Every March, St Patrick’s Day transforms Dublin — but few people know the man helping to turn a single parade into one of Ireland’s biggest cultural and economic events.
Richard Tierney is the CEO of St Patrick’s Festival, the organisation behind Ireland’s national celebration. In thispodcast with Ian Kehoe, Tierney explains how the festival has evolved into a multi-day, citywide programme — with free daytime events, night-time culture and thousands of participants — while still carrying the weight of national identity at home and abroad.
Coming from a background in live entertainment and major commercial deals, Tierney was brought in with a clear brief: make the festival financially sustainable without losing its cultural soul.
Cork company Valid8Me has developed reusable identity software that it claims allows financial institutions and professional services firms to onboard new customers in a cheaper and quicker way than anyone else in the market. Grant Thornton believes in the product, and the accountancy firm has just taken a majority stake in the company for €12.5 million. In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, co-founder and CEO Patrick Horgan explains how the deal came about and outlines his plan to expand in the UK and the US. He also talks about the business of compliance, know-your-customer regulations and the company’s “atypical” journey.
In his book Chums, Simon Kuper explored the link between Oxford University and the elite that has ruled in the UK, primarily in the Conservative Party. That elite, through Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and other, also created Brexit. In this podcast, Kuper talks to Dion Fanning about the contenders for the leadership, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss, two products of Oxford and two nostalgists for the glory days of Margaret Thatcher.
Prosperity is a devil's bargain. You get higher wages. But your rent goes up, your commute gets longer, and your traditional culture gets replaced by an insipid global one.
According to Joe McReynolds, this is why Tokyo deserves our attention. In a podcast with Sean Keyes, the urban studies expert and author of Emergent Tokyo explains how it is a rich, growing city with high wages and low unemployment, and seemingly immune from many of prosperity's unpleasant side effects - rents in Tokyo are about 40 per cent lower than in Dublin. McReynolds also explains how the city has managed to preserve its culture and old ways of life.
The assassination of Shinzo Abe has stunned Japan. The week since his death has led to an examination of his legacy as well as more reflection on the shocking nature of his killing. Gearoid Reidy is an Irish journalist who is a columnist for Bloomberg based in Japan. He talked in this podcast to Dion Fanning about the legacy of Shinzo Abe, both culturally and economically and how his life and death were wrapped up in his family history.
Lynn Hunter owns and runs the biggest influencer agency in the country and now plays the matchmaker between global brands and Irish content creators. In this podcast, she tells Rosanna Cooney about getting the agency off the ground and where the influencer industry is headed.
Tommie Gorman talks to Dion Fanning about the Boris Johnson he knew and why the chaos that defined Boris Johnson's premiership will remain given those most likely to succeed him.
In 2016, Tom O’Brien was caught in the crossfire when Apollo House, a building he was receiver over, was occupied by activists protesting homelessness. Six years on, he reflects upon that period and talks about the latest journey in his career: managing partner of Mazars. In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, O’Brien also talks about the future of the accountancy industry, the economic outlook for Ireland, and the sectors most at risk of failure.
Following the explosion of sanctimony after the brawl at Croke Park, Paul Flynn and Fintan Drury discuss how the GAA's own approach has contributed to the problems and why the player at the centre of the affair has been forgotten.
Sean Keyes talks to Dan McCrum about his book Money Men, which tells the story of the €24 billion fraudulent German payments company Wirecard – and also of the investigative journalism that uncovered it.
When US multinationals began to expand into Ireland, they were years ahead of local practices in terms of looking after employee wellbeing, says Stephen Costello. He saw the opportunity to launch the workplace mental health start-up Spectrum Life – and tells its story to Devin Sean Martin.
