“I had a very frank discussion with McGuinness and I told him that I couldn’t ever square the application of violence for political reasons”
Northern Ireland journalist Eamonn Mallie has just released a memoir, Eyewitness to War and Peace, and his interview with Dion Fanning explores the upheaval he has witnessed through a career covering the Troubles and the peace process, as well as the process of reporting on it. "With Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly at the helm, I’m hopeful that we’re on the right track again," Mallie says, and he explains why.
“I’m not very good with people…I’m very good with dogs.”
In the first episode of Experience with Dion Fanning, a new podcast series with people in Irish life reflecting on the experiences that shaped them, John Banville talks about grief, journalism and why he doesn't care what people say about him on Twitter.
“One of the big reasons costs are high in the Anglosphere is that state capacity was emptied out in the 80s and 90s. Everything has been outsourced to the private sector.”
Ireland gets a poor return for its investment in public infrastructure. As the population climbs, that's a big problem. Marco Chitti, a transit researcher who specialises in sharing best practice in infrastructure investment, has some ideas on how to build better. In this podcast, Chitti talks to Sean Keyes.
“He wanted to show that he was a Russian patriot and so he would live out his life in Russia. I know this was extremely painful for his wife.”
Mikhail Gorbachev's biographer William Taubman talks to Dion Fanning about how he came to know the last leader of the USSR and how if he hadn't humiliated Boris Yeltsin at a meeting in 1987, the history of the Soviet Union might have been different.
“Climate change is likely to cost a lot of money. The government hasn’t set out any kind of plan or estimates of how much it’s going to cost.”
The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has warned that Government faces difficult choices and needs to prioritise what it wants to achieve in Budget 2023. It must address with the current cost-of-living crisis, without further stoking inflation. It must balance short-term and long-term demands. It must also appease the three coalition partners. And as the economist Sebastian Barnes, the chairman of the Council, says in this podcast with Stephen Kinsella, the upcoming Budget is set against the backdrop of four overlapping crises. He remains positive about the economy but is less upbeat to the state’s approach to pension and climate.
“We’re not looking for the perfect company. We’re looking for good, solid, growing businesses that have a good shot at doubling or tripling in size over the next X number of years.”
The growth fund BGF made its first investment in the Irish market in 2019. It has followed it up with a dozen more deals, deploying a total of €97.5 million in the Irish market. Backed by Isif, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Ulster Bank, it has €250 million in capital to invest.
In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, the head of BGF in Ireland Leo Casey talks about the type of companies the firm is willing to back, the sectors it prefers, and the size of the check it can write. In addition, the former IBI corporate financier talks about the slowdown in dealmaking this year, frothy valuations and the headwinds facing the economy.
“The simplicity of the business model is driven by the fact that I’m involved in three different business ventures along with running a family farm, going to college and wanting to do all the things a 21-year-old ordinarily does”
Co Limerick-based Nick Cotter is the winner of this year's Global Student Entrepreneur Awards for the solution developed to reduce chemical use in livestock by Cotter Agritech, the latest strand in a farm-based business sustaining two generations of his family and several employees. From running a marketing survey in his primary school for his first firewood business to selling organic lamb to Adare Manor and keeping a cool head when approached by venture capitalists, he tells Thomas Hubert what drives him to juggle business, college and life – and why it could only have happened on a farm.
“It does seem likely to me that there is a group within Russia who have decided that peaceful protests against Putin aren’t getting anywhere”
The car bomb that killed Darya Dugina may have been intended for her father Aleksandr Dugin, a figure who may or may not have Vladimir Putin's ear but who has articulated a vision of the Russian nation which justifies the invasion of Ukraine. Journalist and documentary-maker Johnny O'Reilly talks to Dion Fanning from Kyiv about Dugin's importance if any and how the war is now playing out on the frontline in Ukraine.
“With technology and an online business, you’re global from day one. As Liam Casey from PCH would say, geography is history”
Two years ago, Mike McGrath and Martin Fitzgerald put their money in their own pockets and developed a minimum viable product, before launching it to the market last year. Today, their Cork-based company, Kwayga, has 50,000 suppliers listed on its platform and is operating in 50 countries.
The business, an online platform that matches buyers and sellers in the food and beverage sector, initially targeted the European market but it is now gaining momentum in the US and Canada. In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, McGrath talks about the genesis of the business, the growing problem of supply chain disruption, and raising funds to scale internationally.
“I don’t think I was dealt with honestly in the last 12 months and that’s something that’s hurt me a little bit”
Kevin O'Brien is one of the great figures from the golden age of Irish cricket. A 50-ball century against England in 2011 catapulted him to the forefront of people's minds but he was there on all the great days. After announcing his retirement, he spoke to Dion Fanning about his disappointment in how it ended.
“We are trying to improve turnaround time, so that a patient gets results quicker and gets their minds put at ease quicker”
Deciphex, the virtual diagnostics company led by academic turned entrepreneur Donal O'Shea, is applying Artificial Intelligence algorithms to pathology, a discipline that hasn't changed much in its physicality over the last century. In this podcast, he talks to Rosanna Cooney about speeding up the diagnostic process and presenting pathologists with an alternate career path.