Monthly Archives: October 2012

Mattress Mick

Junior finance minister Brian Hayes.

In an interview with the Irish Independent, junior finance minister Brian Hayes said the deal would not be extended in December’s Budget, and buyers must act before the “train will have left the station”.

“”This is an offer of a lifetime, it won’t come again,” …All our futures are based on getting the property market going again. People need to act fast to avail of it.””


First-Time Home Buyers Told To take €5,000 ‘Deal Of A Llifetime’ (Independent.ie)

A framed raffle ticket for the Magdalane Laundry, Gloucester Street [now Sean McDermott Street], Dublin,

The Magdalene asylum in Lower Gloucester Street, within the Mecklenburg Street area, in which there are 13 nuns who keep 90 fallen women at work at the profitable laundry business”.
In 1993 the convent and their laundries had been the subject of much controversy, when they exhumed and cremated 133+ Magdalen women (penitents) and buried them together in a mass grave in Glasnevin Cemetery.
The order of nuns had lost a lot of money on the stock market and sold the land where the Magdalene women were buried. In order for the sale of land to go through, the bodies of the Magdalen women former prostitutes had to be exhumed.
This was done almost in the dead of night very quietly and the Irish media did not cover it as it should have. “The grave diggers had found an extra 75 bodies of Magdalen women with no death certificate and the Irish Government let this pass and gave permission for reburial without death certificates”.


“It was clear that all the pressure was getting to be too much. The banks were also constantly phoning him and his accountant. The demands from Revenue were also becoming more threatening. Gerry needed money fast,” Melanie Verwoerd relates in her memoir When We Dance, which was due to be published last week.

“I had nothing left, having paid for most of his living expenses, as well as loaning him money so that he could meet his obligations, for months.”

…By now, Gerry Ryan began contacting friends and acquaintances seeking loans. “One came through with a smallish amount but the rest said no,” says Melanie

 

Book Reveals A Gerry That The Public Didn’t Know (Liam Collins, Sunday Independent)

(James Horan/Photocall Ireland)

Shane Lowry, winner of yesterday’s Portugal Masters.

A few firsts:

Shanes’s first victory as a professional, following the 2009 Irish Open he claimed as an amateur, in his very first European Tour appearance.

The first victory by a player from the Irish Republic on The European Tour since Lowry in 2009 at the Irish Open.

Gained his largest European Tour prize of €375,000.

The six footer managed to do it carrying 16 stone.

Sixteen.

Shane Lowry claims first professional European Tour victory in the Portugal Masters (RTE)

Shane Lowry (EuropeanTour.com)

(Getty)

Many people from the Border counties of Cavan and Fermanagh gathered for the rally, which got underway after 4pm.

Well-known GAA figures Mickey Harte, Donegal selector Rory Gallagher and Peter Quinn spoke out in support of the family at the rally, organised by the Concerned Irish Citizens group.

Seán Quinn’s wife Patricia and his daughters were among those at the rally. Mr Quinn’s daughter Ciara Quinn told the crowd that the family will succeed and create jobs again and that she and her siblings would not become Anglo scapegoats.

Mr Quinn and his wife Patricia eventually broke down as prayers and a poem were read for their jailed son, Sean Quinn junior.

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Thousands attend Quinn rally (Áine McMahon, Irish Times)

(Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland)

(Pix 5/6: Rodney Edwards)

(Hat tip: Lars Biscuits)