline his

commitment to racial equality (as between

racism and anti-racism), he also listed

Fianna Fáil ex-senator Lorraine Clifford-

Lee as another of

the 11 nominees to

the Seanad.

FF, it will be

recalled, refused to

disassociate itself

from Clifford-Lee

after the emergence

of tweets she had

posted some years

earlier in which she

went through the

gamut of offensive

and racist terms to

describe Travellers,

Lorraine Clifford-Lee

including a jibe about a Traveller wedding.

The senator was then running in the

Dublin Fingal by-election and, despite

demands from various quarters, the party

refused to disassociate itself from its

candidate or to even discipline her. This,

the party said, was because the remarks

were made in a personal capacity “many

years” previously.

Flynn is a member of the Irish Traveller

movement, the Ballyfermot Traveller Action

Programme and the National Traveller

Women’s Forum. The latter group was one

of those that appeared at an Oireachtas

committee when these remarks were made

public and it demanded that reparation be

made from the state for the kind of remarks

made by Clifford-Lee.

Flynn made it clear this week that she

will be campaigning for all marginalised

groups in the Seanad and one must

presume that Clifford-Lee will be right

behind her in this laudable crusade.

However, it is doubtful that Lorraine’s

party will bestow on her the same title as it

did in the last Seanad, namely spokesperson

on justice and equality.

GOLDHAWK

CALL HIM NOW!

Confitentiality assured 01 661 1062

Bog Cuttings

WHERE’S WALLY?

DERRY CROWN Court heard the case of a

shoplifter accused of stealing an adult fancydress

costume from a Party Warehouse shop in

Derry. Mary Donegan, 33, of Carnhill, Derry,

visited the shop, telling a member of staff she

was looking for a costume for her son. CCTV

then recorded Donegan removing a Where’s

Wally fancy-dress costume and stuffing it down

her top. The shop’s alarm was activated when

she tried to leave the store. Donegan told a

member of staff that it had probably been

set off by a “metal object” in her leg, before

leaving the premises. Judge Philip Babington

imposed a four-month suspended sentence and

ordered Donegan to pay compensation to Party

Warehouse. The Where’s Wally costume was

never recovered.

Derry Now

AMPLE SAMPLE

LIAM MURRAY of 54 Cois Abhainn, Turlough

Road, Castlebar, pleaded not guilty to charges

of dangerous driving, refusing to give a blood

or urine sample and having no insurance

at Castlebar District Court. Garda Padraig

Naughton told the court he had observed

Murray’s car driving erratically through

Castlebar on March 13, 2016. Murray initially

tried to evade pursuit, but eventually pulled

over before trying to escape on foot. Garda

Naughton gave chase, catching Murray after a

short distance as the accused was “extremely

unsteady” on his feet. Murray then failed to

provide a sufficient urine sample at the Garda

station. “He provided a miniscule amount

which didn’t cover the bottom of the jug,” said

Naughton. Murray similarly refused to give

blood for analysis and, referring to the urine

sample, said, “That will have to do you.” Judge

Fiona Lydon imposed a four-year driving ban

and a fine of €500 for failing to give a sample

and a further €500 fine for driving without

insurance.

Western People, submitted by reader

‘FUCK THE MAGISTRATES’

A BALLINA man was remanded on continuing

bail in Castlebar District Court following

charges of abusive and threatening behaviour

towards gardaí. Mark O’Hara, Ridgepool

Lodge, Church Road, Ballina, was arrested near

his residence for becoming abusive towards

gardaí who were dealing with a separate issue.

At Ballina Garda Station, O’Hara allegedly

spat at gardaí and urinated in his cell. Garda

Joyce told the court that the accused issued

strings of profanities saying to gardaí, “I’ll shag

your mother” and “Fuck the magistrates, fuck

you and fuck your mother.” On hearing these

quotes read out in court, the defendant said,

“That’s not fair. I wasn’t in my right mind.”

Solicitor Peter Loftus said his client was not a

flight risk and that O’Hara should receive some

credit for turning up to court at all. Judge Fiona

Lydon remanded O’Hara on bail.

Western People, submitted by reader

• €15 offered for suitable contributions

Send to: Bog Cuttings, The Phoenix, 44 Lr Baggot

St, Dublin 2, or email bogcuttings@thephoenix.ie


WHO’S AFRAID OF

DANIEL KINAHAN?

THE STAR’S gamble in announcing

a boycott of the proposed Anthony

Joshua/Tyson Fury fight has paid

off spectacularly as gangster Daniel

Kinahan was effectively disowned

recently by

KHK Sports,

owned by a son

of the king of

Bahrain. Shortly

afterwards,

Kinahan was

cut out of the

“biggest ever”

boxing bout and

his reinvention

from criminal and

alleged murderer

to businessman

has been halted.

Daniel Kinahan

Then taoiseach Leo Varadkar and other

politicians were quick to climb aboard this

crusade against the criminal Kinahan cartel,

while some in the Irish media also gave

coverage to the issue – eventually. However,

it was the Star that sparked the campaign,

although the newspaper and its editor,

Des Gibson, got little credit from media

colleagues. And despite the Star writing to

newspapers and broadcasters, both in Ireland

and Britain, seeking support for its boycott

call, precious few responded favourably, if

at all.

This was particularly galling as

the paper’s chief sports writer, Kieran

Cunningham, had been tracking and

reporting on Kinahan and his effort to

reinvent himself for more than a year, with

nobody in government or elsewhere taking a

blind bit of notice.

Gibson’s anger spilled over into one

of his editorials last month in which he

said, “Daniel Kinahan. Drug dealer. Mob

boss. Director of death. Yesterday, some

newspapers played their part. Others didn’t.

Some broadcasters played their part. Our

national one didn’t. RTÉ’s flagship radio

news and opinion show shoe-horned a

three-minute conversation about Kinahan

at the end of their one-hour review of the

papers. Prime Time did a small slot during

the week on the story. Sarah McInerney

had a 20-minute spot on her radio show

last Thursday. But largely, RTÉ has led

the ‘ostrich brigade’, with Virgin and

other newspapers both here and in the UK

following in luke-warm pursuit.”

Gibson went on to call out his media

peers who had failed to commit to a boycott

even though they had reported on the story.

And he ended with a crack at broadcasting

giants, like Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV,

for hedging their bets about bidding for

broadcasting rights for the fights.

Hilariously, another of Rupert Murdoch’s

men, Aawrish Sunday Times news editor

John Burns, penned an anguished comment

piece about the “ethical dilemma” of this

situation. Burns concluded that “there

probably is no right answer”, an agnostic

response that helps to explain his own

newspaper’s non-response to this media

quandary.

THOSE STROPPY Irish Times women

haven’t gone away, you know. A report

from IT women journalists alleging all

manner of sexist, “macho” behaviour

by management at the most politically

correct entity in the civilised world caused

a furore last August (see The Phoenix

23/8/19). A committee involving all sides

– management, union, male, female – was

set up last September to investigate the

allegations and to recommend solutions.

The two senior management personnel

on the committee are HR director Majella

Gallagher and assistant editor Deirdre

Veldon, while the two journalists that drew

up the document are also women – Kitty

Holland and Sorcha Pollak. Alongside

management and union members on the

committee, there is also the reassuring

figure of consumer affairs corresondent

Conor Pope. As a member of that renowned

ethics body, the Irish Times editorial

committee, Pope is expected to play the role

of arbitrator if any further unpleasantness

should break out, as happened when

several male hacks objected strenuously to

the women’s charges.

However, the sisters have also been

reassured by another quarter – namely,

Veldon and Gallagher – who have let

it be known that they had already been

pursuing an inquiry into any hint of gender

imbalance at the IT before the offending

document was drawn up by Holland and

Pollak.

As well, reforms are being implemented

in the form of a mentoring programme for

new entrants, male and female, although

it is expected to be mainly nervous females

that take up the offer. And there is also a

course for those men who might want to

avail of lectures on unconscious gender

bias.

DUTCH MASTER

SALES

MEDIAHUIS’s INM publisher in

Ireland, Peter Vandermeersch, has

been quoted as having scant respect

for INM’s digital strategy (“incredibly,

there was none”) and not much for its

print titles either, according to a recent

interview with Adworld magazine (see

The Phoenix 19/6/20). But after nine

months in charge and this year’s Covid-

19 pandemic, Peter was very upbeat in

that interview – unlike his sentiments

delivered to key staff members in an

internal memo

more recently.

Vandermeersch

told Adworld in

April that, despite

everything, “the

numbers go through

the roof. We

celebrate 22,000

subscriptions

to Independent.

ie. And yes,

advertising revenue

is under pressure. Peter Vandermeersch

We have to take

difficult measures. Some colleagues are

being furloughed. The higher management

takes a pay cut. Our dailies are struggling.

Our weekend papers are doing better than

budgeted.”

And in May Peter gushed, “We launch,

in the middle of the Covid-crisis, a digital

subscription to the Belfast Telegraph and an

e-paper for 11 regional papers. We have the

first meetings for the launch of a new site

and app for the Sunday World. We prepare a

new home delivery system… And we act as

if this all is obvious. There is a tremendous

energy in the organisation.”

However, the publisher’s memo to

staff is not quite so positive. “How are we

doing?” he asks rhetorically, before replying,

“First our print business. It is clear that

there are some concerns here. At the end of

June 2020 we are selling 14% papers less

than a year ago (Talbot Street). In Belfast

we are even lagging 23% behind last year.

Our regionals are doing a bit better (but still

selling 11% less papers than a year ago).

“While our Sunday titles are doing

relatively well (Sunday Independent 5%

less than a year ago; Sunday World 2% less;

Sunday Life 11% less) and our Saturday

Independent is also better than average

(minus 9%), we are under pressure during

the week (Monday-Friday Irish Independent

minus 21%; Herald minus 18%). These

numbers make us worry.”

Peter also reports that digital sales have

“reached a first plateau” and that new

sales are only replacing lost sales. And

while bundles of print and digital sales are

being rolled out, he warns that, “because

of the Covid-19, print volumes (definitely

during the week) are falling faster than we

budgeted”.


Gary McGann

WHILE NOT as high profile as the election of a taoiseach last

weekend, a vote in the corporate world next month looks set to

send shock waves through the Irish business community. Pillar

of the establishment and business heavyweight Gary McGann, chairman

of the listed company Aryzta (previously IAWS), could face the chop,

which would represent an ignominious exit at the twilight of a stellar

career. The former chief executive at Smurfit Kappa group, and maybe

the ultimate insider, is fast running out of options and only a miracle can

save him now. The good news is that he won’t be short of a bob or two.

Aryzta plc is best known for its parbaked

breads (Cuisine de France was the

innovator) and this sector of the food

market has grown rapidly in recent years.

Nevertheless, on March 10 last, Aryzta

managed to report a pre-tax loss of almost

€1bn for just the six-month period to the

end of January this year.

This astonishing setback proved the

last straw for McGann’s increasingly irate

shareholders, who have seen the share

price drop from €40, when Gazza took the

chair in September 2016, to the current

46c, a drop of almost 99%. In other words,

McGann’s reign has witnessed the best part

of €5bn in equity destruction.

For some time things have been grim for

investors in Aryzta, particularly those who

believed that McGann’s arrival in the hot

seat three-and-a-half years ago would spark

a revival. Most damaging has been the

€800m rights issue in November 2018 that

involved a whopping 90% discount on the

then share price.

At that time, Aryzta’s

largest shareholder,

Francisco Paramés,

initiated a revolt

that resulted

in McGann

only narrowly

pushing

through the

share issue,

with 47% of

shareholders

voting against

the motion.

This time

around,

Paramés’s

Cobas Asset

Management

group

has joined

forces with

Veraison Capital

to assemble a near

18% stake, which

has enabled them to call for an

extraordinary general meeting

next month (immediately ahead

of McGann’s 70th birthday) to get

rid of the chair and many of his

crew. Worryingly for

Gazza, JO

Hambro Capital Management – which

only came on board at the rights issue

when grabbing a 5.8% shareholding – has

decided to support the dissidents at the

proposed EGM. The Swiss activist investor,

Gregor Joss, who holds 3% through his

Larius Capital fund and had opposed the

2018 rights issue, is also bound to support

the Cobas strategy, while Harry Hartfort

over in Causeway Capital, who controls a

5% stake, will also almost certainly throw

his lot in with the dissidents.

McGann’s strategy when it comes to

dealing with this pincer movement has

been to gamble on a possible takeover bid,

with UK merchant bank Rothschild pulled

in “to undertake a review of all strategic

and financial options available to the group

to maximise value for the benefit of all of

the group’s stakeholders”. It is surely too

little and too late.

The hope clearly is that this move will

entice a takeover bid from an outsider, thus

stymying the move to get rid of McGann. In

the midst of the current pandemic,

however, and before next

month’s EGM, this strategy’s

chances of success looks

somewhat less than

zero.

The evolution of

Aryzta started with

Philip Lynch back

in 1996 when

he took over

Cuisine de

France and

expanded

steadily.

In 2003,

Owen Killian

arrived

as CEO

and duly

supercharged expansion via the takeover

of La Brea Bakery and Otis Spunkmeyer in

the US and Hiestand in Europe.

By 2015, Aryzta was the dominant player

in the fast-growing global par-bake frozen

confectionary sector, holding a 7% share

in a fragmented market where no other

company had more than 1%. The highwater

mark was in 2015, when turnover hit

€4bn and trading profits of €500m were

recorded.

With the shares trading up a hefty

€72 and Aryzta capitalised at nearly

€6bn, Killian embarked on an audacious

expansion campaign. He bought out

Canadian fast-food giant Tim Hortons

(which has the biggest chain of

confectionary shops in North America)

from a joint venture and, on the back of

this, built a giant new €70m bakery in

Ireland and an even bigger €150m plant in

Germany. To top it off, €½bn was splashed

out to buy Cloverhill bakery (manufacturer

of the iconic Twinkie snack) with its giant

bakeries in Chicago and Cicero, Illinois.

LOSING CUSTOMERS

Just as these came on stream, however,

Aryzta lost its single biggest customer in

Switzerland and its biggest one in Germany

and, crucially, Tim Hortons across the

Atlantic, leaving the group hugely exposed

to plant under-utilisation in these giant new

facilities.

To compound these problems, in March

2015 Killian paid €450m to buy a minority

49% stake in the French Picard specialist

frozen-food retailer, with 1,000 small shops

throughout France – a sector in which

Aryzta had absolutely no experience.

McGann, who joined the board in

December 2015 before becoming chairman

a year later, should have seen the writing

on the wall, with revenue stagnant in the

year to July 2016, despite the huge increase

in capacity, and trading profits falling 6%

from €514m to €485m.

He did not, however, shift gears until

the half-year figures for the six months to

January 2017 were published in early March

that year, showing sales beginning to fall

and operating profits dropping a dramatic

31% to €159m.

Coming on top of total net borrowings

of well over €2bn, this painted a dangerous

picture at best and, two weeks after the halfyear

figures were released, Killian, chief

finance officer Paddy McEniff and the two

top execs in North America – John Yamin

and Ronan Minihane – were encouraged

out the door by McGann, who lashed out a

whopping €10m in goodbye money

between them.

Unfortunately, Gazza appeared to have

no plan B in place, as it was not until May

2017 that he announced the appointment

of Kevin Toland as the new CEO, although

the latter could not start until September.

For six vital months, therefore, Aryzta

was rudderless apart from the chairman’s

direction.

While sales only fell 2% in the year to

the end of July 2017, the group trading

profit imploded by a hefty 43% to €277m,

driven down by North America, where

returns collapsed by no less than 59%.

In his first chairman’s report, McGann

advised worried shareholders, “We have

characterised 2017 as a difficult year,”

adding that “as a board, we are committed

to making the right strategic decisions…

and preserving and creating shareholder

value”. Anyone willing to decipher the full

accounts, however, would have realised

that, after exceptional write-offs, Aryzta

made a record pre-tax loss of €1bn. Maybe

McGann should have mentioned that.

There was little sign of creating

shareholder value the following year,

covering the 12 months to July 2018,

when sales fell 10% and the trading profit

dropped by a further 40% to €164m. After

taking exceptional items into account,

there was an improvement from the

previous year’s pre-tax loss to ‘only’ €½bn,

with the chairman advising, “The 2018

financial year has been a difficult one.”

There was good news, however: Aryzta had

come up with a cost-reduction plan called

‘Project Renew’, which was designed to

deliver annual savings of €90m by 2021, at

a cost of €200m.

EQUITY DESTRUCTION

On the back of two disastrous years,

McGann and his board came up with

a plan to cut the group’s then €1.9bn

of borrowings by raising €800m equity

through a 10-for-one rights issue, with the

shares offered at a 90% discount of 88c.

(The shares were then trading at €8.50.)

This left shareholders shell-shocked at

the practically unprecedented level of

equity destruction. Hence, the significant

opposition from Francisco Paramés and

others to that fundraiser.

The fact that Aryzta had moved its

base from Ireland to Switzerland did not

help small shareholders. Under Swiss

regulations, they were only given just over

a week to exercise their rights, which

involved transferring funds in Swiss Francs

to a UBS bank account in Zurich – a tall

ask. Those infuriated shareholders are

likely to let loose at the upcoming EGM,

with McGann right in the firing line.

Those same shareholders will also have

been angered by the cack-handed disposal

of Aryzta’s minority 49% stake in Picard,

which had been bought for €450m in 2015

and was sold for €156m last year.

Although Aryzta has managed to slow

down the loss of sales and stabilise earnings,

the group ended up with a net attributable

loss last year of €68m. In the latest half

year to January 2020 (ie before Covid-19

kicked in), sales were down a further 3%

and trading profits fell 16% to €74m.

Taking into account the loss incurred on

the Picard sale and assorted write-offs, the

bottom line, after interest, showed a loss

of a €921m. To lose a billion euro once is

unfortunate…

CEO SELECTION

One of the most important tasks of

any chairman is the selection of the CEO

and, in picking Kevin Toland, McGann

has failed to inspire. Toland’s most recent

experience in the four years to taking up

the Aryzta post was in running Dublin

Airport. Maybe this appealed to the Aryzta

chairman (who headed up Aer Lingus

himself for seven years in the 1990s), but

the reality is that it was a pretty cushy

number, essentially based on charging

passengers passing through the airport

€9.50 a head, landing retailers with huge

rents and making a mint out of car parks.

Rocket science it ain’t.

Francisco Paramés

From the time Gazza joined the Aryzta

board in December 2015, the company

was already in trouble. On becoming

chairman at the end of 2016 and then

clearing out the top management in March

2017, McGann should have had a clear

understanding of the issues, but there is no

sign of the necessary strategy being put in

place – like immediately floating or selling

off Picard to get Aryzta out of a retailing

business about which it knew nothing.

The two giant Cloverhill production

facilities in Chicago and Cicero should

have been sold and the number of bakeries

the group has worldwide should have

been dramatically rationalised (it is still

operating 53 separate plants today). The

big Otis Spunkmeyer cookies and muffins

business, which had been bought in

2006 for $600m, should also have been

offloaded. It sells to 62,000 retail customers

and, because of its huge brand recognition

in the US, would attract significant interest.

Having faced a 47% vote against the

resolution to implement the dreadful

€800m rights issue back in November

2018, McGann made a point in his October

2019 chairman’s review of highlighting

his desire to “restore an open, trusted and

transparent dialogue between Aryzta and

its shareholders… and build a constructive

dialogue with all shareholders”.

It is unclear if the chairman considers

the current siege by Veraison and its

allies as reflecting “transparent dialogue”.


Following the formal request for an EGM

on May 20 to oust most of the board,

McGann kicked the can down the road to

mid-August. Veraison has described this as

a “deliberate delay” to facilitate a strategy

review ahead of the EGM.

The dissident shareholders go on to say:

“Since 2017 the existing board of directors

has failed to set the right strategic course to

focus and reduce the complexity of Aryzta.

This has led to enormous value destruction

for shareholders. It is unacceptable that

before a renewal of the board and without

taking all stakeholders into the account, the

strategy review, rejected for a long time, is

now to be concluded on short notice with

an investment bank [Rothschild].”

With sales down 24% in the most recent

quarter (clearly affected by Covid-19), and

sales in the first three weeks in May down

an even greater 33%, Aryzta is certain

to deliver absolutely diabolical results

for its full year to end July 2020. Unless

Rothschild comes up with some audacious

get-out-of-jail card in the next few weeks,

the dissident shareholders are going to rout

the board and Gary McGann will be booted

out.

His 70th birthday party on August 25

could be a sombre affair.

GARY McGANN’S

BUSY DIARY

Gary McGann is business royalty – a former

president of Ibec and regularly one of the

highest-paid suits in the country – having

taken out €20m in his last three years at

Smurfit Kappa, up to his resignation in

August 2015. In 2014, Gazza was officially

the best-paid executive in Ireland with a

total package of an eye-watering €7.2m,

including share options and bonuses.

After his retirement from Smurfit,

McGann remained on the board as a nonexecutive

director, as well as holding a seat

on the board of US giant Multi-Packaging

Solutions, although he stood down from

both as the brown stuff started to hit the

fan at Aryzta, where he was paid €323,000

in the year to July 2019.

Another board where the busy director

popped up was Green REIT, where

McGann was in situ until its sale at the

end of last year. And today he is to be

found on the boards of AON Ireland

insurance and building giant Sisk Group (as

chairman).

If that doesn’t look like spreading

himself pretty thin, McGann also finds

time to chair the gambling conglomerate

Paddy Power-Betfair, now called Flutter

Entertainment. He picked up €400,000

here last year by the way.

Up to the Aryzta debacle, the biggest

blot on McGann’s CV was the directorship

of Anglo Irish Bank from 2004 up to its

€30bn collapse in 2009. Although he was

a non-executive director, the fact that the

board did not seek to temper the orgy

of property lending after a 16-year-long

economic boom reflects poorly on all of

the well-rewarded members.

Happily, it did not prevent Gazza going

on to pick up other lucrative directorships.


Finn McRedmond

IT SAYS much about the rightward drift of the Irish Times that a one-nation Tory

sympathiser now occupies a weekly slot on the newspaper’s op-ed page. “Based

in Westminster”, as the IT introduced her to readers in the first few weeks of her

column, Finn McRedmond castigates most of her political targets as dangerous

extremists – a tactic that simultaneously presents herself as eminently reasonable

and moderate. And her passionate denunciation of British Brexiteers makes her

the right sort in the eyes of Tara Street’s editorial office, although she appears to

have little time for feminists.

McRedmond’s first IT column last

August was a sterling defence of Leo

Varadkar against the “right-wing British

press”, arguing that their invective was not

anti-Irish (as if), but a failure to accept

the new order of things in the EU. A week

later Finn (actually, it’s Fionnuala) dished

it to British Labour’s then leader, Jeremy

Corbyn, in a most superior piece that

dismissed both British Tories and left-wing

Labourites as unable to appreciate modern,

EU-oriented Ireland.

So far, so centrist, with Boris, Brexiteers,

Corbynite socialism and Republicanism

dismissed from Westminster. But in

her second month’s columnising, Finn

became most distressed at the behaviour

of bad Tory Boris in the House of

Commons as he expelled good Tory

MPs for attempting to legislate against

a no-deal Brexit. Revealing a warmth

and affection for the pro-EU wing of

the Conservative Party she warned,

“Tory rebels… may have lost their

membership… but they have emerged as

defenders of representative democracy,

parliamentary sovereignty, and the

civility of political process which the

Conservative Party was once defined by…

Johnson might believe he’s won a battle

– but parliament and the Tory rebels will

certainly win the war.” Heah! Heah!

A follow-up column indicated a

near neurotic, pearl-clutching reaction

by Finn, who spoke of Johnson as

having “entirely lost his mind… not fit

for office” and causing “total systems

failure” at Westminster. Most poignant,

though, was her keenly felt lament that the

Tories no longer included the likes of “Ken

Clark or Churchill’s grandson” among their

number.

However, being a responsible journalist

and mature beyond her years – somewhere

in her mid-20s – the young McRedmond

urged Irish readers not to laugh or exult

at such anarchic British behaviour and she

even ticked off Vlad for his witty remark to

Boris in Dublin last September. “When Leo

Varadkar deftly mocked Johnson on the

steps of Government Buildings two weeks

ago, offering to be the ‘Athena’ to the UK’s

Herculean task, it was funny and certainly

demonstrated a classical literacy Johnson

so admires. But it wasn’t wise,” cautioned

McRedmond, who was anxious that Anglo-

Irish relations be preserved intact.

Where has this intensely political

journalist come from and what inspired

her to champion civilised British Tories (as

opposed to bad Tory boys and girls of the

Thatcherite variety)? Finn’s background is

south county Dublin, where she attended

the private Rathdown School for girls,

Glenageary, operating under Church

of Ireland management. Daddy is David

McRedmond, former head of TV3 and now

boss at An Post, which he has managed

to turn around after heavy and recurring

losses. Completing the modern, perfectly

formed Irish Times family is mummy, Penny

McRedmond, who was heavily involved

in Fine Gael candidate Jennifer Carroll

MacNeill’s successful general election

campaign in Dún Laoghaire last February.

Penny is also chairperson of Global Action

Finn McRedmond in her college days

Plan Ireland’s (GAP Ireland) board of

directors. GAP Ireland describes itself as an

“environmental education organisation”. In

a happy coincidence, David McRedmond

was selected as the IT’s business person of

the month for March.

Coming from such a high-achieving

family, Finn aimed high academically

and she studied, or rather read, classics

at Cambridge University. Her first overt

Tory declaration was in college mag the

Tab, where in 2015 she wrote an article

headlined, “Being a Tory does not make you

a bad person”. She explained, “I voted for

the party that I think this country needs…

I didn’t vote conservative for low taxes so

I can keep my mansion while everyone

else can live in a slum. I don’t even have a

mansion. It’s a townhouse.”

Undeterred, McRedmond went on

to the London School of Economics

before working for a range of Londonbased

mags, but mostly with the

magazine Reaction. Chaired by Robert

(Lord) Salisbury, former Conservative

leader of the House of Lords and

advisor to the Euro-sceptic Open

Europe, Reaction describes itself as “promarket

but not slavishly so”.

McRedmond also focused on Labour,

Corbyn and the party’s alleged anti-

Semitism in Reaction, repetitively and

enthusiastically in a pro-Israeli polemic

that works in Blighty but not in Ireland.

Some months after McRedmond began

her IT column, Reaction published an

article by Sunday Independent journalist Eilis

O’Hanlon, who accused Fintan O’Toole of

inspiring a wave of anti-British sentiment.

“I’m Irish and I reject the premise of

O’Hanlon’s critique”, the indignant Finn

immediately responded, with a strong

defence of Fintan in the same magazine.

McRedmond’s more recent IT articles

have been a little out of synch with

the paper’s feminist orthodoxy as she

quibbled with the adulation of Sally

Rooney’s Normal People. Damning it with

faint praise – “a nice novel” – Finn does

not believe Rooney‘s writing style is that

original but she does note, “That she is a

young woman matters hugely in an age of

marketisable feminism.”

A week later (15 May) Finn took issue

with the view that “women leaders are

more adept at managing Covid-19 than

their male counterparts”, writing that

this is “one line of thinking [that] has

emerged most clearly”. A reference to any

significant, even insignificant, opinion

former who believes this would have been

useful here. McRedmond went on to

polemicise against feminists’ arguments

that focus on “feminine qualities”.

Last month the Irish exile was moved to

inform Irish readers that “Britain is bigger

than the anti-Irishness of the Daily Express”,

which had recently indulged in a bout of

characteristic racism about Varadkar and

Ireland. Despite the evidence of the last five

years, in which Little England dominated

the Brexit debate with distinctly racist

overtones, McRedmond argued that only

a minority of the British press was anti-

Irish. She said that, in “reverting to base

instincts – indulging latent nationalistic oneupmanship

– we reveal ourselves to be no

better than the British tabloid press”.

Despite her feisty willingness to

confront base Irish prejudices against

the British media, Finn came over all coy

when Goldhawk rang to inquire about her

journalism, saying she had a deadline to

meet and suggesting a chat later that day.

Goldhawk rang at the designated hour but,

despite several follow-up calls and messages

suggesting that she call back, no further

Anglo-Irish dialogue was possible.


SOCIETY H STAGE H SCREEN H SEX H SOUNDS H SPORTS H SIGHTS H SOCIETY

ROSE

McHUGH’S

GOOD NEWS

ON HER way out the door of

the Department of Culture,

Josepha Madigan dished out

€102,000 to the Crawford Art

Gallery in Cork. It is the latest

piece of good news for the

Rose McHugh-chaired national

cultural institution.

The money is linked to

two proposed exhibitions for

the Decade of Centenaries

programme, including one around

the death of Terence McSwiney

in 1920 after a 74-day hunger

strike.

Late last year, Madigan

approved a grant of €184,000

to upgrade the environmental

controls in the gallery, the start

of a proposed major upgrading

of the building provided for in

the bloated Project 2040 plan,

which has earmarked a spend of

€460m on the national cultural

institutions over 10 years.

Rose McHugh will be

anxious to ensure there is no

backsliding on this by the new

government and presumably a

meeting with the

new arts minister,

Catherine

Martin, will be top

of the chair’s to-do

list.

The Crawford’s

current board

consists of 11

members, with

one outstanding

vacancy, created

after the Cork City

Council nominee

on the board,

Ken O’Flynn,

stepped down in January to

contest the general election. He

had been passed over by FF as a

candidate and stood instead as

an independent, narrowly missing

out on a seat in Cork North.

O’Flynn’s replacement on the

Glucksman board has yet to be

selected by the council.

The most recent arrivals (and

the only directors appointed

by Madigan during her tenure)

are Louise Crowley, senior

lecturer in UCC’s faculty of law,

specialising in family law; and

former Arup engineer Sean

Rose McHugh

Clarke (who has the benefit

of having studied European art

history).

Crowley was in the news

recently when she announced

the introduction in UCC of a

mandatory anti-sex abuse course

for new students.

Others on the

board include

IADT’s Josephine

Browne, who

chairs the

Crawford’s

artistic policy

committee; and

architect Gareth

O’Callaghan,

who is a member

of the all-important

building and

development

committee, chaired

by McHugh.

This is the committee

overseeing the ambitious

restoration project for the

building that holds the Crawford

art collection – a property that

is actually in the ownership of

Cork Education and Training

Board (ETB). The complicated

structure is one that McHugh has

been looking to unravel since her

appointment in March 2017 (by

then culture minister Heather

Humphreys) in conjunction

with the gallery’s finance and legal

committee, chaired by Cork City

Council manager Ann Doherty.

Progress has been made

on this front and last year the

art collection itself (over 4,000

works) was transferred by Cork

ETB to the Crawford. Meanwhile,

a lease was entered into between

Cork ETB and the gallery to

cover the period until the

300-year-old building’s ownership

is finally transferred to the OPW,

a move that will allow for the

overdue refurbishment.

On the financial front, the

Crawford remains in the black

despite its modest €1.5m approx

revenue grant from the culture

department. There has been an

improvement in the last couple

of years and the current director

of the gallery, Mary McCarthy

(ex-National Sculpture Factory),

has had her remuneration pegged

to principal officer level (she is

on around €83,000 pa) after the

Crawford top job had for years

been tied to assistant principal

level, making the post a less-thanattractive

one when compared

with other national cultural

institutions.

The 2019 annual report,

signed off by the C&AG last

October, showed a surplus for

the year of €170,000, significantly

up on 2018.


SARAH DILLON’S WRAPPED HANDOUTS

FANS OF GOLDHAWK will

be familiar with the workings of

the Western Region Audiovisual

Producer’s (Wrap) Fund, headed

up by Sarah Dillon. It is a

development and production

scheme floated by local

authorities in Clare, Donegal,

Galway, Mayo, Roscommon and

Sligo, with support and backing

from Galway Film Centre,

the Western Development

Commission and Udárás na

Gaeltachta (see The Phoenix

17/5/19). The smart players have

clearly adapted quickly.

The idea behind the fund

is to support companies

in the film, TV and games

sectors to increase the level of

development and production in

the west of Ireland. From the

outset, however, it was clear that

much of the moolah went to gigs

developed outside the region.

The first Wrap-backed

production shot in the region

was Calm With Horses, made

under the auspices of Andrew

Lowe and Ed Guiney’s Element

Pictures, whose offices are in

London and Dublin. But, in order

to be in a position to qualify

as locals, the ‘special-purpose

vehicle’ company set up for the

film was based at Element’s Pálás

Cinema in Galway.

So when Goldhawk read the

latest PR release – headlined

“Wrap Fund set to generate

more than €16m

spend across

the West of

Ireland” – it was

not too surprising

that many of

the producers

featured are those

nimble enough to

establish outposts

in the fertile Wrap

region.

For example,

one of the headline

projects is God’s

Creatures, a feature

film backed by BBC Films and

Screen Ireland, and to be filmed

in Donegal, with UK-based

tyro producer Fodhla Cronin

O’Reilly in the driving seat. A

special-purpose vehicle company,

God’s Creatures DAC, was set

up for the project on March 11,

c/o the address of a relative of

Cronin O’Reilly in Co Galway.

David Collins of Samson

Films in Dublin set up MSML

Fodhla Cronin O’Reilly

Film Productions DAC in Spiddal

in Galway on March 20 for his

Nordic co-production, My Sailor

My Love, backed by the Finnish

Film Foundation, Finnish Council

of Arts, Creative Europe, YLE,

UMedia, Screen

Ireland, WRAP and

Nordisk Film & TV.

The TV series

Smother starring

Dervla Kirwan

– co-produced by

Rob Walpole

and Rebecca

O’Flanagan’s

Dublin-based

Rubicon Films

and financed by

BBC Studios, RTÉ,

BBC, the Western

Development

Commission and Screen Ireland

– is currently on production

stoppage due to the pandemic.

The special-purpose vehicle

company set up in June last year,

Smother Productions DAC, has

an address at the Lahinch Coast

Hotel.

Long-time collaborators

Brendan Muldowney and

Conor Barry, whose Savage

Productions is based in Dublin,

set up Kiera Films DAC in

Strandhill in Sligo on May 6 this

year for their impending horror

genre production, The Ten

Steps, which is backed by Screen

Ireland.

A Sligo base was also found

last year for director (and Screen

Ireland board member) Marian

Quinn’s Janey Films, which had

been based for two decades

in Leitrim (ie not in the ‘Wrap

zone’). This proved useful for

the funding of Quinn’s impending

feature film Della & Jim, which

has also been backed by Screen

Ireland.

Given there’s all the local

lolly for the movie and television

producers, it’s surprising that

Wrap has joined the Western

AV Forum to make “a formal

request to the Irish government”

to extend the Section 481 tax

credit regional uplift on the

grounds that “the Regions

have not benefited from the

intended production increase

and infrastructural development

promised from the initiative”.

Goldhawk reckons that

new arts minister Catherine

Martin’s in-tray is going to be

overflowing with such requests.



SISU’S

BEAUTIFUL

MOVE

WITH HAIRDRESSERS, beauty

salons etc open again for

business, there will be plenty

booking in for their facial

treatments, including those über

popular Botox injections. Not all

beauty clinics have been closed

until this week, however, and

eyebrows were raised (by those

who could move them) when

some operations opened their

doors early last month. One of

these was the “doctor-led” SISU

Clinics.

SISU was established by

moneybags Pat Phelan in

conjunction with Cork brothers

James and Brian Cotter,

who had founded their own

Visage clinics. The three amigos

have obviously aimed high and

managed to raise an impressive

€1m at the end of 2018, with

investors including Dan and

Linda Kiely, who cashed in

big time at business process

outsourcing company Voxpro.

The couple hold their €125,000

stake through their investment

vehicle, Regsont Ltd, which was

sitting on assets of €66m at the

end of 2018 (before the Voxpro

sale was even completed last

year).

SISU now has seven clinics

– including Dublin

city centre,

Killarney and

Cork (the first

one opened) –

which promise to

“bring bespoke

patient care and

unparalleled service

to an industry

awash in unqualified

providers and

dominated by an

‘assembly line’

approach”. Clearly

then, they don’t

rate the competition.

And if you are happy to

stump up the moolah for a visit

to SISU, the good news is that,

apparently, you will not be “a

name on a booking sheet –

you’re a person, and you deserve

nothing but the best”.

Given that the doctors

who work at SISU “possess

unparalleled training”, it is clear

that Phelan and the Cotters

boys are eager to, er, make their

mark.

Linda and Dan Kiely

Prices are not for the fainthearted,

with Botox injections

starting at €170 for one area,

while dermal fillers can set you

back €300 and the ‘Sisu Kiss’

treatment (ie plumping up the

lips) also comes in at €300.

Something called a ‘liquid facelift’,

meanwhile, will set up back a

cool €999. And

for blokes anxious

to get rid of body

hair, SISU will do

a number on your

chest and back, also

for €999.

With prices

like this, it is no

wonder that Phelan

told Web Summit

his group could

become a $½bn

business, with 100

clinics by 2021,

here and in Europe

and the US.

Of course, becoming a $½bn

business requires customers (lots

of them) and SISU was quick off

the mark during the pandemic,

opening its clinics in early June,

despite Tony Holohan’s

recommendation that facilities

providing certain treatments

should not reopen until the

latest phase. SISU, however,

made the decision based on the

fact that, as James Cotter told

the Indo last month, “we are not

a salon, we are a clinic. We only

have doctors performing our

treatments.”

Given that these doctors have

had “unparalleled training” no

less, there was clearly nothing to

worry about.

THE SWISS billionaire owner

of Moyglare Stud in Co Kildare

– Eva Maria Bucher-Haefner

(daughter of the founder, Walter

Haefner) – has been busy lately

with her holding group Moyreal

AG. Her latest investment is

with a Swiss business called

Oases Holdings (where she

has also joined the board),

which specialises in designing

residential facilities for the

elderly. (Eva Marie’s father

lived to the ripe old age of 101.)

Moyreal has a number of

divisions, mostly focused on

real estate, and Frau Haefner

recently explained that the latest

development being undertaken,

outside Lucerne, is a residential

development based on the

principal of car sharing. In

Zurich, a development of ‘tiny

houses’ is under way, which

feature moveable walls.

Here in Ireland it is, of

course, the famous Moyglare

Stud for which Eva Maria is best

known and there are changes

afoot. The Maynooth farm is



synonymous with trainer Dermot

Weld, who has been Moyglare’s

principal trainer since its

establishment, with the team

combining for a host of topclass

victories both at home and

abroad, most recently landing

the Irish St Leger last year with

Search For A Song.

This year, however, there

has been a shift in policy, with

trainers Joseph O’Brien, John

THE BOARD of the Glucksman

Gallery in University College

Cork (UCC) has been beefed

up by the arrival of heavyweight

legal eagle Richard Martin.

And there have also been other

changes courtesy of a new

constitution.

Richard Martin is the

managing partner of Ronan

Daly Jermyn and specialises in

entertainment and media law.

He is also a UCC graduate,

which presumably helped

when it came to

filling the board

vacancy. His other

directorships

include Cork

University

Hospital, the

Cork Chamber of

Commerce and

the Barrymore

Trust, which was

established by

sculptor Ken

Thompson to

develop the castle

as a cultural and

tourist centre.

Last year, the Glucksman

board also saw a new arrival

in the form of the glamorous

Tarka Russell, whose latest

gig is at the Timothy Taylor

Gallery. She was recently

appointed director there

and is overseeing the sales

and curatorial programme

at the gallery’s new London

headquarters in Mayfair. Tarka

is the daughter of Mary Jane

and Philip Russell, formerly

of the impressive Dunkathel

House in Glanmire.

The board of the Glucksman

Gallery is chaired by former

gallery owner, the Londonbased

Lawrence O’Hana,

who is described as managing

director of an art investment

advisory outfit called ayfair

Art Partners. Formerly of

Lehman Brothers, he managed

the infamous bank’s corporate

charitable foundation. (Lehman

Brothers was where Lewis

Glucksman, whose funds helped

build the eponymous gallery,

made his fortune.) O’Hana is

Oxx and Jessica Harrington all

being added to the Moyglare

roster of trainers.

While Weld still appears to be

the main man, with the majority

of the string under his care, the

addition of new trainers to the

team does suggest that a more

even spread of Eva Maria’s

powerful squad of bluebloods

will be the norm in the years to

come.

CHANGES AT THE

GLUCKSMAN GALLERY

Richard Martin

married to Irish artist Laura

Gannon and sits on the board

of Fluxus Art Projects, an

Anglo-French art charity where

Kristin Scott Thomas is

honorary patron.

Apart from assorted UCC

heads, including president

Patrick O’Shea, the other

Glucksman board members

are Doyle Hotels’ Paula

Colgan, artist and lecturer

Brian Fay and American art

writer Nicholas Fox Weber

of the Josef and

Anni Albers

Foundation.

Recently, the

Glucksman board

voted to adapt

the constitution

of the gallery,

with the main

focus being the

emphasis on the

education aspect

of the institution.

This is presumably

linked to the tax

relief available

to donors to cultural bodies

involved in education. The

new memorandum and articles

of association notes first

and foremost that the main

object of the Glucksman is “to

research and educate through

the visual arts”. Previously, the

main object was “to operate the

Lewis Glucksman Art Gallery”.

The new document also

highlights the aim of enabling

“the advancement of education

through student and public

participation in its artistic and

educational programmes”.

The gallery now also has

some impressive sounding

new “subsidiary objects”, such

as providing “a cultural space

for the scholarly investigation

of visual culture” and acting

as “a beacon of culture for

independent thinking” no less.

A more mundane change

is the removal of the article

that stated that “directors shall

not be required to retire by

rotation”, which should help

ensure plenty of new faces in

the years to come.


Craic & Codology •••Craic & Codology •••Craic & Codology •••Craic & Codology

THE IRISH TIMES

Martin reassures the people

Daoine na hÉireann, as your new leader I am

asking you to share my dream and to focus on

the future, and let go of the past.

All that previous stuff about Fine Gael being

a shower of murderous, lying b**tards or a collection

of Irish Tories fashioned in the image of

Al Capone was, of course, mere political banter.

It was the kind of jocular jousting that

seemed to go on forever, but in fact lasted a mere

100 years. It was no more intended to be taken

seriously than us calling the Green Party a timewasting,

barrow load of deluded dreamers and

wilting violets – which they are not any more,

obviously.

It was, of course, all harmless stuff and not to

be confused with the sincere prognosis relevant

to psychopathic Sinn Féin, with whom I will

never ever share power. Unless someday I do.

Leadership is all about honesty and its recently

hired first cousin, integrity.

That is my most important message today

when, as a dedicated Fianna Fáil member, I

follow in the footsteps of legendary icons like

Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern. We are back.

You have nothing to worry about. Go raibh míle

maith agaibh.

OLD TESTAMENT TIME

A Reading from the Book of Houses, Verse 7:

Prophet Damo Predicts Pestilence

And lo, there was at that time

living in a big house in the city a

wealthy prophet, Holy Dermo of

Desmond, who didst claim to see

the future. Great was the fear of

the people when Desmond spoke

for it was known that his moustache

taketh no prisoners.

An angel brought news that

many people would live in new

high-rise tents in the village

for great was the work of the

Emperor Murphy for once. And

on hearing this, a furious trembling

descended on Dermo from

his balded head to his golden

sandals.

Turning to the people, Dermo

sayeth that a great plague would

rise from these tents and destroy

the earth. Locusts would swarm

and rivers of fire would bring

giant rats with two heads that

would carry away babies from

the tents to feed to their young.

Fifty years of floods would then

destroy the crops and all in the

city would perish, sayeth Dermo,

vowing to raise an army of law

makers to smite the tent makers.

But hearing his prophecy, the

people didst not flee. For they

knew that Dermo’s visions were

frequent and another would be

along soon. And great was the

laughter that night in the city.

Summer Reads

Phil Book recommends

5O must-read titles

Roy Keane: Moby Dick

I like to relax by fishing and I can relate to this story of a lad who sets

his sights high and gets his reward. Mind you, if he had that muppet De

Gea minding his net he probably would’ve come away empty handed. Credit

to Ahab, pure class.

Danny Healy-Rae: Alice in Wonderland

I’ll be re-reading the tragic story of a young girleen who falls into a

massive pothole – thanks to a lack of funding for rural road repairs.

The poor thing bangs her head and suffers awful hallucinations, with the

HSE nowhere to be seen. It inspired me to enter politics.

Shane Ross: The Room Where it Happened

Michael Bolton’s foray from music to books has caused quite a stir!

Charting an epic tale of political bumbling in public office, I thought I

might have picked up a draft copy of my autobiography by mistake. I wonder

if that fool will also get voted out this year.

Leo Varadkar: Programme for Government

The latest Leinster House novella has already been hailed by critics as

an “inspired fantasy” and a “classic work of comic fiction”.



Dear Diary…

Micheál Martin’s top secret thoughts

WEDNESDAY

Wow! I’m still afraid that I might wake up and realise it’s all a dream.

Looking at all the posters on my bedroom wall – Dev, Biffo, Bertie – who

would ever have thought that, after so much heartbreak and disappointment,

I would soon be joining my all-time heroes. Yet here I am, hovering

on the edge of the most powerful position on the political stage – and

still only weeks off my 60th birthday – just a kid with a crazy dream.

THURSDAY

Message from the acting Taoiseach, who is equally over the moon that

we’re about to go into government together. So he’s like, “It’s true,

Micheál. We’re job-sharing, so you’re going to be in total charge of just

about everything.” And I’m like, “OMG! You can’t be serious.” Sure, we

have minor policy differences, but Leo and I agree on the major issues –

such as doing U-turns and blaming the Greens for everything.

FRIDAY

The big day’s here at last – and everybody’s completely thrilled for me.

All except the usual stick-in-the-mud spoilsports. No names, but let’s

just call him Éamon Ó C for short. Meanwhile, it’s down to the serious

stuff, with renewed focus on uniting the entire country by immediately

getting rid of all the old ministerial deadwood. Vlad and myself will have

to act fast – and everyone knows that we’re both very good at acting.

Big yikes or what?

FEARS GROW OVER SECOND WAVE

As the country exits lockdown,

concerns are continuing

to grow about a resurgence

in Covid-19 fillers and

think-pieces. One day last

week saw the highest number

of Covid-related speculation

in the Irish Times since

mid-March, whilst there has

also been a notable spike in

the Irish Independent.

“Once the newsroom

gets contaminated, it’s

impossible to stop the

spread,” said one public

health expert. “It starts with

a few small news stories,

then transfers to the feature

pages, where they’ll run articles

on how to buy haz-mat

suits and build an underground

bunker. Once Fintan

O’Toole writes a think-piece,

it’s officially a pandemic.”

Meanwhile, audiences

around the country are being

told to brace themselves

for a fresh round of TV

appearances from Cillian De

Gascun and Luke O’Neill.

LEO WELCOMES

HISTORIC DEAL

“Life is like a box of chocolates – you

never know what you’re gonna get.

Over the past two weeks, I have said

to our membership, ‘If this plane

leaves and you’re not with us, you’ll

regret it. Maybe not today, maybe

not tomorrow, but soon and for the

rest of your life.’

“We need to restart our economy

again and begin visiting great nations

like France to sample their

amazing cuisine. You know what

they call a quarter pounder with

cheese in Paris? They call it a Royale

with Cheese. And let us not forget

the Dutch. You know what they put

on French fries in Holland instead of

ketchup? Mayonnaise. I seen ’em do

it man – they f****n’ drown ’em in

that s**t.”

The Forty Shades of Green

I close my eyes and picture all the piles of votes saying ‘yes’.

From the fishing port at Dingle and the village of Recess

From the banks of the river Shannon and from

the folks at Skibbereen

From the moorlands and the midlands came those

forty shades of green

Chorus: All together now…

But most of all I love those votes from Tipperary town

And I thank the Lord we didn’t need the votes of Co Down

And now we want to see and do

Great things that have never been seen.

Wind energy as sweet as Shalimar

‘cos there’s forty shades of green



Covid-19 update:

Relief as gangs of drunks

set to return to streets

Ireland was poised to celebrate

the easing of Covid-19 restrictions

last night as thousands of

drinkers looked forward to the

re-opening of pubs.

“I can’t wait to collapse

against someone’s car on the

way home again before sliding

in a heap into the gutter while

talking complete shite,” promised

a 26-year-old milkman in

Clare.

“It hasn’t been the same

crawling to the bathroom at

home,” concurred a young

nurse in Wicklow. “When

I vomit on a night out, my

friends capture it on their

phones.”

Meanwhile in Galway, urinating

gangs were rehearsing

for... (That’s enough good news

for one day – Ed.)

Ó Cuív and Martin disagree

on coalition arrangement

Ó Cuív

Our historic role as

leaders will be greatly

diminished.

We’ll plummet in

the polls.

Nonsense! We’re too far

down already to plummet.

Their record on housing and

social equality is abysmal.

There have to be alternatives...

Rubbish. Leo says I can drive

and he’ll take a back seat.

See? We do have

things in common!

No way! It’s Taoiseach

or bust for me! Woohoo!

Martin

EXCLUSIVE TO ALL PAPERS

Man applies for

Eurogroup

President job

A leading Irish politician has put

his name forward for consideration

to become the next president of

the Eurogroup.

On other pages

Pope Francis keen to continue as

Catholic Pontiff – p2

Bears eager to defecate in new

wooded areas – p3

Pics of Paschal looking particularly

smug – p4

Seating will be in short

supply on public transport

as restrictions ease

– meaning it’s business

as usual, according to a

report. Delays, overpricing

and crumbling

infrastructure will further

contribute to a sense

of normality returning, the study

suggests.

Goldhawk’s Drive-Thru

cinema is delighted to be

screening these classic

movies over the coming

weeks:

The Green Mile

A very innocent man (Eamon

Ryan) is counting down the

days to his political death

sentence. In a cruel twist, he

is informed that his electric

chair is powered by renewable

energy.

Field of Dreams

The Saint of Abbotstown,

Niall Quinn, dreams of turning

the FAI into a cathedral

of soccer, but is constantly

hampered in his attempts by

embarrassing ghosts such as

Saipan, John Delaney etc.

The Boxer

Boxing promoter Daniel is

sucker punched when his

friend for life Tyson Fury

announces that they will

be parting ways. Can he

convince the big man that he

deserves another shot?

PUBLIC TRANSPORT LATEST

“New measures to

combat Covid-19 on

public transport could

lead to frustration, stress

and anger – all feelings

Irish commuters are

very familiar with. There

will be little discernible

difference to the prepandemic

experience, which was

already a dystopian nightmare.”

Craic & Codology •••Craic & Codology


Win a €100 Free Bet which can be used in

any of Paddy Power’s betting shops nationwide

Luke Kelly statue

favourites

Scribble Box

Favourite film: American Graffiti

Favourite song: Paint It Black, Rolling Stones

Favourite TV show: Give My Head Peace

Favourite band: Massive Attack

Favourite tribe: Vandals

Favourite animal: Copycat

Favourite exercise: Mind-boggling

Favourite musician: Tom Petty

Criticism of Comic Relief

‘no laughing matter’ says RTÉ

RTÉ has confirmed that there were

no in-house audiences for any of

the studio-based ‘comic’ sketches

during Covid Relief. All the laughter

was dubbed.

A number of charities that were

supposed to benefit from the event

under the slogan “Laugh and make

a donation” say they do not expect

to earn very much from the whole

shebang as there was very little to

laugh at other than the oxymoronic

reference to “the cream of Irish

comedy”.

“If that was the cream, it left a

“There are two more hiding over here.”

Reluctant Comic Relief participants are rounded

up. (Spoiler: this is yet another weak joke)

very sour taste,” said one aspiring

writer (Verity Droll, aged 7) in

what was the best joke of the night.

LOOKALIKES

Col Sanders

Distributes heart-stopping material

John Bolton

Writes exposés on Trump

ACROSS

1 Bush admitted Republican leader then turned into

something that was much the same. (5)

4 Are all of us back in the boat to describe seaboard

from Kerry to Donegal? (7)

8 Spoor left by wildcats and other feral carnivorous

fauna. (4)

9 Holding dear iconic rebel leading Irish 1916

rebellion and drawing in Huguenot leader. (10)

10 Is denizen of banks’ involvement with Irish gents a

need to make changes after leaving factory? (8)

11 The exam is, as crudely put by the lads, just like

having a ball along with a couple of Nazi grandees.

(6)

13 Sometimes in a school, a wide-eyed monster will

give the principal a bad beating! (10)

16 Ends up praying for less reduction from a state of

limping. (4)

17 Fish caught just when finishing angling off the coast

(4)

18 Personal journal has entry of writer in elite Nazi

unit going there just for drugs. (10)

20 Please make changes, though not during a wake! (6)

22 Are early PLO riots like kids do with Cops &

Robbers, Cowboys & Indians or Nurses & Doctors?

(4-4)

24 The mahatma’s foot problem could have developed,

we’ve been told, in a maze. (6,4)

26 Manage, when I enter, to utterly destroy the

concern. (4)

27 Frolics about innocently like youngsters do, though

it sounds as if one plays for money. (7)

28 From the Mexican border to the Canadian border,

she has the rest of North America at heart. (5)

PLEASE PRINT CLEARLY

Crossword by Procrustes

DOWN

Name .......................................................................................

Address ...................................................................................

.............................................................................................

.............................................................................................

Tel No ......................................................................................

E-mail ......................................................................................

Closing date: Fri 26 Jun

Post only to: CROSSWORD

COMPETITION,

Phoenix Magazine,

44 Lr Baggot St,

Dublin 2, Ireland

1 Though known to very few, sign predicts

they will be found in all sorts of company.

(11)

2 Go off on a helicopter flight, up and down,

or become part of it? (5)

3 One rugby player between Nos. 9 and 15

was dismissed, but as a strategy, that didn’t

work out! (9)

4 See them swelter in agitation as they struggle

to come to grips with a difficult problem. (7)

5 It may not be enough for her to circumvent

minimum dress code requirements in Saudi

Arabia. (5)

6 Having seen a ship wrecked, shipwrecked

holy man wrote to these people. (9)

7 It sounds as if there won’t be any for her, in

order to get this right. (3)

12 Just gone astray in Spain and Portugal, not

because of having had too much to drink.

(11)

14 It’s elementary: the girl and I will be

embraced by mother. (9)

15 They are stormy wild glens, yet lots of

people live in them. (9)

19 Clergyman lectures Rome’s Poles who have

gone wrong, for their own good! (7)

21 Having had a volume to drink from tap

ring for a ride. For us, that’s a horse of a

different colour! (5)

23 Legendary character from an ancient city and

a modern one. (5)

25 Managed to contain a tired old horse that

one would go on again and again. (3)

LAST ISSUE’S SOLUTION:

Across: 1. Cameo. 4. Quality. 8. Smug. 9. Laid to rest. 10.

Finalist. 11. Rheums. 13. Calculates. 16. Iona. 17. Zion. 18.

Scrap heaps. 20. Angina. 22. Schedule. 24. Ambassador.

26. Lute. 27. Breathe. 28. Stays. Down: 1. Combination. 2.

Magma. 3. Oil-fields. 4. Quintet. 5. Astir. 6. Israelite. 7. Yes.

12. Manipulates. 14. Candidate. 15. Sapphires. 19. Rushdie.

21. Asset. 23. Delta. 25. Mob.

LAST ISSUE’S WINNER: Michael Lee, Co Cork


Stocks & Shares

Providence Resources’

strange deal with

SpotOn Energy

TONY O’REILLY Jnr has had an eventful career and the

end came last December with Providence share price

sitting at 5c, having peaked at €7 back in 2012. Not too

unexpectedly, O’Reilly Jnr resigned from his €470,000

pa job, but managed to walk away from the cash-strapped

company with a €954,000 payoff. Now, it looks like further

regime change will be necessary if Providence is finally to

deliver on the back of its huge Barryroe field. Surprisingly,

a £1 company turns up at the centre of the latest proposal,

while the big shareholder in Providence – Nick Furlong’s

Pageant Holdings – is described as a “related party” in the

context of the latest fundraising exercise.

The chairman for the last

four years, Pat Plunkett, has

clearly been tarnished by all

the recent failures, in particular

the wasting of the

€70m funds Providence

raised in June 2016 at a

share price of 16c and

his signing off on the

farm-out agreement

with the Chinese Apec

consortium, which

turned out to be a

paper-bag company.

The chairman has also

had to declare that he

is not an independent

director because of

his involvement in T5, an

exploration company that has

failed to get off the ground

since he founded it seven years

ago but which, inevitably, puts

him in conflict with Providence.

Clearly, the bruised

shareholders are tired of the

whole project and pushed for

regime change, resulting in all

the staff being laid off in August

2019, including Providence’s

chief technical officer for the

last nine years, John O’Sullivan.

Pageant Holdings led the

charge. It is now Providence’s

largest shareholder with a 15%

stake and invested in the two

share placings over the last year.

This was also true of the UK

Kite Lake Capital Management,

which doubled its proportionate

shareholding to just on 10%,

while the Merseyside Pension

Fund moved its shareholding

up from 7.2% to 7.8%. M&G

Investments allowed itself to be

diluted, from being the largest

shareholder at just on 15% to a

€

0.14

0.12

0.10

0.08

0.06

0.04

0.02

0

Jul

holding of 11.8%, and Goldman

Sachs surprisingly left the field

along with the Marlborough

fund, which had just on 5%,

PROVIDENCE

Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

and the giant BlackRock group,

which had held 3.5%.

The big four shareholders

– Pageant, M&G, Kite Lake

and Merseyside – sit on a

combined 45% stake, having

put up most of the €3.4m

raised in September 2019 at

5p and the €3m raised this

April at 1.5p. They are clearly

dictating events, in particular

the appointment of Alan Linn

as CEO in January, a somewhat

surprising move given his

credentials.

Linn is a chemical engineer

rather than a geologist or a

geophysicist. He did work for

big companies like Exxon,

Lasmo and Cairn, but not at

a really senior level. In 2008,

however, he joined ROC Oil

as COO and rose to CEO in

2010. In 2014, the company lost

€31m and was suspended from

the Australian Stock Exchange

in January the following year.

Linn exited in March

2015 and became CEO of the

distressed African oil and gas

company Afren, amid talk of a

recapitalisation plan. This led

nowhere fast and Afren went

into administration in July 2015

and was delisted from

the London Stock

Exchange. In 2017,

Linn moved to Third

Energy as COO but,

“following a strategic

review of the business,

the decision was made

to divest the offshore

business and focus on

the onshore”. Linn

ended up as CEO of the

onshore business in July

2019, but jumped ship

six months later to join

Providence this January.

Linn has no particular

insight into the group’s Irish

offshore prospects and, as a

chemical engineer, it is hard

to know how he would be able

to oversee a strategy in the

Atlantic rather than follow

the instructions of the major

shareholders, who clearly have

decided that Providence’s whole

focus should be on its Barryroe

oil field.

This makes it easier to

understand why Linn has

outsourced the management

of Barryroe to a Norwegian

consortium, SpotOn Energy,

which stumped up just £0.5m in

the recent placing and was given

a contract that offers SpotOn

“exclusivity until 31st October

2020” to assess the potential of

the Barryroe field and agree

farm-out terms.

SpotOn Energy is a tiny

£1 offshore oil and gas field

development advisory company

of no financial substance, which

Alan Linn

claims to have contacts in the

industry and the ability to bring

significant experienced drilling

and exploration companies to

the table. It characterises itself

as “a new breed of oil and gas

development and production

company”. For Providence

shareholders, this may sound a

bit like Apec, which promised

a $200m five-well drilling

programme that it said it would

achieve by bringing together

a consortium of drilling,

development, production and

finance companies.

At least with Apec,

shareholders knew the terms

on offer. Under the deal

signed in April, SpotOn Energy

agreed “a non-binding and

non-exclusive heads of terms”

that nevertheless gives it “a

period of exclusivity” for just on

six months. During this time,

SpotOn will “seek to agree an

appraisal work programme for

the Barryroe field and develop

commercial terms with the

aim of concluding a binding

farm-out agreement within that

period”.

Insofar as this means

anything, it means that SpotOn

will essentially be doing Alan

Linn’s job.

It is unclear if Linn had any

links to SpotOn before he took

the Providence job, but this

Continued on page 26

Reference the Market Abuse

Regulations 2005, nothing

published by Moneybags in

this section is to be taken as a

recommendation, either implicit

or explicit, to buy or sell any of

the shares mentioned.

Perfect storm

hammers Hammerson

shareholders

HAMMERSON PLC (owner of Dundrum Town Centre)

is the most significant retail property investor in this

country. However, CEO David Atkins stepped down last

month and the board is undergoing dramatic changes

as the company finds itself in a perfect storm. The

shareholders have seen the share price collapse and they

will be particularly concerned to hear that a paltry 14% of

UK shopping centre tenants had paid their second-quarter

rent by the deadline, while last week’s failure of the giant

Intu shopping centre group significantly ups the ante.

Hammerson is the secondlargest

UK prime shopping gross rent roll.

spaces, generating a €50m pa

centre operator, controlling With an annual footfall of

20% of the top 50 UK centres, 20 million, Dundrum is by

not far behind Intu, which far the busiest Irish shopping

has 28% of the top 50. The centre and it came with the

former attempted to take over benefit of the original six-acre

Intu two years ago but, luckily Dundrum shopping arcade,

as it turns out, pulled back at built 40 years ago and, crucially,

the last minute because of the with planning permission for

latter’s huge borrowings and a further one million sq ft. If

the possible significant adverse developed, this would bring

impact of Brexit, never mind the total Dundrum Town

the structural drift of retail Centre complex to a total of

sales to online shopping. 2.5 million sq ft and rank it

But Atkins and the David up there with the biggest in

Tyler-chaired board were also Europe.

responsible, however,

for rejecting a 635p

per share offer for

Hammerson in 2018 by

French giant Klepierre.

(Today the share price

is 87% down on that

figure.)

At one level,

Hammerson thought

it had landed on its

feet in Ireland and,

as soon as it got full

control, it jacked up

Pence sterling

300

250

200

150

100

50

the Dundrum Town Centre’s

car park rates by 50% from

(€2 to €3). With its 3,400 carpark

spaces, this move yielded

an immediate hefty return,

although may not exactly be

in keeping with Hammerson’s

stated vision to “create vibrant

continually evolving spaces in

and around thriving cities…

to deliver value for all our

stakeholders and to create a

positive and sustainable impact

for generations to come”.

The car-park hike also made

the Nama deal look pretty good

value for the British outfit,

adding an additional €5m pa

income stream, which, on the

basis of the exit multiple paid,

was worth €165m.

Dundrum was anchored

by a prime tenant portfolio

– including Harvey Nicholls,

House of Fraser, Marks &

Spencer and Penneys – with

120 retail units in all, as well

as 38 restaurants, a 12-screen

cinema and 3,400 car-park

HAMMERSON

To date, however, other

than getting planning

permission for 105 apartments

adjoining the new centre area,

Hammerson has not activated

this phase-two element of the

whole project.

Of course, the British giant

has had to contend with a

number of shocks, like the pull

out of the big Hamleys toy store

and the refusal of Smyths to

replace it on the grounds of

excessive rents.

Mike Ashley’s long-fingering

of a decision about the

future of the huge 120,000

sq ft space occupied by the

(insolvent) House of Fraser

was an even bigger blow. The

so-called ‘company voluntary

arrangement’ approved by

creditors allowed Ashley to

cancel the lease at any time

he wanted and (no doubt

encouraged by Hammerson)

operated for two years without

paying rent. Last year, however,

he threw in the towel and left

Stocks & Shares

Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

Hammerson with an empty

space and a big headache.

This issue has been partly

resolved by Brown Thomas

agreeing to lease the bottom

two floors of the fourstorey

House of Fraser

store and, presumably,

the Westons are paying

nothing like the €50

per sq ft previously

charged for big prime

retail space like this and

may well have got a year

or two rent free for the

60,000 sq ft.

Dundrum Town

Centre’s Irish manager,

Don Nugent, thought

he had got Penneys to move

from its current 36,000 sq ft on

the ground floor to occupy the

upper two floors of the House

of Fraser unit, but Covid-19

scuppered the deal for the

60,000 sq ft space.

The €50m rent roll attached

to Dundrum makes it clearly


David Atkins

the prime asset in the portfolio

bought by Hammerson. The

500,000 sq ft Swords Pavilion

shopping centre is nothing

like as significant as Dundrum

and the rent roll is only €13m

(and it is only 50% owned),

but it did come with a 16-acre

adjoining development site.

Again Hammerson has done

nothing to progress this.

In the centre of Dublin, the

ILAC Centre just off Henry

Street is also only 50% owned.

This 155,000 sq ft development

is a lot smaller than the other

two and generates a gross rent

of €8m. Again, this asset came

with the adjoining five-acre site

Joe O’Reilly and Liam Maye

assembled on O’Connell Street

on which they were going to

build a huge one million sq

ft retail development centre.

Hammerson has done relatively

little here to really push this

Continued on page 26


Providence continued from page 24

matter (along with Linn’s as

yet undisclosed salary) needs

to be clarified by Plunkett

at Providence’s AGM in the

Leopardstown Clayton Hotel

on July 20. What must also be

made clear to shareholders

are the precise terms of the

SpotOn deal. If successful, what

does SpotOn get out of the

arrangement?

INDUSTRY SECRET

Plunkett did tell his

shareholders in the April

placing document that

“SpotOn Energy is a Norwegian

company… with extensive

experience designing and

constructing semi-submersible

drilling rigs for North Sea

deployment and also in the

design, development and

asset integrity management

of offshore facilities”. It has

certainly been a very well-kept

secret in the industry that

SpotOn constructs “semisubmersible

drilling rigs” –

something that requires a giant

shipyard and around $250m.

What should also be raised

at the AGM is the note in the

recent placing document, which

discloses that Furlong’s Pageant

Holdings not only subscribed

for 40 million new shares but is

also “a related party”. It is not

disclosed who Furlong/Pageant

is related to in this context

and how it may concern Alan

Linn or SpotOn Energy. Many

shareholders had felt reassured

that Furlong was an outsider

driving the regime change at

Providence – something badly

needed, especially in light of

the $1bn flushed away on failed

drills down the years.

Plunkett signed off on

the Druid and Dunbeg $45m

drilling flop and the 2018

Chinese Apec deal but, while

everyone else is gone, the

chairman somehow remains

in situ. The fact that he

was responsible for finding

Linn is unlikely to instil too

much confidence either and

shareholders need to ask some

serious questions at the AGM.

What keeps Providence

shareholders involved today is

that the company controls the

Barryroe oil and gas field, one

of the biggest undeveloped oil

discoveries in Europe. Over the

decades, it has been successfully

drilled five times. In October

2011, Providence (80%) and

Lansdowne Oil and Gas (20%)

drilled what is known as the

48/24/10 appraisal well, which

was a gusher.

Tony O’Reilly Jnr and John

O’Sullivan raised €65m in 2012

on the back of this drilling

success at €6.90 a share and

then raised a further €28m

in March 2015 at 34c a share

(a 94% discount on the 2012

placing), followed by a further

€60m in 2016 at an additional

discounted price of 15c a share.

This came to over €150m from

2012 to 2016. This money

should have been used to

Stocks & Shares

develop Barryroe, rather than

wasted on wildcat drilling.

Though shareholders were

battered by these significant

placings at hugely discounted

share prices, the further share

placing last September at 5p

share, topped up by the one in

April this year at 1.5p a share,

have virtually wiped out all the

original shareholders.

With what looks like

300 million barrels of oil

recoverable in Barryroe and

production costs of around

$26 a barrel, at the current

depressed oil price of $42 a

barrel, Providence is looking

at a potential profit of just on

Pat Plunkett

$5bn. Post-Covid, the price

should slowly return to its

natural $70 a barrel, resulting

in a potential profit of $13bn.

Then there is the one trillion

cubic ft of gas worth a gross

$10bn. With production costs of

$2 per 1,000 cubic ft, Barryroe

could deliver a potential $8bn

profit from gas alone.

The shares are at a miserable

4c, at which price Providence

is capitalised at €25m. Even

at 40c they would still look

cheap but, if Nick Furlong

wants to really cash in on his

investment, it seems inevitable

that further regime change will

be necessary.

Hammerson continued from page 25

project forward and, thanks

to the pandemic, it may not

happen for some time.

The purchase of these three

retail interests was carried out

in a 50% joint venture with

Allianz, with the net cost to

Hammerson of €910m.

EXPANSION

One of the sectors that

Hammerson focuses on is

specialist fashion ‘retail value’

centres or ‘villages’ and the

acquisition of Kildare Village

fitted with this strategy. The

50% interest in this 170,000

sq ft retail centre was acquired

in December 2015 and is

undergoing a €65m, 60,000 sq

ft expansion.

In recent times, Hammerson

has been trying to react to

the shift of retail to online

spending by strategically

focusing more on giant multielement

retail centres offering

more than shopping, with

substantial entertainment and

food offerings. The company

has been offloading smaller

centres, but its net debt is a still

significant €2.5bn.

Capital values for retail

space have been hugely

impacted by the drift online as

well as Brexit (and now Covid-

19 must be taken into account).

Last year, Hammerson had

to reduce the gross value of

its retail property by €1.3bn,

including a €140m write-off of

the value of Dundrum Town

Centre. This cut its net asset

value per share down from

over £7 a share to just on £6 a

share, while the share price has

been taking an awful beating,

plummeting from a peak of £17

at the top of the last boom in

March 2007 to a current price

of just over 84p, where shares

are trading on a whopping 86%

discount to asset value.

Of course, that net asset

value is meaningless in

the current post-Covid-19

environment, which has

dramatically accelerated the

fall in the share price, down

72% since the start of the year

alone. This scale of share price

collapse could tempt some

brave investors in, given that

UK retail is reopening.

There has to be, however,

a real concern that big players

like Hammerson will pay a

very hefty price in the current

climate. A survey by the UK

property outfit Re-Leased,

published last week, revealed

that a miniscule 14% of

shopping centre tenants had

paid their second-quarter rents

by the June 24 deadline.

Dundrum Town Centre

The collapse of the biggest

player in the UK’s shopping

centre game, Intu, meanwhile,

could see a firesale of retail

centres that would further

depress asset values at

Hammerson.

For a company without a

CEO and a rapidly shrinking

share price, these are scary

times.



SPORT OF KINGS

LUKE COMER’S

FORM BOOK

LUKE COMER doesn’t appeal

as a candidate for champion

trainer this season if the exploits

of his early season runners

are anything to go by. He may

yet have a tilt at

the Irish St Leger

though.

Comer

unleashed a number

of last autumn’s

expensive purchases

in the opening

few weeks of the

season, but heavy

defeats were

inflicted on the vast

majority, despite

several showing

high levels of ability

for their previous

trainers.

Fan Club Rules, a £70,000 buy

last October, was a consistent

performer for previous

connections (only once finishing

outside the top four) but, on his

Luke Comer

first two starts for Comer, he has

been beaten a total of almost 75

lengths in sprint races. Similarly,

All The King’s Men, a winner on

his penultimate start for Aidan

O’Brien last October, before

being purchased by Comer for

,000, finished last on his

stable debut.

The one beacon of hope

for the moneybags property

developer was the performance

of Broad Street, one of only

two of his 20 or so runners

so far to have posted a topthree

placing, finishing third at

the Curragh. Formerly trained

by Dermot Weld for Prince

Khalid Abdullah’s

Juddmonte Farms,

Broad Street was

picked up by

Comer during the

same Newmarket

shopping spree

last October for

£65,000. If his

owner doesn’t

over-face the

horse, he could

prove a decent

money spinner.

Comer has a

habit of getting excited if one of

his charges shows some promise,

regularly tilting at windmills in

major races when the horse

could be winning if kept in its

own grade. The Galwayman also

likes nothing more than having

runners in races he sponsors, so

it is not beyond the bounds of

possibility that we will see Broad

Street charting a course towards

the Group 1 Comer Groupsponsored

Irish St Leger at the

Curragh in September.

FAMILIAR

SOUNDTRACK

AT THE

CURRAGH

THE IRISH Derby weekend at

the Curragh took place alongside

a now familiar soundtrack, akin

to Heuston Station, as the wind

whistled through the €80m

grandstand causing a screech of

alarming decibels.

The design issue that causes

the eerie whine came to light

last year soon after the grand

opening and racegoers assumed

it would have been rectified over

the winter. However, whatever

modifications were put in place

were outmanoeuvred by the

strength and direction of the

weekend breezes.

Probably the biggest talking

point over the three days arose

out of the €,000 fine handed

out by the stewards to trainer

Denis Hogan over the running

of the Noel Hayes-owned

Narynkol. Narynkol finished a

close fourth under very tender

handling from apprentice rider

Alan Glynn, who claimed that

he got his whip tangled in the

horse’s mane, which prevented

him from giving the 50/1 shot a

more vigorous ride.

The stewards did not accept

this as a valid excuse and banned

the rider for 12 days, while also

imposing the hefty fine on Hogan

over the alleged breach of the

non-trier rule 212.

Hogan has indicated his

intention to appeal the fine and

it could be a busy period for him

on the appeals front. The Irish

Horeseracing Regulatory Board

investigation is continuing its

inquiry into Tony The Gent’s run

at Dundalk in March, when two

Hogan runners finished in the

order that a late betting plunge

suggested they could, despite the

differential in the rating of each

horse.

Elsewhere at the Curragh,

the ironically named Godolphin

filly Feminism would have been

a topical winner of the maiden

on Friday, but was beaten

just a head by the Jessica

Harrington-trained Bearberry.

Given Sheikh Mohammed al

Maktoum’s high-profile marital

issues in the past six months, it is

surprising the naming of this filly

wasn’t deemed a tad sensitive for

his highness.


MONEY H MONEY H MONEY H MONEY H MONEY H MONEY H MONEY H MONEY

Hot Water

Brigade

Key Collections

locked out

WITH THE pandemic causing

havoc in the tourism sector,

it is perhaps not surprising

that some businesses are

suffering coronavirus-related

side effects. Nevertheless,

the winding up last week of

short-term let operator Key

Collections comes

as a bit of a shock.

The company

behind Key

Collections

is Roomyield

Hospitality Ltd,

which was set up

by Nina Gillett

and Sheila

O’Riordan in

2011 to run

hotel, apartments

and short-term

lets. It grew

rapidly, especially in Dublin,

before expanding to

Carrick-on-Shannon and also

London. With Airbnb-style

accommodation seen as

a money-spinner for all

concerned, Key Collections

looked like a pretty safe bet

and the last accounts filed

showed accumulated profits

GOLDHAWK spied a

couple of companies being

readied for striking off by

the Companies Office. They

turned out to be linked to

Monaco-based Corkman Rick

Delaney, whose Aqua Blue

Sport professional cycling

team recently careered off

the track, despite some

pretty big bucks having been

pumped in (see The Phoenix

5/6/20).

Delaney’s Aqua Blue Sport

collapsed into liquidation last

month after the moneybags

pulled the plug on his

forgettable cycling adventure,

which had been a troubled

one from shortly after the

2016 unveiling of his team.

While the funding model

was based on income from

his e-commerce cycling

equipment operation,

sponsorship was also a

key factor and Delaney

encountered major issues

here. Combined with

difficulties in getting invites

Sheila O’Riordan (left) and

Nina Gillett

at the end of 2017 of €2.2m.

However, those figures are

well out of date at this stage.

Gillett and O’Riordan were

presumably concerned about

the future direction of Key

Collections given the change

of environment in relation to

short-term accommodation

in the last couple of years.

The government issued a

memo to Dublin City Council

(DCC) asking it to consider

“protecting the existing stock

of residential property in areas

of high demand” when ruling

on planning applications for

short-term lets.

The first major run-in

related to the attempt by

Roomyield

Hospitality

to lease out

housing units

at the Chancery

Hall apartment

complex in D7

on a short-term

basis. DCC ruled

that the complex

was intended

for private

residential use

only, rather than

any short-term

letting, and Gillett

and O’Riordan appealed the

decision to An Bord Pleanála

through the subsidiary

company Sacreto Ltd.

Last year, the appeal board

upheld the council’s decision,

which meant that full planning

permission was required for

a change of use to short-term

to big races and a row with

the Italian manufacturer of

Aqua Blue Sport’s racing

bikes, it wasn’t long before

the wheels came

off.

The ride

got even

bumpier when

the company

appeared on the

list of Revenue

defaulters,

having been hit

for €118,000

(for underdeclaration

of

VAT).

According to

the last accounts

filed for Aqua Blue, covering

the year to December 2017,

accumulated losses stood at

€4.6m, with directors owed

€2.8m and a further €1.8m

owed to Delaney’s British

Virgin Islands-registered

entity, Aurys Investments Ltd.

A small sum in the

accounts concerned a

letting. The problem, of

course, is that DCC is in no

mood to grant permission for

Airbnb-style accommodation

these days, given the extent

of the housing crisis. And

the arrival of Covid-19 on the

scene has delivered a second

hammer blow, with the market

for such accommodation

practically disappearing

overnight.

On April 24 last, Gillett

stepped down from the board

of Roomyield Hospitality

Ltd and her 50% stake was

acquired by the company,

according to documents filed

in the Companies Office

last month. It is not clear

what O’Riordan paid for

Gillett’s shares, but last week’s

liquidation suggests they were

worth zilch.

Last month, the Sunday

Lisa Delaney’s jarring experience

Rick Delaney

company called Jar Water

Ltd, which owed Aqua Blue

Sport a paltry €3,000. It

had registered the Aqua

Blue business

name way back

in 2003 and

Rick’s wife, Lisa

Delaney (then

with an address

in Rochestown,

Cork), registered

the name for use

in a partnership

a year later. Jar

Water has now

been listed for

striking off by

the Companies

Office, as has its

parent company, Jar Water

Holdings Ltd.

This latter is owned by

Lisa Delaney and it turns out

it had built up accumulated

losses of €4.4m by the end

of 2017, although financial

assets (listed investments)

were valued at a whopping

€11m at the time and the

Times reported that Gillett

had purchased a 65% stake in

Hotel St George on Parnell

Square, D1, with backing from

Bank of Ireland. Moreover,

she also bought Roomyield’s

equity in Seylene Ltd, the

subsidiary company that has

the contract to run the St

George.

Given the high standing of

Key Collections in the tourism

sector, its winding up will

significantly increase anxiety

among players in this sector.

Danny Kenny’s

low bar

A COMPANY called Midnight

Entertainment Ltd is to be

wound up at the end of this

week. The owner here turns

share capital was standing at

over €15m.

Lisa Delaney herself owed

Jar Water Holdings €375,000

at the end of 2017, while

there are various dealings

highlighted with what

are described as ‘related

companies’. These include

a sum of €223,000 owed

by Jar Water Holdings to

PM Principle Marketing

Ltd, which turns out to be

registered in Cyprus.

Not too far from Cyprus,

Malta is the base for two

number crunchers –

Reginald Meli Attard and

Theresa Al Aswad – who are

listed as directors, along with

Lisa Delaney, of Jar Water

Holdings.

Lisa’s own address

changed from Victoria

Palace on Boulevard

Princesse Charlotte in

Monaco to nearby Le Simon

on Boulevard Du Jardin

Exotique.

Sounds delightful.



out to be an interesting

chap by the name of Danny

Kenny, with an address in

Knocknacarra Park, Galway.

He has had his fair share of

adventures.

Midnight Entertainment

found itself in a spot of bother

in 2015, resulting in Kenny

being given a six-month

suspended sentence in Galway

District Court for operating

what Judge Mary Fahy

described as “a shebeen”. She

said the licensing laws were

being flouted and Kenny had

sought to justify his actions

by claiming that the 4 Aces

Casino was a private members

club.

Kenny

objected in court

to the claim that

he had wines,

beer, spirits and

cider for sale

without a licence

and said that

those who paid

€30 to enter the

premises were

members of a

private club,

which was not

subject to the

normal restrictions on serving

alcohol.

Fahy, however, observed

that “the most salubrious clubs

in Stephen’s Green don’t

charge that amount”. She

said a genuine casino would

have the appropriate licence,

noting, “It is outrageous that

this man could run a place like

this – a shebeen – and expect

the court, or any court, to

accept that he was running a

bona fide club.”

Gardaí raided the premises,

having had the 4 Aces under

observation for some time,

and removed three van loads

of alcohol. Enquiries with

the District Court revealed


there were no registered

clubs at the address, although

Midnight Entertainment was

registered there, with Kenny

listed as a director and 100%

shareholder.

Judge Fahy sentenced

Kenny to six months, despite

it being a first offence, but

suspended it for two years.

In 2017, the company itself

was also charged with selling

alcohol without a licence

and, when the case came

before Judge Fahy, Midnight

Entertainment asked for the

judge to recuse herself on

the basis of comments made

in the previous hearing. Fahy

refused and the

matter ended up

in the High Court

in March last

year before Judge

Charles Meenan,

who quashed

Fahy’s decision not

to recuse herself.

Now, Midnight

Entertainment is

to be liquidated

as a result of

losses incurred

Judge Mary Fahy although, as

recently as the end

of last year, the accounts

for Midnight Entertainment

showed accumulated profits

of over €½m, with a profit

recorded in 2019 of more that

€120,000. Those remarkably

healthy-looking accounts were

signed off on March 11 this

year, immediately ahead of the

Covid-19 shutdown of pubs

and clubs.

The outing in Galway

District Court was not Kenny’s

first brush with the law. Some

10 years earlier, as part of the

nationwide Operation Quest,

Kenny found himself in the

same setting following a raid by

gardaí on a lap-dancing club

called Angels in Upper Salthill.

The company behind

Angels was Fat Chef Catering

Ltd, where the principal was

Dublin-based Patrick O’Keeffe,

while Danny Kenny was

Hot Water Brigade continued on page 30



Hot Water Brigade continued from page 29

employed as head of security

and general manager, and the

manager was Galway-based

Michael Clarke.

A more recent

Galway District

Court outing

concerned The

Lantern pub

in Ballybane,

where Kenny’s

Kingu Kongu Ltd

held the licence

for almost four

years, during

which time there

were numerous

public-order

incidents brought

to the attention of gardaí,

including a number of serious

ones.

As a result, An Garda

Síochána objected to the

renewal of the licence in

November last year, with

Judge Fahy (again) refusing

to renew the licence – a ruling

that earned her a round of

applause from local residents

who had objected.

However, the issue was

complicated by the fact that,

after the gardaí had served

notice of their intention to

object to the licence renewal

and before the hearing in

Judge Fahy’s court, the licence

had been transferred from

Kingu Kongu back to the

property’s owner, Mary Lydon.

As a result, on appeal to

the circuit court, Judge James

McCourt overturned Fahy’s

ruling and renewed the

licence, although he noted

that it seemed to be the case

that Kenny was not a fit person

to manage a pub.

In court, the state argued

that, if a drinks’ licence could

be renewed simply because

the person who had been

operating it had given up

the lease, no renewal could

ever really be objected to

by the gardaí. For his part,

Kenny told the court he was

not involved in the day-to-day

running of The Lantern.

The licence was

surrendered to Lydon in

September last year, the same

month that Kingu Kongu

was placed in liquidation.

Kenny was again the 100%

shareholder here and the

December 2018 accounts

showed that the company

was in the red to the tune of

€50,000 at that time.

Another Kenny company

in liquidation is Magic Club

Ltd, which registered the

business name Le Paradis Club

(described as a ‘gentleman’s

club’) back in 2007. In April

2010, Midnight Club (100%

4 Aces Casino

owned by Kenny) collapsed

into liquidation and, shortly

afterwards, the name Le

Paradis Club was registered to

another company

– Twilight Sports

& Social Club Ltd

– which is owned

since February

this year by one

Danny Kenny.

Until earlier

this year, the

100% shareholder

was listed as

Romanian

national Gianina

Manalla, who

stepped down as

a director when

Kenny was appointed on

February 17 last along with his

son, Patrick Kenny.

Le Paradis at one stage had

operated as a lap-dancing club

on Galway’s Upper Dominick

Street (across the street from

the 4 Aces Casino) and it is

unclear what plans Kenny

has for the business name

now that he has it again. Will

it be as eventful as his other

ventures?

The Phoenix Vol.38 No.13

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