Yearly Archives: 2013

11/09/2013. Launch Review of Tourism Policy . Pict

On Wednesday’s Late Debate on RTE Radio One, Minister Leo Varadkar and Professor John Crown debated the Seanad referendum.

The professor had this to ask the Minister:

Professor John Crown: “Do you think that our country is in a better place because we’ve lost the only banking and finance expert [Peter Mathews] because he had a difference of opinion with your taoiseach on abortion?”

Leo Varadkar: “Yeah well with the greatest respect to Peter Mathews em, I think more and more people are seeing that his banking expertise is not what it might have been…”

Crown: “Ah so that’s why he went it was just a coincidence, that’s why he was booted not over the abortion bill but because he was incompetent? Don’t buy it Leo, not plausible.”

Varadkar: “No. It’s not why but you know you’re jumping around. But the fact he’s not on that committee anymore, I, I, and if you ask around the Dail and Seanad very few people would think and even around the media would think that committee is less for him not being there. It’s probably better for him not being there for a number of reasons particularly for the way he would try to dominate it and so on.”

Later as the debate wrapped up, the host Audrey Carville gave the minister the opportunity to clarify his earlier comments:

Audrey Carville: “Just finally, do you want to withdraw anything you said about Peter Mathews? He’s obviously not here to defend himself. We’ve had some comments in about calling your comments mean and nasty and so on. Do you want to say anything in relation to that?”

Varadkar: “Well, look it, look Peter is an individual in his own right but if I was looking for banking expertise I really wouldn’t be going to him. But you know I’m sure if he wants to join the technical group…”

Carville: “Okay. That’s fine. Well, we will obviously distance ourselves from comments made about Peter Mathews.”

Listen here (around the 25:30 mark)

Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland

Villa11

“Denis O’Brien, the billionaire Irish owner of Digicel Group Ltd., said he wants to bring the Ryder Cup to his golf course in Spain, as buyers pay as much as $3 million for homes at the resort.”

“O’Brien sold about 28 properties last year in his PGA Catalunya Resort in Girona, and he expects to sell between 40 and 45 this year, according to an interview with Bloomberg Television. The buyers include Germans, French, Swiss, Russians and Kazakhs, O’Brien said.”

“We have a boatload” of customers, said O’Brien. “These would be high-end properties anywhere from $1 million up to $3 million.”

Friday, September 27, 2013 – Bloomberg

“The Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC), which includes the rump of the failed Anglo Irish Bank, last year tightened its grip on the PGA Golf Catalunya, one of the courses owned by O’Brien’s golf holding company, Murrayhill.”

“The deal gave the IBRC a claim over shares in the club as part of a refinancing. The loss-making resort has struggled to shift high-priced villas in recession-hit Spain.”


Sunday, January 15, 2012 – Sunday Times

Careful Denis.

Smells like a bubble.

Previously: Denis O’Brien: Dividends, Debt And Paying Back Anglo 

Irish Billionaire Has ‘Boatload’ of Customers for Spanish ( Donal Griffin & Stephanie Ruhle, Bloomberg)

Pic: Villa in PGA Catalunya Resort

brothers

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“We Are Brothers” by Baddy Paris and Rufus Starlight – a krautrocky message to their older sibling, who had asked them to be best men at his wedding and got this – possibly the most fabulous best-man speech ever – in response. They sez:‬

At his wedding we pleaded for our brother not to leave us, in the only way we knew how to say it; through the the medium of 80s music and video. We thought we’d done ok, but he left us anyway.

reddit/highdefinite

90315386(From left: Stephanie O’Connor, Anto Wolfe, Dairne Black and Kieva Ryan in Sinnott’s Bar, Dublin last night)

They said that a day full of stout,
Would attract every gouger and lout,
But this year was limper,
No bang, just a whimper,
When the pubs threw their customers out.

John Moynes

(Mark Stedman/Photocall Ireland)

janis

The latest animated interview from the PBS Blank On Blank webseries features Janis Joplin in conversation over the phone with Howard Smith just four days before her death in 1970.

laugingsquid

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Loyalist activist Willie Frazer arriving at court in Belfast earlier dressed as Muslim cleric Abu Hamza with a ‘hook-hand’ fashioned out of a wire coat hanger and Sellotape.

Jamie Bryson is sporting a wig while Jim Dowson wears a veil.

Frazer appears in court as ‘Abu Hamza’ (UTV Live News)

In Pictures: Willie Frazer wears Abu Hamza outfit to court (Belfast Telegraph)

Previously: The Right Hook

Anything Good In The Irish News?

A Marie Stopes Protestor

Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker