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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4 October-November
A
s we were sayin, there are moments
when the abstract lanuae of ’free
speech’ becomes a screen, an
attractive veil that obscures what is
happenin in plain siht, in dicult
times.
Two columns by the Irish Times’ powerful and
aenda-settin opinion editor, Jennifer
O’Connell: the first, rebukin socialist TD Ruth
Coppiner for refusin to take questions from
Gript; and a more recent one lamentin that she
felt oblied to “stand up for” Graham Linehan
after his arrest — come to us in that reister and
enerate a need for reiteration.
Both proceed as if the public square were an
antiseptic debatin chamber where all voices are
functionally equivalent and the ravest daner
is selective enaement by politicians or police.
What they do not do — and what the Village
editorial blew up the need for — is to confront
the antecedent question: what should a
democratic culture do with an outlet or individual
whose output has the character of racist or
ender-hostile aitation or serial misinformation?
If that description fits, then neutrality toward
platformin is not a virtue; it is a capitulation
dressed as fair play.
Village states its position in its April edition
without euphemism: Gript is a racist oran; its
editor lies and stirs hatred aainst immirants.
One may quarrel with the usual Village tonal
excess, but not the clarity. The editorial is not
makin a delicate aesthetic judment about
manners; it is allein a settled pattern of
conduct, and on that basis drawin a policy
conclusion — treat such an outlet dierently,
includin refusin it leitimacy and access.
O’Connell never seriously joins that issue.
Instead, her unlettered article treats the matter
as if it were a question about the etiquette of
press conferences and civilised disareement.
That self-indulent misframin then does most
of the arumentative work for her.
Consider the May column on Ruth Coppiner.
O’Connell’s chare is simple: politicians
shouldn’t “blacklist” a media oranisation they
dislike, especially one within the industry’s self-
reulatory architecture. The bias is towards
procedural even-handedness — the sort of
precept that suits a rule-of-law culture and
sounds unimpeachable at first touch. But Press
Council membership is not a sacrament that
confers virtue on its recipients. Codes of practice
are not talismans; they are aspirations backed
by weak sanctions, whose eectiveness depends
on the collective will of a confused profession
and the viilance of readers. Where an outlet
persistently propaates racialised hostility and
bad-faith misinformation, the most proportionate
and principled response from public fiures can
be to disenae. A refusal to amplify is not
censorship; it is a prophylactic.
O’Connell’s arument collapses that
distinction. She treats Coppiner’s decision not
to take questions as a betrayal of pluralism. Yet
pluralism properly understood does not require
that every forum be open to every actor
reardless of record. It requires a capacious
sphere of lawful expression alonside a
discernin ecoloy of platforms, atekeepers,
and counter-speech. The latter is crucial. A
politics that cannot distinuish between bein
free to speak and havin a riht to be dinified
with a microphone is a politics that will always
yield terrain to the loudest provocateurs.
Village’s editorial asks us to exercise that
discrimination candidly: if a publication’s output
is racist aitation — as opposed to merely
“conservative” or “contrarian” — it should be
treated as qualitatively dierent. O’Connell
never says why that premise, if true, would not
justify exactly the stance she condemns.
The September column, on Graham Linehan,
repeats the pattern with hiher stakes. O’Connell
Reprising the meaning
of anti-racism and
anti-transphobia
Back then to the lonely editorial in
Village’s last edition which generated
some hostility
Issue 86
October-November 2025
Chllenging he endemiclly
complcen nd ohers by
he cue promoion of
equliy, susinbiliy nd
ccounbiliy
ONLINE
www.villgemgzine.ie
@VillgeMgIRE
EDITOR
Michel Smih
edior@villgemgzine.ie
DEPUTY EDITOR
J Vivin Cooke
DESIGN AND PRODUCTION
Lenny Rooney
ADVERTISING
sles@villge.ie
PRINTERS
Boylns, Droghed,
Co Louh
VILLAGE IS PUBLISHED BY
Ormond Quy Publishing
Ormond Quy Upper,
Dublin
October-November 5
oxyen. In practical terms, that means
reconisin a politician’s refusal to
enae with a racist outlet as a responsible
exercise of judement, not an aront to a
free press. And it means acknowledin,
in the Linehan case, that the threshold for
intervention was crossed not because the
police were priish but because the
words invited an assault on people already
bein menaced in public discourse.
We should be wary, too, of the familiar
rhetorical move that invokes ‘slippery
slopes’ to resist firm lines. The slope here
runs in both directions. If a society cannot
brin itself to say ‘no platform’ to those
who incite harm, it will find itself
normalisin that harm. The slope then is
not hypothetical; it is the slow slide from
a democracy that uards the vulnerable
into a culture that indules those who
taret them.
One hopes, finally, for a press
conversation that abandons the babyish
dichotomy between absolutism and
censorship, and rows comfortable with
the adult work of discernment. That work
is not lamorous. It does not produce neat
headlines. It makes enemies. But it
honours the people whose lives are lived
under the weather of our discourse, and it
leaves the law free to do its modest but
crucial part: to act where incitement
crosses the line, and to let the rest be
contested by arument, culture, and the
choice to withhold our meaphones. In
that ecoloy, O’Connell’s proceduralism,
amplified by her mates in the politics
section of the politico-philosophically
nuatory Irish Times, is reckless. Worse
still has been the failure of anyone else in
the larely ideas-free Irish discourse to
take up the debate.
describes Linehan’s online behaviour as
crude, nasty, and obsessive, but chastises
the police response and worries about a
culture-war circus. Aain, the piece turns
away from content to procedure. The
impression is of a writer eaer to defend a
principle in the abstract while withholdin
sustained attention from the particular
utterance that spurred intervention. Yet
the particular matters. Linehan’s post: “if
a trans-identified male is in a female-only
space…punch him in the balls”, is not
merely coarse speech. It is an exhortation
to physical violence aainst a vulnerable,
protected minority. It is not po-faced to
underscore that this is not a joke thouh
frivolous commentators somehow claim it
is: most trans women retain their testicles.
The fact of the incitement to violence
appears, astonishinly, to sit at the
marins of O’Connell’s analysis, thouh it
is at the root of the issue here, and triers
enforcement of the law, a proressive law.
Once that fact is put in the centre, the
question looks very dierent. There is, and
should be, limited ‘discretion’ for police
where there is a prima facie call to assault.
The law in liberal democracies draws a
basic distinction between expressions
that oend and expressions that incite.
Prosecutorial uidelines, human-rihts
jurisprudence and the common-sense
ethics of a plural society share this kernel:
advocacy of violence, here crude
encouraement to strike someone in their
disputed terrain, does not enjoy the same
latitude as mere insult or satire. One may
leitimately debate thresholds and
contexts; one cannot sincerely pretend
that a tweet commandin the public to
“punch” members of a minority is simply
another contribution to an onoin culture
quarrel. It is an invitation to harm. Treatin
such incitement as if it were a normal
political opinion endaners real people.
O’Connell knows well the uliness of
Linehan’s behaviour and the piece was
oofily titled ‘Don’t make me stand up for
Graham Linehan’. But she fails to draw the
obvious conclusion about enforcement
and so lays bare the emptiness of a certain
style of “principled” commentary. The
style makes a ritual acknowledement —
yes, it’s hateful; yes, it’s uly — then slips
back into a neutral posture, as if the only
value that counted were the avoidance of
“overreach”. But freedom of expression is
not a od that yields to no other. It is a
social compact, maintained by rules as
well as liberties. The rules are not there
just to protect tender feelins. They exist
to protect the riht to equal participation,
so that members of vilified roups are not
forced to live and move under a cloud of
menace.
The Village editorial centralised this,
promotin de-amplification of bad-faith
aitators; to some readers that will sound
censorious. But the alternative is not some
purified marketplace of ideas in which the
best arument wins. The alternative is an
information environment in which
attention is the scarce ood, bad actors
know how to hijack it, and well-meanin
arbiters hand them the keys under the
banner of even-handedness.
There is another reason O’Connell’s
frame is inadequate. It treats the harms of
platformin as speculative and the harms
of non-platformin as concrete. The truth
is the reverse. We know what amplification
does. We have seen how a steady diet of
racialised stories — cherry-picked crimes,
decontextualised imaes, alorithms
tuned to fear — aects public sentiment.
We know how tarets chane their
behaviour when they are bein told,
constantly, that they do not belon, that
they are danerous, that they may be
struck. We know how policy space narrows
when politics is forced to spend its oxyen
refutin the same spurious claims week
after week. The harm of refusin a
microphone to one dedicated provocateur
is, by contrast, modest and reversible. He
can publish on his own channels, arue in
other forums, sue if defamed, and seek to
persuade readers. What he cannot demand
is that politicians and mainstream media
launder his project throuh theirs. That is
not “freedom”; it is a subsidy for bullyin.
A word on fairness. None of this requires
believin that the police always et these
judments riht, that prosecutors exercise
perfect restraint, or that no ocial ever
exploits a public-order power to suppress
dissent. Liberties must be uarded;
powers must be scrutinised. But the
response to that truism is not to flatten
every case into an abstract freedom
drama. It is to insist on distinctions:
between insult and incitement; between
holdin views many find repunant and
tellin people to punch others; between
an outlet that arues a hard ideoloical
line and one that — on the evidence —
plays a sustained role in fomentin
racialised hostility and spreadin
falsehoods. Those distinctions are not the
enemies of liberty. They are the
preconditions of a common life in which
liberty can be shared.
The irony is that O’Connell plainly
wishes to preserve a civil sphere. She
praises courts that refuse the spectacle;
she worries about escalation. But civility
is not achieved by pretendin that the
actors are interchaneable. It is achieved
by upholdin norms that punish calls to
violence and starve hateful campains of
6 October-November
Town Idiot
Villager is territorial. If there is one place
he dislikes more than Avoca if anything it
is Kildare Village. It is especially annoying
since you cannot have a Village adjoining a
Town. Its vile fake out-of-town retro-suburban
mainstreet/warehouse aesthetic, its assumed
Americanism, its partnerships with the Irish
Times, its focus on image over substance, its
obsession with prestige, and its evil toutings
of the disgusting words “exclusive” and
“private”…jar. Don’t go there.
News Miscellany
Villager
Claptrap
Paul Murphy, the best performer in the
Dáil, destroyed the Irish Independent’s
Mary Regan at a press conference outside
Leinster House, for her article saying video
showed Catherine Connolly did not applaud
Zelenskiy when he addressed the Dáil. In
fact she stood and applauded, though
unenthusiastically she says. Mary Regan was
altogether much nicer before she left RTÉ for
pastures Sheahan some months ago. And
the Irish Times’ Harry McGee got in on the
act after the first Presidential debate falsely
claiming Catherine Connolly had ignored
Kieran Cuddihy’s hawkish question about
her claim that Germany’s Labour-aliated
Social Democrats were comparable to Nazis.
She denied she’d ever said it.
Catherine the Great
German-speaker Connolly also got Leahied
the previous week in the Irish Times for
saying, sorrowfully, that there were some
“parallels” between Germany now and in the
1930s — she is much too subtle to have made
“comparisons” to “Nazis”. But even that most
sober and Europhile of media, The Rest is
Politics, for whom German-speaker Alistair
Campbell is a co-host. ran an episode the
same week titled “Trump’s Far Right Allies in
Germany: Is History Repeating Itself?... Why is
Germany the perfect starting point for far-right
agitators?”. Catherine Connolly has a quiet
serenity and a radicalism that is always worth
listening to. Like a cross between Michael D
and a wise nun really. She is the sort of person
who changes minds.
Higgins liggins
Mind-changer Michael D Higgins never
expected to produce a book of poems while
President but he is nevertheless personally
benefiting from a new audio-poems release:
an album of poems read by the President,
recorded in Áras an Uachtaráin, with
accompanying written poems, tied to a recent
National Concert Hall celebration. As if it
were a home shopping channel, the first 600
purchasers got the bonus of a poem, with
the well-upholstered Presidential signature
WEM – “With Existing Measures”: the pathway you get if only policies already in force (fully legislated/implemented
and funded by the cutoff date) deliver as expected. It’s the baseline.
WAM – “With Additional Measures”: adds planned/announced policies not yet fully in place (e.g., measures
government intends to adopt/scale). More optimistic, but contingent.
Neither village nor town
October-November 7
inappropriately attached, This appears like the
unwelcome use of State facilities for personal
financial advancement. It’s not Miggledee’s
first brush with minor financial opprobrium:
in 2018 the PAC criticised the lack of an audit
committee for the President’s €317k annual
allowance; soon after, Áras an Uachtaráin
published first-term breakdowns including
details of the €1.7m (€5000 a week) spent
on food/hospitality 2011–2018. His 2018
campaign spend was €367k, the biggest of
all the forgettable field. A viral Peter-Casey-
endorsed claim that the State paid for his
gorgeous Bernese Mountain dogs’ grooming
was fact-checked and rated Unproven by
redoubtable Journal.ie fact-checkers. It’s not
clear what pension he will take but he has
been forbearant in not taking his Oireachtas
pension while President. Much worse than
his financial standards, our departing head
of state has long been mocked for his poetry
most notably by The Guardian in 2011 and
by our own Kevin Kiely who said of his geo-
political versification, ‘The Prophets are
Weeping’: “his latest eusion is an appalling
piece of confused mystification in keeping
with his low literary standards”. No matter,
Higgins has sociology, politics and rhetoric in
his toolbox. A Great and truth-telling President
of rare bravery, withal.
Henry Higgins
Higgins had a nanny with an Anglo-Irish
accent — trained in a Limerick ‘big house’,
accounting perhaps for his unusual dialect,
though not his intermittent shrillness. It is
essential in a Presidential candidate to have
a grating voice.
Where hope and his fee rhyme
President Barack Obama didn’t bother
leaving his hotel to get the Freedom of Dublin,
recycled his hackneyed and increasingly
wishful ‘hope for the future’ message, and
will apparently trouser most, or all, of his
vast speaker fee. Sadly, Barack Obama is
hope we could not believe in. He also told a
Fintan O’Toole-overseen audience that Israel
had gone beyond any military rationale in
pummeling Gaza, but that is beside the point.
Even if there were a military rationale Israel
should not pummel Gaza because doing so
constitutes war crimes up to and including
genocide.
UNity
Ethics, and
the categorical
imperative,
demand we try to
act as paragons.
It’s one of the
main reasons
for neutrality and pacifism, a word you don’t
hear much of these days even in pre-Connolly
Ireland. Village documented how little, after
frantic lobbyings, Ireland made in 2021-2
of its brief stint on the UN Security Council
(“building peace; strengthening conflict
prevention; and ensuring accountability”) but
now we’re making progress. Ireland’s 2024
intervention on South Africa’s case against
Israel was timely and brave, and sensibly
pushes for expansion of the ambiguous
concept of genocide; this year it pushed
France, Canada, Australia and even the
UK (albeit discreditingly contingently) into
recognising Palestine as a state; now even
RTÉ’s declaration (a year late) that it will
not enter Eurovision if Israel does, has set a
valuable precedent with four others including
Spain and the Netherlands following. Villager
can never remember what makes Israel part of
Europe anyway. Ireland, however, is moving
into a position it is familiar with from the fifth
century, as custodian of European values as
a curtain falls on the intermittently-civilised
continent.
Meet ‘the Robinsons’
The UK is better than Ireland at producing
morons. The popular leader Tommy Robinson
made his name as a football hooligan and
went downhill reputationally from there to
the point where he is a hero to Musk who
prefers him to Faright. Ireland has nobody
as bad apart from Conor McGregor who has
accumulated no constituency but a lot of
court cases. Villager has a motto for Robinson,
Katie Hopkins and their shirter ‘Uniting the
Kingdom’ campaign, the biggest in British
history or whatever: “Innit?”— a manifesto for
the oppressed little white man.
Chance would be a fine thing
British politics isn’t incoherent or even lurching
nativist. Since Brexit, age and education
not class best predict votes, splitting young
graduates (left) and pensioners (right). Voters
perceive two blocs and mostly switch within
them: Labour to parties left of it; Conservatives
to Reform. The old duopoly is shrinking: their
57% in 2024, already the lowest since 1910,
has slid to 39% in polls. Meanwhile the
Irish pattern rhymes with Britain’s on age/
education but material pressures, especially
housing and income, play a bigger role than
culture-war/Leave-Remain style divides here.
Just as in Ireland we say things like ‘grand’and
‘ah, stop’ and in England they say ‘Chance
would be a fine thing’ (whatever that means),
and innit.
Europe puts the ration in
illegal immigration
In the first eight months of this year, 112,000
people crossed illegally into Europe — 21%
fewer than last year and 52% below the
231,000 recorded in the same period of 2023.
Protection, and deportation
The International Protection Bill 2025,
promoted by Justice Minister Jim O’Callaghan,
seeks to transpose the EU Migration Pact
into Irish law. Civil society groups warn it
risks eroding rights by restricting legal aid,
curtailing appeals, expanding detention, and
prioritising speed over fairness—even where
the Pact allows more humane choices. Critics
say the government is opting for restrictive
interpretations rather than safeguards.
O’Callaghan has fuelled controversy with
remarks about asylum seekers: proposing
€10,000 payments to families who drop
claims, accusing some of “abusing” the
system, calling current numbers “too
high”, and supporting cost-sharing for
accommodation. He has also expressed
openness to EU “deportation hubs” abroad,
a stance that civil society argues undermines
Ireland’s human rights obligations.
More or Less
Construction of Merrion Square’s tea room
has been delayed from now until the second
quarter of 2026 and the site, on scarce
and valuable parkland, has been excitingly
abandoned. Better anyway to serve coee
from nearby cafés, Villager always said. But
mainly his plea is to Les Moore, as head of
Dublin City Parks the genius who conceives
these interventions, to once again revert to
the guidance: Less is More, Les Moore, but
also now — onsite following abandonment of
all stations — More is More, somehow.
8 October-November
shifty politically opportunistic billionaires
tightening the spigot on what blinkered
Americans get to know.
Me Speech
Donald Trump, ever the litigious apprentice
of Kincora-tracking paedophile Roy Cohn,
once sued an architecture critic for $500m
because he mocked a 150-storey tower. CBS
forked over $16m after a spat about Kamala
Harris’s coherence on 60 — convenient
grease for merger wheels — and ABC paid
the same when George Stephanopoulos
mixed up “sexual abuse” with “rape.” The
Wall Street Journal was targeted for Epstein-
file birthday wishes Trump insists weren’t
his. Now he’s back at it, hurling a lawsuit at
the New York Times — not for libel, but for
existing…trying to damage his “business,
personal and political reputation”. Trump’s
defamation crusades remain less about
law than about authoritarian performance
art. Meanwhile he’s clearly arranged for the
indictment of nemesis James Comey, on
charges related to his 2020 congressional
testimony and indeed is “taking on the
liberals” in general, a target which hopefully
will have no end just as it has no beginnings.
Suits you, sir
It is bad to be lookist or fattist, but Donald
Trump is both and deserves any antagonism
that undermines his support: so it’s
interesting to note that his personal hostility
to exercise is manifesting itself as pastiness
and physical grossness (it’s Village so please
accept we don’t mean that in a judgemental
way) but mainly Villager wanted to note how
horrible are Trump’s suit legs.
Gilty as charged
Presidents have always like refashioning the
Oval Oce. It makes them feel like their taste
is relevant: Kennedy reinstated the Resolute
Desk; Nixon installed the so-called Wilson
desk, flsely thinking it had been Woodrow
Wilson’s; Reagan introduced a sunburst
rug; Clinton favoured blue carpeting and
gold drapery; George W. Bush redesigned
the rug; Obama adopted taupe tones and
a quotation-woven carpet. In 2017, Donald
Trump restored gold curtains, brought back
Reagan’s rug and Bush-era sofas, returned
the Churchill bust, hung Andrew Jackson’s
portrait, kept the MLK bust, and replaced
Donnelly Mistery
Stephen Donnelly has opened a healthcare
consultancy based in his home in Delgany, Co
Wicklow, called SD Advisory, presumably after
the Social Democrats. Its agenda is Business
and Other Management Consultancy
Activities, so the former Health Minister’s
Harvard and McKinsey backgrounds will help,
and its principal is ‘Mr Donnelly’[sic] lest
anyone find out too much.
Legoinnaires bound for
Ukraine
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen addressed
Denmark in a grave speech in late September
following a series of drone incidents targeting
vital infrastructure. She cited drones
spotted near North Sea gas platforms,
suspicious flights over Copenhagen
Airport, and attempted interference with
power substations. She linked them to a
wider pattern of drones, cyberattacks, and
sabotage, with Russia as the likely threat.
Denmark has strengthened anti-drone
defences and will send unarmed troops
to Ukraine for drone training, legitimate
targets according to its Russian ambassador.
Denmark has given €9bn in military aid and
€1bn in civic support as well as some F16s to
Ukraine since its war started. By comparison,
Ireland has committed €350 million in non-
lethal military support though it has taken in
about twice as many Ukrainians as Denmark.
WARped
Donald Trump claims to have ended “six or
seven wars,” presenting himself as a singular
peacemaker. Independent analysis is far less
definitive. Israel–Iran did see a US-backed
ceasefire, but rocket fire and covert attacks
continue. Rwanda and the DRC agreed to
negotiations, yet rebel militias still operate
across the border. Thailand–Cambodia
accepted a ceasefire after clashes, though
territorial grievances persist. India explicitly
denies American mediation in Kashmir,
dismissing Trump’s account. Serbia–
Kosovo, long unsettled, had no active war
to end during his term. Egypt–Ethiopia is a
hydro-political dispute over the Nile dam,
never a shooting war. Armenia–Azerbaijan
reached a provisional truce, but violations
remain frequent. So... Trump’s interventions
may have facilitated pauses or talks, but
his sweeping claim to have “ended wars”
considerably overstates fragile, contested
outcomes.
Right wingnuts
There have been 391 deaths caused by right-
wing attacks in the US since 1975, compared
to 65 deaths from left-wing attacks, according
to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.
Trump’s tramps
We need to be tough on those in Ireland who
made little of what Trump was always going
to do to democracy. Since none of them are
repentant, it is probable they are trying to do
the same to Ireland.
Magalomania
America’s media
barons are
repainting the
newsrooms MAGA
red with liberals
getting sliced.
Kimmel’s returned
after suspension
by ABC, which
is owned by
publicly-traded post-fairy-tale Disney, for
saying Charlie Kirk’s doomed killer was
MAGA. Since Trump’s re-election, Disney
has erased a queer-coded character from
the Latino-driven Pixar film Elio; eaced
all references to a transgender character’s
identity from a Pixar streaming series and
made Mickey Mouse weakenings of its
diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
Stephen Colbert will leave once-Cronkite
Paramount-owned CBS, next year — for
purely “financial” reasons we’re told; but
there’s a pattern.
Trumper Larry Ellison’s family has clinched
control of Paramount from Sumner
Redstone’s family. Paramount even yanked
a South Park episode lampooning slain
influencer Charlie Kirk and is reportedly
sning around a purchase of Warner Bros
Discovery, home of CNN, which would tuck
the rabidly Democrat network inside a deep
red conglomerate. CBS also vowed to stop
editing interviews after Trump and then
Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem cried
bias. Ellison junior (David) is said to be
courting the “anti-woke” Free Press owned
by former NYT op-ed editor Bari Weiss to help
paralyse CBS’s editorial spine. Meanwhile,
the Murdoch succession soap ended with
Lachlan empowered to keep Fox on its ultra-
right grievance diet until 2050; the other
siblings left with $1.1bn consolation prizes.
Fox stock soars; Fox ratings dominate; Trump
is fruitlessly suing the Wall Street for a
tedious €15bn Journal anyway even though
Rupert Murdoch attended the Windsor Castle
dinner with the Pres and his kinglet. The
once magisterial Bezos-owned Washington
Post is looking for new opinions editors
to preach “free markets”. And dumped
a Kirk-sceptical, and uncoincidentally
Black, contributor. The net eect: market
consolidation, political intimidation, and
Presidential pants
October-November 9
wallpaper.In 2025 he turned the Oval Oce
into a gilt reliquary —gold-lipped mouldings,
brighter drapes, a crush of gilt-framed
portraits—what aides grandly dubbed a
“Golden Oce for the Golden Age”. Andrew
Jackson was rehung, the all-determining
Churchill bust wheeled back post-Biden,
and the Diet Coke button resurrected, while
service-branch flags crowded the scene like
set dressing for power. Trump has paved
Jackie Kennedy’s Rose garden. And there will
be a ballroom. Mar-a-Lago is the taste model
though the White House is more than twice
its age.
Hu?
Founded in 1823,
the Royal Hibernian
Academy evolved
into a conservative
institution with
a home on Ely
Place and, since
2009, upgraded
galleries and a
School. A recent
Village exposé
discovered that the ‘Academy’’s governance
is brittle: short tenures, vague bylaws,
blurred accountability and excessive power
concentrated in retiring Director/Curator
Patrick T Murphy (c.€120k). President Abigail
O’Brien, sister of Denis, allied with him
though she too is o now. Into this culture
blew whirlwind Sandra Hu, rapidly promoted
and credited with strong sales and Chinese
networks. A Beijing trip she organised
exposed loose oversight and conflict-of-
interest risks. After Hu’s formal complaints
about Murphy, mediation collapsed; she
was suspended and a c€100k settlement
agreed without proper Council authority, Hu
argues. After that all is a public subsidy and
an unreportable legal blur. It all reminds
Villager of the Abbey. And the RIAI. And the
Arts Council.
Fair Plae
A Village magazine article from April detailed
a formal complaint to the Standards in Public
Oce Commission (SIPO) concerning Kerry
Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae. The
complaint alleges his government deal was
unlawful and breached ethical standards.
According to the piece, “Healy-Rae should
have resigned from several company
directorships on appointment as a junior
minister” — a legal obligation designed to
prevent conflicts of interest. Instead, Village
argues, he maintained roles in private
firms while exercising ministerial power,
“acting in both private and public capacities
simultaneously”. Together with a complaint
that Michael
Healy-Rae remains a Director of Ml Healy-
Rae Properties Ltd, which registered its
annual return for 2023 on 31 January 2025
but for which the Companies Registration
Oie shows no sign of the necessary B10
form indicating there has been a change of
director. Section 2.2.4 of The 2003 Code of
Conduct for Oce Holders also states that
“Oce holders should not hold company
directorships carrying remuneration. Even if
remuneration is not paid, it is regarded as
undesirable for them to hold directorships”.
Healy-Rae is also a Director of Roughty Plant
Hire Limited, Roughty Properties Limited and
Black Cap & Co Limited. So low is the firepower
of SIPO that Healy-Rae hasn’t even bothered
resigning his directorships, six months after
the complaint was lodged.
Hegarty’s demolition job on
Browne
A devastating article by Orla Hegarty of
UCD’s school of architecture, on RTE.ie in
September, warned that the government’s
foolish plans to reduce minimum apartment
sizes to 32 sq m will mean “more units
but fewer people housed”. A building with
100 standard apartments might house 275
people, she noted, but if converted to studios
only 178. She argued small units suit single
occupants, undermining family housing
supply. She called claims of major cost savings
“overstated”, since kitchens, bathrooms and
services cost the same regardless of size.
Hegarty also highlighted health and social
harms of “living, cooking and sleeping in one
room”, warning reforms prioritise short-term
unit numbers over liveability, equity, and
long-term community needs. For Villager the
criticism is definitive and any Minister who
pushes the reductions through despite the
criticism should resign. The Minister is James
Browne.
Courting controversy
Village’s editor has been in legal
correspondence with Leo Varadkar and
his publishers about his (Varadkar’s) me
moirs which state that counterclaims in
the #LeotheLeak aair led to him being
investigated by the Garda which isn’t
true. Michael Smith is already two years
into legal proceedings against the Sunday
Times and Varadkar for an article where he
was quoted saying
Smith, as one of the
people who instigated
the investigation of
the former Taoiseach
over his leaking
of a ‘confidential’
document, was a
Putinite and a Shinner
which he is not.
Raise the VAT rate
Someone’s been and gone and put plastic
letters all over the fascia of the restaurant
under the Village oce. Without permission.
It follows a name change to ‘La Brasa
Steakhouse’ and an upsurge in Brazilian
waiters brandishing barbecue machetes
precariously for intimidating use in slicing
barbecue meat.
Steady on
Village is ratcheting up. We’ve applied for
Coimisiún na Meán funding, are overhauling
our online coverage to include daily
features and are trying to increase Steady
memberships online (www.village.ie) to
shift away from shop purchases in a world
where there are almost no more newsagents.
We’re also going to do a podcast and hold
occasional talks. The magazine is committing
to coming out five times a year with a more
solid cover. The editor has even employed a
head of growth who might deliver some paid
advertising.
Magaine editors
AI is not just arriving like Blucher to the aid of
maga(z)ine editors, Villager need never need
panic finishing o his piece at 4 am, with the
magazine due to the printer before 9. Just
whistle and AI will wrap it up. Thank you.
RHA go to wall of China
