For professional athletes, retirement doesn’t come in the form of a gradual career peak—it arrives suddenly, often through injury or physical decline. Unlike those in other careers who can steadily build toward financial security, many athletes find themselves facing uncertainty in their early 30s. In this episode of Sports Matters, former rugby players Niall Woods and Marty Moore discuss the challenges of transitioning out of the game, from financial instability to the loss of identity and structure. Speaking to Ian Kehoe, they explore the psychological and practical difficulties of life after professional sport and the importance of preparation for the next chapter. Sports Matters is sponsored by Whitney Moore.
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.
Graham Cawley co-founded Santiago Capital after three decades in corporate finance. In conversation with Thomas Hubert, he explains how the firm is carving out a niche by directing funds from wealthy clients and international institutional investors to traditional Irish property developers, and why it is expanding unsecured lending to small businesses.
“We have a shelf off the west coast of Ireland on which we can deploy offshore wind resources. Rather than taking raw energy out of our wind turbines and shipping it either through hydrogen or through large interconnectors into Europe – why would we not build the industry here where it’s close to the energy, and get the benefit from that?” KPMG’s Colm O’Neill tells Sean Keyes why he thinks it's finally time Ireland makes a pitch for heavy industry.
Estate agent and auctioneer Robert Hoban co-founded Offr in 2019 with the intention of making buying or renting a property as easy as booking a flight. Then, the pandemic shuttered the economy. It proved the business model for his online bidding platform, but seriously impacted his target customers - estate agents. In this podcast with Ian Kehoe, he talks about navigating his start-up through the pandemic, raising €6 million through three funding rounds, and his plans to bring the product to the US market.
In September and October, corporation tax receipts underperformed, leading to fears that the modern-day gold rush that has underpinned Ireland’s remarkable fiscal turnaround was coming to an end. However, earlier this week, the government unveiled bumper numbers for November, the most crucial tax month in the year. To discuss what happened – and what happens next – Ian Kehoe is joined by Thomas Hubert, who has spent years chronicling the vagaries of Ireland’s corporation tax, and the economist Stephen Kinsella. The trio also discuss Ireland's overreliance on corporation tax, the outlook for 2024, and a new report by the Fiscal Advisory Council that accuses the government of financial “gimmickry”.
Why are we as a society so obsessed with the provenance of things, but willingly deceived about where it ends up? Award-winning journalist Oliver Franklin-Wallis became obsessed with this question and the global waste industry, often manned by bad actors taking advantage of an uneducated public. He talks to Sinead O'Sullivan about his new book Wasteland, which took him from the mountainous landfills of New Delhi, to the flooded second-hand markets of Ghana and to the sewers of the Thames.
Gathered around a table in New York are journalist Sam Smyth, comedian Des Bishop and two of America's most illustrious lawyers, Ed Hayes and Barry Scheck. Together, they have a boisterous debate on American politics, the changing media landscape and the showmanship required to be a 21st-century trial lawyer.
John Hume was a man of contradictions. Hugely ambitious and with a vision for peace and unity, he could be difficult, cantankerous and his silences were legendary. Stephen Walker, author of a new biography, speaks to Dion Fanning about the criticism of Hume, his vision and the risks he took for peace.
Cars have promised freedom and mobility. However, according to the journalist Daniel Knowles, they have actually made our lives worse. In Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do, Knowles looks at the rise of the car and assesses the impact it has had on everything from urban planning to the economy and human happiness - or lack thereof. He takes readers around the world from Nairobi, where, despite the fact that few people own a car, the city is still cloaked in smog, to Houston, where the Katy Freeway has 36 lanes and there are 30 parking spaces for every resident. In this podcast, he talks to Sinead about why he wrote the book, and what needs to happen to reduce our reliance on cars.
CoolPlanet is in expansion mode again after the pandemic froze its core business helping corporate customers cut their energy use and carbon emissions. It now outsources the roll-out of those projects and focuses on the analytics software driving them - including to control new electric trucks specialised in mining, its founder and chairman Norman Crowley tells Thomas Hubert. He sees a decade of growth ahead in the need for decarbonising the economy and warns that Ireland is missing the offshore wind opportunity while protecting a type of livestock farming that has no future.
