Dublin Rental Investigator tweetz:

What’s Carl Dombrowski offering ‘a female’ near Ossory Ind. Estate? “A place without comfort – just sleeping place with access to nearby toilet – If you don’t mind going to pool, gym for showers”. Sees himself as a slumlord.

Anyone?

Ossory Road, North Strand, Dublin 3 (€300 a month, Daft.ie)

Outside the office of the Department of Health on Baggot Street in Dublin this morning

Paul Reynolds, of RTE, reports:

The Department of Health in Dublin has been evacuated after it received a suspicious package this morning.

The package is suspected to contain a white powder and precautions are being taken in case it may be hazardous material.

Gardaí have sealed off the area around Baggot Street. Emergency services were called to the department’s building at 11.25am.

Anyone?

Department of Health evacuated due to suspicious package delivery (RTE)

Pics: Fiachra O Cionnaith

UPDATE:

Behold: NGC 6302, also known as the ‘bug’ or ‘butterfly nebula’  – a vast planetary dust cloud with a dying central star 4,000 light years from Earth in the Scorpion Constellation. This enhancement is based on an especially sharp image recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. to wit:

Cutting across a bright cavity of ionized gas, the dust torus surrounding the central star is near the center of this view, almost edge-on to the line-of-sight. Molecular hydrogen has been detected in the hot star’s dusty cosmic shroud.

(Pic: Robert Eder)

apod

Owen Denvir – The Lie That You Think I Am

Belfast singer songwriter Owen writes:

You guys featured one of my videos way back in 2015. It’s not taken me 4 years to release something new, I just thought that my new video in particular you might enjoy.

It’s animated by a student artist I stumbled across from Brighton called Maddy Salgado. I’ve recently been working with a charity called Live Music Now, who provide live music for care homes around the UK.

This song was inspired by my experiences with old folks with dementia, both through the scheme and in my family. It always seems like the most important things to dementia sufferers are family and music from their childhood, and triggering these memories with them is a joy to watch. I think Maddy did a fantastic job visualising this.

In fairness.

Owen Denvir

From top: DUP Leader Arlene Foster in Dublin last Summer following a meeting with the Fianna Fáil Leadership on Brexit; Bryan Wall

Brexit was always going to be a disaster, both for Britain in general and British politics. Led by a group of people who think the days of the Empire were in fact glorious and not laden with misery and death, it’s not likely things could turn out any other way.

Boris Johnson represents nobody but his own ego. He understands world politics through the lens of privilege and historical revisionism. Jacob Rees-Mogg is no better. Privately educated, and intent on reliving the days of British prestige, he could be torn out of the pages of a Dickens novel.

Both played the part of propagandists and historical revisionists. The EU stands in the way of British democracy and freedom. Therefore, the solution is simple: Brexit.

But the solution was not simple and it was never going to be.

Cast everything else aside and focus on the issue of Northern Ireland alone. No due consideration was ever given to Ireland, let alone the north of Ireland. The latter has always been seen as a burden and the former an obstreperous former colony which should really know its place.

Ireland should either rejoin the UK, or remember its “place” and get out of the way of larger more important plans. What if there’s a hard border and a return to violence?

British interests, which are always more important and more rational given the natural intellectual superiority of the Eton-educated, must be given the appropriate leeway.

Violence was always an Irish issue and nothing to do with British occupation, obviously. Johnson and friends want a return to a world where Britain can stride the world and the lessers will bow.

It is easy to laugh and mock. But these are dangerous men with even more dangerous interpretations of history. And what’s worse, they want to return to what they believe was the height of civilisation: A Britain “free” of the EU and trivial things like the Good Friday Agreement.

Brexit is their reenactment of a delusion. In their fantasies, both men sees themselves as bastions of British enlightenment. Reality beckons, but no matter. If they remain firm in their convictions the world will surely twist and bend to meet their expectations and wants.

Meanwhile, the potential consequences for the rest of us have been clear from the start.

This is vivid in a recent interview with a volunteer in Arlene Foster’s constituency office. The woman, a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), said she voted for Brexit for the simple reason that she wants the north to return to the way it was “40 years ago”.

It is the media that is making things worse, according to her; not the likes of Johnson and Rees-Mogg. She also says “I don’t even agree with the Good Friday Agreement” because the “protestant sector were done hard by”.

There will never be a united Ireland according to her. It is an independent country and she proudly tells us her grandfather “fought for this country”. Consequently, if there was any united Ireland she says she would “get my uniform back on and I would stand firmly British”.

Thus we have the threat of a return to violence alongside British calls for us to “know our place”. And that is part of the fear of the extremist unionists: That the people they gladly trampled under foot actually have some rights and a legitimate claim to call and campaign for a border poll.

Tensions, at the very least, are inevitable in such a scenario.

Did this even cross the minds of the Brexiteers? Not likely. For them Northern Ireland is a dead weight that should have been cast aside decades ago. Brexit must happen regardless of what Arlene Foster and her supporters think.

The only reason that Foster’s party has been able to dictate to Theresa May’s government is the latter’s vampire-like need for power. Foster and her party are a means to an end for May.

Foster and other unionists seem to live under the illusion that their place as part of the UK is guaranteed no matter what. The Good Friday Agreement and basic demographics prove otherwise.

But the question still remains: What exactly is going to happen?

The only certainty is that a border poll is inevitable. In a wonderfully historic irony Brexiteers, in their desire to return to the halcyon days of the British Empire, have only hastened the collapse of the United Kingdom. Within our lifetimes Irish unity is almost guaranteed.

Perhaps, then, we should be thankful to Messrs Johnson and Rees-Mogg. But in the short-term the damage they are already causing is not to be downplayed. The British economy is suffering, people are uncertain about their future, and hate crimes have risen. Only Eton could provide such wonderful statesmen.

For us, Brexit is just a look behind the curtain. We gaze and wonder at how such intentional ignorance could have gifted the world the terror that was the British Empire. Brexit also exemplifies the feeling we’ve had most of our lives.

British elites and their supporters look down on Ireland and the Irish. We’re an inconvenience off their west coast. Johnson and Rees-Mogg can pontificate all they like. Ireland isn’t going away. And neither is Irish unity.

Bryan Wall is an independent journalist based in Cork. His column appears here every Monday. Read more of his work here and follow Bryan on twitter:  @Bryan_Wall

Rollingnews

From top: Tom Lyons and Ian Kehoe outside the High Court last Friday; Marian Finucane (left) and her panel on yesterday’s RTÉ Radio One show, from left: Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, Irene Sands, Fergus Finlay Larry Donnelly and  Eoin Fahy

On RTÉ Radio One’s Marian Finucane show yesterday…

The newspaper panel – Ellen O’Malley Dunlop, Chairperson of the National Women’s Council of Ireland; Fergus Finlay former, CEO of Barnardos and former spin doctor for the Labour Party; Irene Sands, barrister; Larry Donnelly, Law Lecturer NUI Galway; Eoin Fahy, Chief Economist, KBI Global Investors – discussed the recent failed defamation case which businessman Denis O’Brien took against the publishers of the Sunday Business Post, Post Publications Ltd.

The segment took eight minutes.

Last Friday, a High Court jury, by a majority, found that articles published by the Sunday Business Post in March 2015 – about a seven-year-old Government-commissioned PwC report – were not defamatory.

At the outset of the item on the matter, law lecturer at NUI Galway Larry Donnelly said he thought the jury’s verdict was a victory for “rigorous”, “objective” and “critical” journalism.

In relation to reports that the costs of the case will amount to €1million – for which Mr O’Brien must pay – Mr Donnelly said this was an “extraordinary” figure, though admittedly not for the billionaire.

He also raised an article by Eoin O’Dell in yesterday’s Sunday Business Post in which the Fellow and Associate Professor of law in Trinity College Dublin argued that the case should never even have made it to the High Court under the Defamation Act 2009.

Mr O’Dell’s article, Mr Lawlor explained, said the act provides for other means to achieve early resolution of defamation cases.

Ms Finucane, in response said:

“Everybody is entitled to their good name and they really are and people feel it, very deeply, if somebody has a go at their good name.”

On Twitter, Mr Lyons noted:

CEO of Barnardos Fergus Finlay said he didn’t know Denis O’Brien well but he worked with the businessman briefly some years ago in relation to the Special Olympics and he thinks he’s “done a number of very great things with his money over the years” – a point to which Ms Finucane replied “indeed, yeah” before Mr Finlay said he was especially referring to people with intellectual disabilities and “stuff he [Mr O’Brien] should be really proud of”.

Mr Finlay went on to say:

“I said this to somebody last week, if you want to bring the National Children’s Hospital in on budget, on time and no messing about – put Denis O’Brien in charge of it cause he has those kinds of skills.”

“And I guess he has done things that, shall we say, are controversial but he seems to feel, I just don’t understand how somebody who is as rich as he is can’t let anything go. He must have terrible nightmares at night and must be constantly worried…”

Ms Finucane said:

“The thing about it is, if you were constantly being insulted and…”

She was interrupted by Mr Finlay who said he didn’t realise he was fat and bald until he discovered social media before saying his salary has previously been reported and he said one just has to read the dog’s abuse they get. He even suggested to Ms Finucane that she would understand this.

But she replied:

“I don’t read it.”

Mr Finlay went on to note that the Sunday Business Post, in yesterday’s paper, listed the 22 legal actions he’s taken against media outlets in the High Court.

He said, in the context of this list, his advice for Mr O’Brien would be to “get a life”.

Ms Finucane said:

“Well, he’s just not going to allow people to undermine his integrity…”

Later, barrister Irene Sands said:

“Mr O’Brien is entitled to bring suits, if he has the money to fund them, fair play to him, let him knock himself out but I do agree with Larry, I think it’s a very good day for the press in general and I do think they were vindicated…and I think the press took a very important stance and ultimately it came out in their favour.”

Just before the item wrapped up, Mr Finlay said that had the case against the Sunday Business Post not gone in the newspaper’s favour, “there would have been a real possibility, I suspect, of the Sunday Business Post going to the wall”.

Ms Finucane said:

“Right, well we don’t know that, we don’t know that.”

But Mr Finlay said if it had happened it could have had serious consequences for media ownership concentration in Ireland.

And Ms Finucane replied:

“Well, I mean that’s not what was on his mind. What was on his mind was his good name and he’s entitled to it.”

Ms Finucane added that Mr O’Brien is “noted for his generosity…particularly in Haiti”.

Last week, when Michael McDowell SC, for the Sunday Business Post, made his closing submission to the jury, he recalled how solicitors acting for Mr O’Brien had initially accused journalist Tom Lyons of criminality and acting illegally by publishing the contents of the PwC report which looked at the top 22 borrowers of six banks at the time of the property crash.

Mr McDowell said Mr Lyons was accused by Mr O’Brien of acting with malice and “consciously” deciding to damage Mr O’Brien.

The barrister said Mr Lyons and his editor at the time Ian Kehoe had thought about omitting Mr O’Brien’s name from the coverage out of fear of litigation but decided against this in the interests of transparency.

Mr McDowell said the SBP refused to take “the RTE approach” – in reference to evidence Mr Lyons gave about being told by RTE not to mention Mr O’Brien when he did a radio interview about his articles back in 2015.

The senior counsel also explained that Mr O’Brien initially said he didn’t know if he was one of the top borrowers in the PwC report as he had never seen the report.

Mr McDowell said Mr O’Brien said “it’s not beyond Mr Lyons” to just insert Mr O’Brien’s name randomly.

But, Mr McDowell said, once an excerpt of the PwC report was presented to the jury – after Mr O’Brien finished giving evidence – Mr O’Brien “changed his tune completely” and identified himself as number 10 on the redacted list of borrowers.

Mr McDowell said Mr O’Brien had effectively accused Mr Lyons of perjury and said Mr O’Brien had a “casual relationship with the truth”.

The above claims made against Mr Lyons were not recounted during the Marian Finucane discussion.

Listen back in full here from 37.50.

Previously: Closing Arguments

Meanwhile…

There you go now.

Broadsheet.ie