Seán Quinn: The most eye-catching name on the artists’ tax exemption list

Seán Quinn once told the story of how he limited his poker losses at his regular game in Cavan to €5 despite being Ireland’s richest man at the time. It seems that Cavan-based Quinn is still as cute with his money and didn’t miss a trick when it came to his memoir. His is the most eye-catching name on the list published by Revenue of those that benefited from the artists’ tax exemption scheme last year.

Quinn secured the tax break for his biography, In My Own Words, which he says he wrote to counteract the “continuous character assassination” of him and his family in the media. Under the scheme, which Charlie Haughey introduced as minister for finance in 1969 to keep starving artists from emigrating, recipients can earn up to €50,000 tax-free. The former billionaire is likely to have trousered a tidy sum from the book. It was just outside the top 10 best-sellers in Ireland last year, according to Nielsen BookScan, selling 8,354 copies.

The real figure is likely to be considerably higher, however, as Nielsen only covers about 70 per cent of all retail sales in Ireland. Books bought by the estimated crowd of 1,000 supporters who turned up at its launch in the Slieve Russell hotel in Co Cavan last September would not be counted, for example.

Not bad for someone who told Newstalk during a promotional interview for the autobiography last year that he didn’t have the price of a bag of spuds.

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Is a floating glass box a house?

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

But is it a house? Wicklow County Council will have to decide shortly after Jodie and John Savage, the daughter and son-in-law of Johnny Ronan, sought planning permission to extend the Ronnie Tallon-designed steel and glass pavilion. The couple, who both work in senior roles for the Ronan Group, want to add a lightweight glass link connecting the protected structure to an extension containing five bedrooms, bathrooms, a home office, TV room and courtyard.

One obstacle may be a question posed by the council during a pre-planning meeting about whether the building, built for Sir Basil Goulding in 1973 as part of the larger Dargle Estate, can be classed as a house. Indeed Goulding’s wife, Valerie, operated it as a restaurant for a spell. The story goes that a young Johnny dined in it in the late 1970s and resolved to buy the estate one day, eventually forking out £650,000 for it from then owner Tony Ryan in 1990.

The Savages have taken a front-foot approach to the council’s “house” conundrum. Their planning application includes a six-page legal opinion from solicitors McCann FitzGerald about why it is indeed a “dwelling house”.

The rich taste of Barry’s Tea

New requirements for MEPs to declare income of more than €5,000 from any sources outside of their day jobs provides an interesting peek into aspects of Irish members’ finances. When former Minister for Foreign Affairs Peter Barry died in 2016, he left €41 million to his six children from his shareholding in the family business, Barry’s Tea.

Among those to benefit was his daughter, Deirdre Clune, a former Cork TD and now an MEP for Ireland South. Being part of the tea dynasty continues to pay off for the Fine Gael politician. Her latest declaration reveals that her shares in Barry’s Cork Unlimited produce an income of about €100,000 annually. Enough to pay for plenty of golden moments.

The art of being a McGuinness

Cillian Murphy has been nominated for every award going in recent weeks. But his talented artist wife, Yvonne McGuinness, has also been busy finishing up a solo exhibition, Rehearsals, at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny last Sunday. The exhibition is said to have drawn on McGuinness’s family’s own involvement in the politics of the city over generations. Indeed it turns out her uncle is none other than local TD John McGuinness, who was also fond of a dramatic flourish during his time as chairman of the Public Accounts Committee.

Element Pictures unnerves pearl-clutchers, the poor things

Ireland’s Element Pictures is also on the award circuit for Poor Things, which has been getting US critics and audiences hot under the collar, with one breathless American reviewer calling it “the raunchiest movie of the decade”. It isn’t the first time Element has unnerved the pearl-clutchers. Normal People’s nudity famously led to irate viewers having an attack of the vapours on RTÉ's Liveline. Perhaps there’s something in the water at Element’s HQ across from the GPO at 30-31 O’Connell Street. After all it used to be a branch of Ann Summers, the knickers shop.

Trump allegedly promises to turn his back on his ancestral continent

Last week Politico reported an alarming anecdote from the European Commissioner for Internal Market, Thierry Breton. The French politician recounted a heated meeting from 2020 between himself, Ursula von der Leyen, Donald Trump and our own Phil Hogan, then Ireland’s commissioner.

“You need to understand that if Europe is under attack we will never come to help you and to support you,” Trump allegedly told the European contingent. “By the way, Nato is dead, and we will leave; we will quit Nato,” Trump also reportedly said. Sadly, he was silent on Big Phil’s reaction to Trump’s bluster.

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