Villager - Village Magazine

July-August 2018

News Miscellany

Villager

Hoel Hell

The demolition of the Ormond Hotel proceeds

apace, advancing on the

Village

ofﬁce next

door on Ormond Quay. The editor has been ter-

minally diverted and his unending quest for

advertising revenue and proofreading services

both remain on hold.

Creer Hell

Village

also needs a new art director/designer.

Applications to the editor with CV.

Village

has

been notably well served for over ﬁve years

between Allister O’Brien and Eoghan Carroll.

Thanks to both from all.

Going o Hell

Marian Finucane’s weekend radio programme

advises that it is not required to explain how it

composes its unimaginative panels.

Village

carried an article some years ago documenting

the disproportionate number of PR people, law-

yers and business people who join the veteran

presenter on her unedifying voyage around the

views of the establishment. Bertie Ahern is now

a regular guest on the programme suggesting

RTÉ does not have a code that discourages reha-

bilitation of the disgraced. Villager well

remembers, of course, the ‘Later with (Fergus)

Finlay and (Frank) Dunlop’ TV Programme part-

fronted by the dodgy former Government Press

Secretary even as his reputation drowned. What

is to guard against Seanie Fitzpatrick and Ray

Burke going head to head with TV3’s benighted

Cooper and Yates duet, for example?

Nominively deerminisic soccer

You can of course read destinies and disposi-

tions in surnames – Villager is a subscriber to

nominative determinism. For some reason the

people who make it on to English soccer and

rugby seem to have colourful names to this end.

Let’s have a look at its doomed World-Cup

football team. Starting with the team’s

defenders: John Stones (Manchester City) is

always solid, Kieran Trippier (Spurs), less so;

Kyle Walker (Manchester City) is pedestrian

while Ashley Young (Manchester United) is

energetic. In the midfield you’d worry about

the staying power of Eric Dier (Spurs); his

team-mate Harry Kane is a mix of saccharine

and discipline; it’s not entirely clear what the

difference between Marcus Rashford (Man-

chester United), and Jordan Pickford might

be; Jake Livermore (WBA) adds spleen;

Raheem Sterling (Manchester City) is reliable

(and of course English); but in keeping up the

pressure on the Croatians, in the end they

missed Tom Heaton (Burnley – where else?)

who stayed on the bench.

Jules Rime sill gleming

Villager didn’t mind Ingerland going out in the

semi ﬁnals. England is a ﬁne place but its people

can be painful when presented with its rare

national triumphs. The fact Manager Gareth

Southgate infamously rocketed a penalty into

the German goalkeeper’s ﬁst losing England the

Euro 96 semi-ﬁnal forced on him an attractive air

of humility, that carried his team along much

more elegantly than any of his recent predeces-

sors; and Villager’s heart melted. Southgate

humbler

going, going

July-August 2018

admitted he could not listen to “Three Lions” for

20 years after his penalty shoot-out miss in the

Euro 96 semi-ﬁnal. Villager wasn’t even at Euro

96 and he still can’t listen to it.

Wh i ll mens

This brings Villager to what it might all herald for

…Brexit. England lost to Belgium in the third-

place play-off and France won with a team full of

immigrant stock: a nightmare for redblooded

Little Englanders. Another analogy is that when

the UK comes humbly back to the EU looking to

be readmitted it will be time to be supportive and

kind. For the moment Brexit is being run by the

equivalent of Glenn Hoddle.

Exi Brexi

Villager is still going with his prediction of no, or

a shortlived, Brexit. Justine Greening, the

Remainer former British Education Secretary has

become the ﬁrst senior Conservative to endorse

a second referendum. Writing in

The

Times

, the

MP for Putney said that the “only solution is to

take the ﬁnal Brexit decision out of the hands of

deadlocked politicians”.

Specil relionship

Meanwhile Theresa May’s abjection to Donald

Trump who suggests “suing” the European foe

ﬁlls Villager with the sort of foreboding he had

when his sister repeatedly dated the neighbour-

hood sleazeball. Just tell the truth and don’t

return his calls, Mrs May.

Rusled

As An Taisce ploughs ahead with its inexplicable

plans to divest itself of its worthy, vibrant and

youthful Education Unit (Green Schools, Blue

Flags, National Spring Clean etc), Villager noted

that one of the cheerleaders for the schism, Trin-

ity’s Professor Ronnie Russell, has resigned from

the Company that envisages taking over these

worthy An Taisce projects, following a recent arti-

cle in

Village

that noted his ignominious and

compromising role in the €35m Whitestown haz-

ardous waste and botched cleanup debacle. This

brings the average age of the oldtimers who com-

prise the new company’s directors back up to

eighty. For an irreplaceable campaigning organi-

sation with an image problem, it really makes no

sense to part company with its presentable and

constructive wing.

Apollo unchined

A new movie, ‘Shelter me: Apollo House’ directed

by Zahara Mouﬁd is being premiered in Dublin’s

IFI cinema on 7 August. “As the homeless prob-

lem in Ireland seemed to go unnoticed by those

in power”, according to Mouﬁd, “housing activ-

ists, well-known public ﬁgures, including Film

Director Jim Sheridan, Musicians Glen Hansard,

Hozier and others came together and took the

law into their own hands. They broke into and

took over an empty gov-

ernment building

– Apollo House – in

Dublin City Centre and

were surprised and

gratiﬁed at the reaction

of the public”. Luvvie-

hating cynics, steel

yourselves and keep

perspective.

Nóirín ﬁghs bck

Ireland’s most excitable

journalist, Paul Wil-

liams, has joined

former Garda Commis-

sioner Nóirín O’Sullivan and

her photographer son Ciaran

McGowan who is a probation-

ary member of the Garda, in

suing the publisher of the

Sunday Times Ireland

for

alleged defamation in the

High Court in Dublin over its

coverage of the Charleton Tri-

bunal in 2017.

The Sunday

Times

had immediately

accepted that its report was

inaccurate in stating that an

interview conducted by Wil-

liams with Ms D who made allegations against

whistleblower Maurice McCabe in 2014 was

recorded by Mr McGowan; and published an

apology.

Villager’s tribunal insiders tell him that

Nóirín will not come out of the Charleton tri-

bunal as badly as many of the misogynist

Twitterati would like.

McGify cus in he wrong plce

The

Telegraph

media group has just published

its 2017 accounts. The cost-cutting new chairman

of INM which owns the

Irish Independent

group

of newspapers, Murdoch Maclennan, was Tele-

graph group CEO from 2004 until 2017 and

deputy chairman until March 2018. The news is

that proﬁts were down 40% and revenue down

5%. In a former life MacLennan used to have a

cartoon of himself on the wall of his ofﬁce,

dressed in a toga and wielding a knife with the

caption: “Massivus knifus” and a trail of blood-

ied bodies. As far as Villager is concerned he

should have bloodied a few more

Telegraph

jour-

nalists though ideologically rather than

ﬁnancially. The Scotsman has been dubbed

Shifty MacGifty because of an alleged former

cutting hands

at least you can see his hands

July-August 2018

irrepressible tendency to buy colleagues

gifts, one which is not, according to insiders,

yet manifesting in Dublin.

Temple of Helh

Villager remembers Laua Magahy as Charlie

Haughey’s favourite civil servant Paddy Tea-

hon’s protégé, pushing the development of

Dublin’s Left Bank, as head of Temple Bar

Properties in the mid-nineteen nineties. If

anyone was responsible for selling short the

vision of a counter-cultural, student, low-

rent arts quarter and making it into a Temple

of bars, driven by property players and a few

over-subsidised arts centres like the now

defunct Viking Adventure and Feast in the

part-gutted St Michael’s and John’s Church,

Dublin City’s oldest Catholic Church, it was

Laura Magahy.

In the boom Magahy was the can-do prop-

erety ﬁxer of choice for Fianna Fáil and she and

Teahon were the forces behind the Bertie bowl,

which collapsed after it looked like it would go

massively over budget. She also had pay-

ments under her contract reduced by more

than half in the wake of political and public

criticism of her lucrative fee structure. Her

ﬁrm’s monthly contract for executive services

was ignominiously cut from €127,000 to just

€57,000. Her consortium also won a contract

to develop the Digital Hub in Dublin’s Liberties

area.

She then reinvented herself as head of a pro-

ject management company, as consultant on

health services and even as a designer of pots

inspired by Dublin’s Markets area where she

had a shop.

Now she’s back as head of SláinteCare, the

ten-year blueprint to overhaul the health ser-

vice over the next decade that was agreed by

the entire Dáil. If you liked Temple Bar or the

Bertie Bowl you’re going to love Magahy’s

SláinteCare.

Clrke’s brk

Clarke In June 2015 the Minister for Justice and

Equality initiated an inquiry under now Chief

Justice Frank Clarke following public concern

after the tragic death of Sergeant Michael

Galvin. Sergeant Galvin

had been the subject of a

GSOC investigation into

Garda interaction with

Ms Sheena Stewart who

died after a road trafﬁc

incident on 1 January

2015. The report was

received in the Depart-

ment of Justice and

Equality on the 4th of

May 2016 and as required

forwarded to the

Ombudsman Commis-

sion. A number of legal

issues arose in relation

to publication of the full

report but on 6 July it was published in full with

some new angles. For example it had been ear-

lier suggested that had GSOC moved more

quickly to inform Sergeant Galvin he was

cleared, he would never have killed himself.

However, in his final report Judge Clarke

has set out the timeline of key events. And

that timeline disproves that narrative. Also

the full report contains criticism of a

number of unnamed media, though of

course recent media reports failed to report

this.

Inevitably the Association of Garda Ser-

geants castigated the Ombudsman after the

full publication. However, Judge Clarke had

pointed to tensions between the Garda and

their overseers in the Ombudsman which he

called the “elephant in the room”. The truth

is it seems nobody behaved that badly or

that well. Meanwhile the recommendations

of a dozen inquiries into our dysfunctional

Garda go unaddressed.

Cerberus’ mny nsy heds

Large shareholders in Deutsche Bank have

criticised its decision to hire private equity

group Cerberus, one of its biggest inves-

tors, as an adviser on restructuring its

operations. Cerberus bought its stake of about

3 per cent in

Deutsche in

November, after

taking a 5 per cent

stake in Commerz-

bank, “It’s similar

to accountants

working as con-

sultants — it’s not

illegal, but it’s

surely not looking

good,” a person

close to one of

Deutsche’s largest

shareholders told

the

Financial

Times

of the move

to recruit Cerberus. The risk is that the US

group might gain access to potentially conﬁ-

dential information as an adviser. A person

familiar with Deutsche’s internal discussions

told the

that the lender was trusting in Chi-

nese walls between Cerberus’s consulting

business and its investment activities. How-

ever, someone close to a large shareholder

was highly sceptical. “You just have to ask

yourself how Cerberus is ultimately earning

most of its money – surely not with its advisory

activity”. Someone else close to a second big

Deutsche shareholder called the bank’s move

“really strange” given that Cerberus is a “related

party” and subject to ongoing market rumours it

might increase its stake in the Frankfurt-based

lender. “You really have to ask yourself: why Cer-

berus? Aren’t there any other, independent

advisors around that Deutsche could use?”.

Strangely, neither Deutsche Bank nor the

Financial Times seem struck at how compro-

mised Cerberus is in Ireland where in 2014

Nama sold a collection of assets, Project

Eagle, to it for €1.43 billion where that had a

par value of more than three times that amount

in circumstances where it has been alleged

that a portion of fee payments of £16m were to

have been made to business and political ﬁg-

ures including a former agent for Nama.

back

disgraced

many bad heads, allegedly