Sarah Carey is an Irish columnist, broadcaster and communications consultant. She writes for the Irish Independent. From March 2011 until August 2017 she presented Talking Point on Newstalk. [1] [2] She is a former columnist for The Sunday Times , [3] The Herald and The Irish Times . [4]
Carey has a degree in history from Trinity College Dublin, and a post-graduate diploma in Business Studies from the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in University College, Dublin (U.C.D.). [5] She has worked as a communications consultant for many companies, particularly in public affairs and infrastructure. Carey is also a professional chair and facilitator of conferences and workshops. [6] She worked for Esat Digifone. [5] and has also worked in the technology industry including Cape Clear and search engine Cuil. Carey was appointed by the Department of the Environment to the Appeals Board of the Register of Architects and Chartered Surveyors, serving two terms from 2013 to 2019.
In 2002 she began writing the blog GUBU, "An Irish woman's social, political and domestic commentary". Then, after reading the blog, Sunday Times Irish Editor Fiona McHugh offered Carey a column. The Sunday Times column ended when she started writing a weekly opinion column for The Irish Times in 2008. [7] The blog also ended in 2008. Carey revealed that in her time at The Sunday Times, opinion columnists had been forbidden from expressing views in favour of the Lisbon Treaty. [8]
Because she had worked as Marketing Coordinator for Esat Telecom, she was a witness at the Moriarty Tribunal. [9] [10] In 2004 she leaked information provided to her by the tribunal about political donations made by Denis O'Brien to political parties in Ireland. The information included a letter of thanks to O'Brien from Michael McDowell of the Progressive Democrats. These leaks were published by journalist Stephen Collins in The Sunday Tribune. She denied to her legal team that she had been the source of the leak. When told she would be questioned under oath, she admitted she was the source. Carey said "her motives were political" as the Tribunal had only highlighted O'Brien's donations to Fine Gael, and not those to other parties. The Tribunal judge publicly rebuked her in 2004 for wasting the tribunal's time in identifying the source of the leak. [11]
When the final Tribunal report was published in March 2011, she appeared on Prime Time , a national TV news analysis show, in which she defended the leak and her support for Mr O'Brien. [12] Days later, she resigned from her job with The Irish Times. [13] In a statement, the editor, Geraldine Kennedy, a former T.D. and Progressive Democrat colleague of Michael McDowell's, said that "her credibility as a columnist had been damaged by the findings of the report of the Moriarty tribunal and its aftermath." She continues to write for other newspapers. [14] and appears regularly on RTE television and radio programmes.
Carey lives in County Meath and is married with three children. [15] Her father William Carey was a Fine Gael councillor for 47 years on Meath County Council. [16] [17]
Garret Desmond FitzGerald was an Irish Fine Gael politician, public intellectual, economist and barrister who served twice as Taoiseach, serving from 1981 to 1982 and 1982 to 1987. He served as Leader of Fine Gael from 1977 to 1987 and was twice Leader of the Opposition between 1977 and 1982; he was previously Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1973 to 1977. FitzGerald served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1969 to 1992 and was a Senator for the Industrial and Commercial Panel from 1965 to 1969.
Mary Harney is an Irish former politician and the former Chancellor of the University of Limerick.
Vincent Browne is an Irish print and broadcast journalist. He is a columnist with The Irish Times and The Sunday Business Post and a non-practising barrister. From 1996 until 2007, he presented a nightly talk-show on RTÉ Radio, Tonight with Vincent Browne, which focused on politics, the proceedings of tribunals on political corruption and police misconduct. From 2007 to 2017 he presented Tonight with Vincent Browne on TV3, which was broadcast from Monday to Thursday at 11:00pm.
Michael Lowry is an Irish independent politician who has served as a Teachta Dála (TD) since 1987, currently for the Tipperary constituency. He previously served as Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications from 1994 to 1996 and Chair of the Fine Gael parliamentary party from 1993 to 1994.
Today FM is a commercial FM radio station, owned and operated by Bauer Audio Ireland Limited, which broadcasts throughout the Republic of Ireland. Broadcasting since 17 March 1997, it broadcasts mostly music, with a daily news and current affairs programme. Today FM holds a licence from the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland as far as the year 2027. The station recorded pretax profits of €7.4 million on a turnover of €19.4 million in early 2009, more than twice what it was two years previously.
The Sunday Independent is an Irish Sunday newspaper broadsheet published by Independent News & Media plc, a subsidiary of Mediahuis.
Denis O'Brien is an Irish billionaire businessman, and the founder and owner of Digicel. He was listed among the World's Top 200 Billionaires in 2015 and was Ireland's richest native-born citizen for several years. His business interests have also extended to aircraft leasing, utilities support (Actavo), petroleum, football, and healthcare. As former chairman of the Esat Digifone consortium, O'Brien was questioned by the Moriarty Tribunal, which investigated the awarding of a mobile phone licence to Esat, among other things.
The Moriarty Tribunal, officially called the Tribunal of Inquiry into certain Payments to Politicians and Related Matters, was an Irish Tribunal of Inquiry established in 1997 into the financial affairs of politicians Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry. It has revealed significant tax evasion by these and other politicians and leading businessmen. As a consequence, the tax authorities have recovered millions of euro in settlements and penalties from many individuals. The final report of the tribunal was expected to be published in mid-January 2010, but was delayed and was published 22 March 2011.
Colm O'Rourke is a Gaelic football manager, former player, retired secondary school principal, sports broadcaster and columnist. He has been manager of the Meath county team since 2022.
The Tribunal of Inquiry into Certain Planning Matters and Payments, commonly known as the Mahon Tribunal after the name of its last chairman, was a public inquiry in Ireland established by Dáil Éireann in 1997 to investigate allegations of corrupt payments to politicians regarding political decisions. It mostly investigated planning permissions and land rezoning issues in the 1990s in the Dublin County Council area. Judge Alan Mahon was the final chair of the tribunal and its other members were Judge Mary Faherty and Judge Gerald Keys. The original chairman, who was the sole member until just before his retirement, was Judge Feargus Flood, giving rise to the original common name of the Flood Tribunal.
Eoghan Harris is an Irish journalist, columnist, director, and former politician. He has held posts in various and diverse political parties. He was a leading theoretician in the Marxist-Leninist Workers' Party. Harris was a fierce critic of Provisional Sinn Féin, from which they had split, and became an opponent of Irish republicanism. For much of the Troubles, from the 1970s until the 1990s, Harris worked in Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) and was influential in shaping the current affairs output of Ireland's national broadcaster. Later he began writing for the Sunday Independent newspaper.
Regina Doherty is an Irish Fine Gael politician who is a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency since the 2024 European Parliament election. She was a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Meath East constituency from 2011 to 2020. She was the Leader of Fine Gael in the Seanad from 2020 to 2024, serving as leader of the Seanad from 2020 to 2022 and Deputy leader of the Seanad from 2022 to 2024. She served as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection from 2017 to 2020 and Government Chief Whip from 2016 to 2017.
Máire Rita Whelan is an Irish judge who has served as a Judge of the Court of Appeal since June 2017. She previously served as Attorney General of Ireland from 2011 to 2017. She was the first woman to hold the office.
Transparency International's 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index scored Ireland at 77 on a scale from 0 to 100. When ranked by score, Ireland ranked 11th among the 180 countries in the Index, where the country ranked first is perceived to have the most honest public sector. For comparison with worldwide scores, the best score was 90, the average score was 43, and the worst score was 11. For comparison with regional scores, the highest score among Western European and European Union countries was 90, the average score was 65 and the lowest score was 42.
It is alleged that as a result of benefits extended to Michael Lowry by Denis O'Brien that Esat Digifone was given an unfair advantage in the procurement of a mobile phone operator's licence.
Helen McEntee is an Irish Fine Gael politician. A Teachta Dála (TD) for the Meath East constituency since 2013, she has been Minister for Justice since June 2020, having previously served as a minister of state from 2016 to 2020. Her justice portfolio was temporarily reassigned to Heather Humphreys and Simon Harris during her two six-month periods of maternity leave in 2021 and 2022–2023.
Sam Smyth is an investigative reporter, columnist and broadcaster. He works for the Irish Mail on Sunday and formerly worked for the Irish Independent, Sunday Independent, and Sunday Tribune newspapers.
Martina Fitzgerald is CEO of Scale Ireland, the national representation body for tech start-ups and scale-ups. She is also a board member of Dóchas and the National Screening Advisory Committee.
Sarah McInerney is an Irish radio and TV presenter and reporter, notable for her work with RTÉ, TV3 / Virgin Media One and Newstalk, and a print journalist, notably having worked with the Sunday Tribune and The Sunday Times. From County Galway and with a degree in journalism from Dublin City University, she co-presents RTÉ's main commute-time radio programme, Drivetime, and RTÉ's flagship current affairs TV programme, Prime Time.
Comcast Int. Holdings v Minister for Public Enterprise & ors and Persona Digital Telephony Ltd v Minister for Public Enterprise & ors [2012] IESC 50 is an Irish Supreme Court case which originated from the controversial decision of Michael Lowry, then Minister for Public Enterprise, to grant the second state mobile phone license to ESAT Digiphone. It has been described as "an absolutely unique case without any precedent in the ninety year history of the state."