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.
Having begun his career as a management consultant with McKinsey, Patrick Coveney has spent more than a decade running Greencore. In a revealing interview with Alison Cowzer, Coveney talks about personal ambition, Brexit and his own future with the food giant. He also talks about scaling an Irish business globally, dynastic politics and his views on the Irish response to the crisis.
When the Lord Mayor of Dublin Hazel Chu announced her candidacy for the Seanad by-election, it exposed further fault lines within the Green Party. She tells Cáit Caden why she decided to run, even though she believes she cannot win, and her future in the party. Chu also discussed tensions in her party and her views on the contentious topic of CETA. Since Chu has entered public office, she has been a driver for integration and diversity. She talks about what she believes should be done, especially in education, to promote integration and her thoughts on the higher level in Irish requirement to become a primary school teacher.
Bernie Madoff's death this week brought back memories of one of the most far-reaching Ponzi schemes in financial history. Diana Henriques's book The Wizard of Lies told his story. She interviewed Madoff and, even in securing that interview, she experienced in a small way what it was like to trust Madoff and for him to betray that trust. In this podcast, she talked about how Madoff did that and how his Ponzi scheme appealed to people's anxiety rather than their greed.
Sean Keyes asks The Currency’s senior correspondent Thomas Hubert and chief economics writer Stephen Kinsella to unpick Joe Biden’s proposal for corporation tax reform: Why does US tax law matter so much to Ireland? How do American multinationals react to changes in the tax code? How likely is the new US president’s plan to be implemented, and how would its combined impact with ongoing international talks at the OECD affect the Irish economy? The answers are less clear-cut than you might think.
Warren Deutrom is CEO of Cricket Ireland. The past 15 years have contained many glorious moments for Irish cricket but now the game's ruling body in Ireland is looking to appeal to those who understand cricket, those who don't and those who may know that its history in Ireland is a long one. But first, like every sport, they have to try to get back playing in Covid times
One year ago, Suzanne Rigby and Mark Hooper’s business, which focused on display advertising in pubs, evaporated overnight. Within one month, they turned around and launched Clickandcollection.com, a service allowing restaurants to manage online orders for meal kits and takeaway menus. Now joined by John O’Connor, they want to expand beyond their customer base of 250 businesses – including internationally. The three entrepreneurs join Thomas Hubert to discuss their experience and their plans.
Having risen the ranks at JP Morgan and HSBC, Sligo native Deirdre McGettrick assumed she would eventually take a job with one of the companies that she advised. Instead, based on her experience of furnishing her own house, she became an unlikely entrepreneur in 2019. Today, Ufurnish.com is the UK’s largest home furnishing and comparison website. The company has just appointed Pat McCann, the founder of hotel group Dalata, as chair, and is currently in the process of raising up to £10 million to fuel expansion. In this podcast with Cait Caden, McGettrick talks about her journey from investment banking to running a start-up and outlines the company’s ambitious plans for the future.
Lisa Fallon just wants to do her job. As a female head coach in men's football that hasn't always been as easy as it should have been. She is now first team head coach at Galway United but as a child, she didn't know what opportunities were available to her. But her talent and coaching ability ensured that she would take them.
Longford native Anne-Marie Tomchak has worked for Mashable and was digital director of British Vogue. Now, she has launched the sustainable fashion business ShareJoy. The venture was founded to nurture and support young people during the pandemic following the loss of 23-year-old Irish woman Arwen Sullivan. It launched on ‘Blue Monday’ in January 2021 to highlight ShareJoy’s core value of promoting mental health awareness. In this podcast, she talks about the phone call she will never forget that inspired her to create ShareJoy, her career in the media and why what she is doing now is not so different from journalism.
Liam Cunningham gave up his career as an electrician with the ESB to become an actor in his twenties. It was in recent years, however, that he rose to worldwide fame for his role as Ser Davos Seaworth in Game of Thrones. Cunningham’s take on the impact the pandemic has had on the film and television industry is worth listening to but he is not shy about discussing politics, gender pay gap and lockdown, as well as turning down a role in Titanic.
