Overheard: Seán Quinn’s tax-free treat, a floating Wicklow glass box and Cillian Murphy’s artistic wife

Seán Quinn as soon as advised the story of how he restricted his poker losses at his common recreation in Cavan to €5 regardless of being Eire’s richest man on the time. It appears that evidently Cavan-based Quinn continues to be as cute together with his cash and didn’t miss a trick when it got here to his memoir. His is essentially the most eye-catching identify on the record revealed by Income of people who benefited from the artists’ tax exemption scheme final yr.

Quinn secured the tax break for his biography, In My Personal Phrases, which he says he wrote to counteract the “steady character assassination” of him and his household within the media. Underneath the scheme, which Charlie Haughey launched as minister for finance in 1969 to maintain ravenous artists from emigrating, recipients can earn as much as €50,000 tax-free. The previous billionaire is prone to have trousered a tidy sum from the guide. It was simply outdoors the highest 10 best-sellers in Eire final yr, in line with Nielsen BookScan, promoting 8,354 copies.

The true determine is prone to be significantly increased, nonetheless, as Nielsen solely covers about 70 per cent of all retail gross sales in Eire. Books purchased by the estimated crowd of 1,000 supporters who turned up at its launch within the Slieve Russell lodge in Co Cavan final September wouldn’t be counted, for instance.

Not unhealthy for somebody who advised Newstalk throughout a promotional interview for the autobiography final yr that he didn’t have the worth of a bag of spuds.

Is a floating glass field a home?

The Goulding Summerhouse, a floating glass field hanging over the river Dargle in Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, is the stuff of Dermot Bannon’s fantasies. You may understand it because the setting for Eamon Cunningham’s Ayahuasca ceremony in RTÉ’s crime drama Kin.

However is it a home? Wicklow County Council should determine shortly after Jodie and John Savage, the daughter and son-in-law of Johnny Ronan, sought planning permission to increase the Ronnie Tallon-designed metal and glass pavilion. The couple, who each work in senior roles for the Ronan Group, wish to add a light-weight glass hyperlink connecting the protected construction to an extension containing 5 bedrooms, bogs, a house workplace, TV room and courtyard.

One impediment could also be a query posed by the council throughout a pre-planning assembly about whether or not the constructing, constructed for Sir Basil Goulding in 1973 as a part of the bigger Dargle Property, could be classed as a home. Certainly Goulding’s spouse, Valerie, operated it as a restaurant for a spell. The story goes {that a} younger Johnny dined in it within the late Nineteen Seventies and resolved to purchase the property at some point, finally forking out £650,000 for it from then proprietor Tony Ryan in 1990.

The Savages have taken a front-foot method to the council’s “home” conundrum. Their planning utility features a six-page authorized opinion from solicitors McCann FitzGerald about why it’s certainly a “dwelling home”.

The wealthy style of Barry’s Tea

New necessities for MEPs to declare revenue of greater than €5,000 from any sources outdoors of their day jobs gives an fascinating peek into features of Irish members’ funds. When former Minister for International Affairs Peter Barry died in 2016, he left €41 million to his six youngsters from his shareholding within the household enterprise, Barry’s Tea.

Amongst these to profit was his daughter, Deirdre Clune, a former Cork TD and now an MEP for Eire South. Being a part of the tea dynasty continues to repay for the Positive Gael politician. Her newest declaration reveals that her shares in Barry’s Cork Limitless produce an revenue of about €100,000 yearly. Sufficient to pay for loads of golden moments.

The artwork of being a McGuinness

Cillian Murphy has been nominated for each award moving into latest weeks. However his proficient artist spouse, Yvonne McGuinness, has additionally been busy ending up a solo exhibition, Rehearsals, on the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny final Sunday. The exhibition is alleged to have drawn on McGuinness’s household’s personal involvement within the politics of the town over generations. Certainly it seems her uncle is none apart from native TD John McGuinness, who was additionally keen on a dramatic flourish throughout his time as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

Aspect Footage unnerves pearl-clutchers, the poor issues

Eire’s Aspect Footage can also be on the award circuit for Poor Issues, which has been getting US critics and audiences scorching underneath the collar, with one breathless American reviewer calling it “the raunchiest film of the last decade”. It isn’t the primary time Aspect has unnerved the pearl-clutchers. Regular Folks’s nudity famously led to irate viewers having an assault of the vapours on RTÉ’s Liveline. Maybe there’s one thing within the water at Aspect’s HQ throughout from the GPO at 30-31 O’Connell Road. In spite of everything it was once a department of Ann Summers, the knickers store.

Trump allegedly guarantees to show his again on his ancestral continent

Final week Politico reported an alarming anecdote from the European Commissioner for Inside Market, Thierry Breton. The French politician recounted a heated assembly from 2020 between himself, Ursula von der Leyen, Donald Trump and our personal Phil Hogan, then Eire’s commissioner.

“It is advisable to perceive that if Europe is underneath assault we’ll by no means come that can assist you and to assist you,” Trump allegedly advised the European contingent. “By the best way, Nato is lifeless, and we’ll go away; we’ll stop Nato,” Trump additionally reportedly stated. Sadly, he was silent on Huge Phil’s response to Trump’s bluster.

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