Ireland's political and cultural magazine
Editorial, Village, April 2014 Gerard Convie is a whistleblower, but you won’t have heard of him. Over the last few years Village has helped a number of other whistleblowers whose cases are to varying degrees unassailable but have not been championed by the media or pursued by the authorities: Jonathan Sugarman on Unicredit Bank, Noel […]
The Treasury boys are back. Without Treasury. Great. Richard Barrett is reported to be deploying two billion euro of investment in property and Johnny Ronan has paid Nama back and is back in business all over town. He’s even found time to make reference to Nazi slogans in pinpointing the injustice done to him by […]
NAMA has had many high-profile staff departures, but few are as likely to end up being the catalyst for a public inquiry into allegations of kickbacks and corruption at the agency as that of its former Head of Asset Recovery, Ronnie Hanna.
How Gerry Adams manipulated DUP leader Peter Robinson with NAMA allegations.
In late September, loyalist blogger, James Bryson, told a public session of the Stormont finance committee that Frank Cushnahan along with solicitor Ian Coulter formerly of Belfast firm Tughans, prominent accountant David Watters, developer Andrew Creighton and DUP leader Peter Robinson were to receive substantial sums from the sale of Project Eagle. Cushnahan was involved […]
Two recent events highlight the true nature of the ongoing Irish economic recovery. Firstly, ahead of the infamous Ireland-Argentina Rugby World Cup match, the press office of the main governing party, Fine Gael, produced a rather brash infographic. Charting projected growth rates in real GDP for 2015 across all Rugby World Cup countries, the graph put […]
There is no greater telltale sign of an election in the offing than when a government starts pledging to give your own money back to you. The Fine Gael-Labour Coalition has promised no less than €3bn between this year’s budget and 2016 in extra spending and tax cuts. Commentators often decry ‘auction’ politics. However, without an […]
Post-independence Irish politics provided few characters as compelling as Dr Noël Browne who was born just months before the Easter Rising, a century ago, in December 1915. Raised in a wicked combination of tragedy, poverty and illness, Browne saw his father, an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, pass away from […]