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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
July-August 2018
5
News Miscellany
Villager
Hoel 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.
Creer 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?
Nominively deerminisic 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 sill gleming
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
6
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 mens
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”.
Specil relionship
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.
Rusled
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 unchined
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 fighs bck
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.
McGify cus in he wrong plce
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
7
irrepressible tendency to buy colleagues
gifts, one which is not, according to insiders,
yet manifesting in Dublin.
Temple of Helh
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.
Clrke’s brk
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’ mny nsy heds
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
FT
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
