It was a bad year for the roses. New accounts filed by the company behind the yearly Rose of Tralee festival show that the Co Kerry event is deep in the red, losing €72,321 last year and bringing its total liabilities to €320,984. To make matters worse, the accounts show another €86,414 is owed by Kerry Rose Festival Ltd, the pageant’s controlling entity, to American shareholder Richard Henggeler after a falling-out over a loan led to a High Court action against the company.
In a separate ongoing legal action, Henggeler, a hotelier whose late daughter represented Washington DC in the 2011 competition, has alleged shareholder oppression against the company’s directors, Anthony O’Gara and John McCarthy. “An estimate of the financial effect of this claim cannot be made,” the accounts state.
In recent years the festival of wholesomeness has relied increasingly on State funding, including from several councils, Fáilte Ireland and the Road Safety Authority. Last year it received a record €278,250 in government grants, up from €125,000 in 2022. Viewing figures are still healthy, with an average of 543,000 watching this year’s final but that’s down from more than 700,000 in the immediate years before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Could the truth be dawning that the Rose is wilting?
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Try walking in Brian Ormond’s shoes
Television presenter Brian Ormond took a rare misstep when he launched a high-end shoe business amid much fanfare in 2021. Ormond and his wife, Pippa O’Connor, own a fashion label selling everything from jeans to vodka. But it looks like Ormond’s not cut out to be a sole trader.
Movrs, 25 per cent owned by Ormond and O’Connor, opened three years ago with shops on Harry Street, just off Grafton Street, and in Kildare Village. But last year the business folded, with the company behind the shoe brand going into liquidation.
The fallout looks set to continue in the High Court. Last week a company called Shuz 4 U Distribution Ltd lodged a legal action against Ormond. The company is owned by Sunil Shah and Paul Gallagher, who owned a quarter each of the Ormond-fronted shoe business.
The pair made a tidy sum from introducing Skechers to Ireland but will be kicking themselves that they didn’t stick to sensible shoes.
Tóibín sees government funding of media as a ‘road to hell’
Peadar Tóíbín of Aontú is not a big fan of the Global Ireland Media Challenge Fund, a Department of Foreign Affairs initiative that has provided more than €1.6 million to media companies to increase coverage of “major geopolitical developments and the changing nature of Ireland’s role in the world”.
RTÉ has been granted €720,000 under the scheme to boost its foreign coverage, hiring three additional reporters, while Virgin Media received €400,000, Journal Media got €180,000 and several other organisations shared smaller sums, including the Irish Examiner, Business Post and Bauer Media.
Tóibín reckons it’s all a bit too close for comfort. “No one is questioning the bona fides of those involved, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and it is, to put it mildly, strange to see a Government department funding those who are supposed to be holding them to account,” he said recently.
His comments chime with a report in the Sunday Independent last month suggesting an expert advisory panel established by the department to advise on the coverage suggested participants provide greater coverage of climate change and “the rise of populism” overseas.
But an internal review of the initiative by the department has given it a ringing endorsement, saying media visits to China, Lebanon, Palestine, Poland, South Korea and the United States wouldn’t have happened without the fund. One unnamed media organisation said it was the “best thing we have done”, while another described it as “ground-breaking”.
The review concludes the fund should continue on a two-year basis with previous and current recipients permitted to reapply.
Dyson takes swipe at new Labour inheritance tax
James Dyson has ploughed into the British Labour Party over its decision to introduce inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million (€1.2 million) in the UK’s recent budget. The inventor claims the so-called tractor tax is “spiteful”, dubbing it “an ignorant swipe at aspiration”. Like television presenter Jeremy Clarkson, who has also been bleating about the new tax, Dyson will be personally affected. He owns more than 30,000 acres of land in the UK, valued in company accounts at more than £500 million.
Perhaps the Brexiteer is planning to spend more time in Ireland, where “active farmers” can still benefit from 90 per cent agricultural relief on passing down farmland. Last week he applied for planning permission from Waterford County Council to construct a helicopter landing pad at Ballynatray House, the 850-acre estate he bought last year on the banks of the river Blackwater for more than €30 million.
The effing Dáil
Last week People Before Profit’s Paul Murphy dropped the F-bomb in the Dáil over an ignorant swipe by Danny Healy-Rae about the Dublin TD’s child. Murphy previously said he had named his child Juniper to avoid “gendering” them from birth. When Healy-Rae mumbled that Murphy did “not know whether your own baby is a boy or a girl”, the Dublin TD told him to “f*** off”, adding for good measure that he was an asshole.
While the effing explosion by Green Party TD Paul Gogarty at Labour deputy Emmet Stagg is perhaps the most famous example of unparliamentary language in the Dáil, the F-word is not that uncommon. A search of the Dáil record turns up over a dozen f***s in the past decade. Independent TD Mick Wallace was responsible for five of them, while Donegal TD Thomas Pringle has also been driven to profanity on three occasions.
There was a common thread with Murphy’s and Pringle’s most recent eruption: Danny Healy-Rae. Last November after the Kerry TD complained about unvetted asylum seekers in Kerry, Pringle said he wanted to dissociate himself from the comments. A row ensued, with Pringle eventually losing his cool and telling Healy-Rae he does “not f***ing listen to what anybody says”.
“Next time, open your ears instead of your mouth, you might f***ing understand what people are saying,” the Donegal TD said.
There are sanctions in place for those who swear in the Dáil, including suspension. But there is nothing similar for those who provoke unparliamentary language. If there were, Healy-Rae would surely be f***ed.
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