Gareth Sheridan plays down business partner's Moldovan airline controversy as ‘not an issue' for election
Gareth Sheridan
has said he knows 'very little' about his business partner's involvement in a
controversial airline privatisation deal in Moldova
.
Speaking at the formal launch of his
presidential campaign
in Dublin, Mr Sheridan said he had not spoken to his business partner Serguei Melnik, who has succeeded him as chief executive of his company Nutriband for the duration of the campaign, about his involvement in the Air Moldova deal and possible links to Russian oligarchs.
Mr Sheridan said he knew 'very little about that situation' and added that it was 'not an issue' in terms of the focus of his campaign, housing.
The 35-year-old said he was confident he had a proposer and seconder to secure nominations for
Laois
and
Tipperary
county councils and declined to name four others he also believed he could secure nominations from.
READ MORE
Mr Sheridan, who would be the youngest ever presidential candidate if he secures a nomination, has budgeted for a campaign fund of up to €500,000, although he hoped to do it for less from his own funds.
He said his net worth was $16 million (€13.7m) based on the current value of his shares in his business Nutriband and he has $500,000 (€429,627) in cash holdings.
His campaign is focused on housing, he added, and he wants to 'make Ireland home again', a phrase he denied had Trumpian connotations.
He pointed to Article 45.2.1 of the Constitution which obliges the State to direct policy so that citizens 'may through their occupations find the means of making reasonable provision for their domestic needs'. Mr Sheridan said people should be able to afford to buy a home in Ireland, which they are not able to do.
Gareth Sheridan with his wife Heidi after the briefing at the Shelbourne hotel. Photograph: Alan Betson/ The Irish Times
Launching his campaign at the Shelbourne Hotel, with his wife Heidi in attendance, Mr Sheridan started his address by drawing attention to media coverage of him in the last number of days, which he described as 'a little off'.
He addressed his relationship with
Sean Gallagher
, who twice put himself forward unsuccessfully in presidential elections, and was executive chairman of Nutriband for four years to 2022.
[
Mairead McGuinness drops out of presidential race due to health reasons
Opens in new window
]
Mr Sheridan said that after the company was listed on the Nasdaq in the US, it was decided to replace Mr Gallagher with Serguei Melnik, who had more experience with capital markets.
'We asked [Mr Gallagher] to voluntarily step aside on the same remuneration,' he said. 'Communication broke down at the next shareholder meeting' and Mr Melnik was voted in to replace Mr Gallagher.
Mr Gallagher then resigned from the Nutriband board. 'I wish Sean the best in whatever he's working on,' Mr Sheridan said.
In 2018, Mr Sheridan and his business associate, Mr Melnik, were fined $25,000 (€21,400) each by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), arising from the issuing of misleading statements by Nutriband in 2017 and 2018, when the two men were the company's only full-time employees.
Nutribrand chief executive Gareth Sheridan with chairman Sergei Melnik. Photograph: Instagram
Six statements made during the period mischaracterised the company's products as not requiring regulatory approval in the US, the SEC said.
Asked about the fines, Mr Sheridan said they had received advice from two attorneys and a dermatologist who had independently advised that FDA approval was not needed.
He said in the business he was in, 'you have to rely on people who are experts in that space. I'm not for a second claiming that I'm an FDA attorney'.
Mr Sheridan was asked for a response to a report that his business partner Mr Melnik, the US-resident Moldovan lawyer who is chairman and chief executive of Nutriband, was a shareholder in a company that bought Air Moldova in 2018 in a deal that became the subject of controversy in Moldova, leading to an inquiry by a parliamentary committee.
'It's not an issue in terms of trying to put a focus on the housing crisis in Ireland,' he said.
Asked if he owned a home or invested in the private rental market he said: 'We have our house in Utah and we have a rental house in Utah. We rent in Dublin.' He added: 'There isn't a housing crisis in Salt Lake City Utah, there is in Dublin.' He drives a 'used 2021 Mercedes hybrid'.
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Irish Times
43 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Irish abroad returning home: ‘It's been hard ... I didn't probably know the Ireland I was coming back to'
Ireland has undergone huge changes over the last number of decades. From the legalising of divorce, same-sex marriage and abortion , to boom and bust economics, increasing immigration, a housing crisis and the impact of the Covid pandemic, people living here have witnessed enormous social shifts. For Ireland's returning expats, however, home can look very different to the one they remember. The most recent figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that, in the year up to April 2024, 30,000 Irish citizens returned to our shores for various reasons, in some cases after many years abroad. So, what do these recent returnees make of the Ireland of today? Is there really no place like home? Or does it even feel like home any more? We spoke to four people who made the move back in recent years. READ MORE Kate Gleeson (39) from Waterford returned to Ireland from London in 2024 when her father became ill. She had been in London for nine years and also lived there for a time in the early 2000s. As a gay woman, Kate initially found it easier to live in London. 'because it's a bigger city'. She said: 'In that perspective, I found it easier to be who I was, because there was less judgment around. I felt in Waterford, everyone knew me and I was always scared that eyes would be on me and they'd be judging me. It was still very taboo here at the time.' Now, things are completely different. 'I probably feel safer here than I do back there, to be honest.' This, she says, is due to having lived in an area where she encountered people with a 'negative outlook on the LGBT community'. She feels these views stem from their religious beliefs. 'I wouldn't feel as safe walking down the high road holding my girlfriend's hand, because I know that I would probably get a few tuts and a few sighs over there.' Still, Kate loved the 'anonymity' of London. 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You've missed out on all the years of growing up in Ireland, of working in Ireland.' She compares it to feeling like a stranger 'in your own culture'. Sr Rebecca explains her life in Pakistan prepared her for some changes. 'One thing about all of that, is we that we lived with the people. And the people have the same problems. The LGBT communities, they are accepted in Pakistan. They're part of the culture. [ When you return home to Ireland from abroad, you notice that everyone is a little changed Opens in new window ] 'Being a missionary, and in such a volatile situation, life was a mess all the time. Life is an absolute mess and you just try to get on with it and accompany people in their mess and our mess and the whole lot.' What did she make of changes such as divorce, marriage equality and repealing the eighth amendment? 'Ireland wanted it,' she replies. She hasn't 'adjusted yet', to being home. 'I'm trying to navigate my road really and truly. 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That means someone else who is desperate for a rental didn't get it. We came back in a housing crisis. We haven't been able to purchase a house, we've been cut off so many times from other people that it's hopeless now. And moving to Dublin is hopeless.' Breda and her husband commute to work. 'There is no commuter train that gets us into an office for nine o'clock in the morning. There is no road infrastructure to get there ... All the companies are around Dublin, Cork and the likes, generally, so it has impacted your professional choices. I'd really like if I worked part-time around the kids. But that flexibility isn't available. You see corporates talking about how everyone has to come back into the office now.' Breda says they have decided to return to Australia later this year. 'My husband and I both worry excessively about our ageing parents [in Ireland]. It's a real concern. 'Australia's not perfect. It's just that we had curated a life that was pretty close to it ... and we hadn't realised you can't create that everywhere.' *Name has been changed
Irish Times
43 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Ryanair adds 600,000 seats to Irish winter schedule
Ryanair will add around 600,000 seats to this year's winter schedule from Irish airports, new figures show, as restrictions at the State's key gateway remain in legal limbo. An analysis of the carrier's plans for winter 2025/26 by aviation data consultancy OAG, which Ryanair confirms as broadly correct, shows that the Irish group intends to grow in most key European countries. From this year, Ryanair will boost the total number of seats out of the Republic of Ireland over the winter season by 15.5 per cent, to 4.89 million. The corresponding figure was 4.23 million last winter. The airline confirmed that it is growing capacity at Dublin Airport , its biggest Irish base, 'thanks to our successful appeal' to the European courts against the 'illegal' cap, which caps passenger numbers there at 32 million a year. READ MORE Ryanair, Aer Lingus and others challenged the cap in the Irish High Court, which referred key issues to the Court of Justice of the EU , suspending the restriction pending the outcome of the airlines' action. Traffic at Dublin Airport could exceed 36 million passengers this year. Ryanair is adding almost 1.6 million seats in Italy, where its capacity will top 16.86 million this winter. The airline has been increasing its presence at bases in Italian regions that are cutting travel taxes and other costs. In another big market for the Irish airline, it will boost capacity in the UK by 6.3 per cent to 12.5 million. Ryanair plans to slash capacity in France this winter by 11.3 per cent to 2.64 million seats. The carrier blames the country's latest tax increase on flights for this. OAG notes that the airline is cutting back at every airport at which it operates in France. The biggest losers in terms of numbers will be Paris Beauvais and Marseille, according to the consultancy. It has pulled out of Strasbourg, Bergerac and Brive. [ Dublin Airport passenger cap to be breached this year, says DAA Opens in new window ] The Government pledged to lift the Dublin Airport passenger cap following 'consultations with stakeholders' in the programme published in January. An Bord Pleanála imposed the limit in 2007, as a condition of allowing the airport build a second terminal, to ease fears about traffic congestion. Darragh O'Brien, Minister for Transport, sought advice from the Attorney General Rossa Fanning, on legislation to lift the planning curb in spring. Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary has criticised the Government for failing to act on the pledge.
Irish Times
43 minutes ago
- Irish Times
The more US tax money we get, the more dysfunctional the Irish economy becomes
From plutocrat to bureaucrat, everyone seems to have an opinion on Dublin's proposed MetroLink . Some argue it's too expensive to build, others that it's too expensive not to build. One opinion that appears to have more purchase in Government circles was articulated recently in this newspaper – and it is the view of corporate United States . The intervention of the multinationals will be critical because the State is captured by them. Being hostage to the concerns of large taxpayers and employers has its pros and cons. The impact on Ireland of boardroom US and its local handler, the Industrial Development Agency (IDA), is important. Most of the time we see only the impressive and unambiguously positive top-line tax and employment numbers. However, there is also a potentially harmful impact of Ireland's foreign investment policy, which explains some of the anomalies from the relative absence of local industrial champions and the attitude of the State bureaucracy, to the price of houses, rates of immigration and the high costs of doing business here. READ MORE The central fact that one sector is favoured over others is also a helpful framework in understanding how the Irish economic policy works, and for whom. In a nutshell, Ireland suffers from what economists term 'Dutch Disease'. In the late-1960s, the Netherlands found large quantities of natural gas in the North Sea. This was largely hailed as a fortuitous windfall, particularly in the 1970s as various Middle Eastern wars and crises sent the price of energy skywards. With its own source of power, the Netherlands didn't need to import energy and was benefiting when many European energy importers were suffering. So far so rosy. [ Growth in Irish living standards is likely to disappoint over the next 20 years Opens in new window ] However, over time the Dutch noticed that other industries in the Netherlands started to suffer. Wages in the booming and high-productivity gas sector began to drag up the wages in other areas of the economy, because workers were getting higher wages in the gas sector and moving or were demanding equivalent wages to their neighbour who was newly employed in the gasworks. Rents and house prices also started to rise, pushed up by the recently enriched workers in the gas sector who could pay more. Dutch society paid for the gas bonanza in a variety of unforeseen ways. Photograph: Getty Images The Dutch currency, the guilder, appreciated, making it more difficult for every industry not associated with gas, to export. Finally, as the gas industry was the sexy new industry, it lobbied the government for preferential treatment in terms of taxes and benefits, and these were granted. Over time not only were other industries and sectors squeezed out by the behemothic natural gas sector but the State itself fell in love with natural gas, to the detriment of the rest of the economy. By the mid-1980s what had been seen as a one-off, fortuitous, everyone's-a-winner, windfall came to be seen as something more complicated. Large parts of the Dutch economy suffered and the society paid for the gas bonanza in a variety of unforeseen ways. This more nuanced analysis, where the dominant new industry elbows out the more plodding but profitable old industries was termed 'Dutch Disease'. In poorer countries, the same dynamic is regularly known as the 'curse of resources', where a developing country finds oil, and the oil industry ends up dominating everything and ultimately lobbies to dictate and bend policy to its whims. All the money of the country is sucked up by the resources industry, and the fruits of the dividend are rarely evenly shared. Ireland is experiencing a form of Dutch Disease. The multinationals are akin to a resource find, a spigot that churns out tax revenue, resulting in other parts of the State bureaucracy trying to get their hands on this cash and divvy it up accordingly. Precisely because there is so much money gushing out of the multinationals and going directly into the public sector, that public sector spending increases dramatically and various lobby groups petition to grab some of the bonanza. The Department of Public Expenditure moves from being the guardian of hard-earned tax money, to the spender of what appears to be free money from the multinationals. In time, the entire public economy mutates into being a reckless spender of American money. There is no budget constraint, just a spend now, worry later mania. This has the effect of pushing up the price of everything, because the State spends over a third of every euro spent in the country. When the economy is already rocking along, prices and wages simply ratchet up. Apple was ordered to pay Ireland €13bn in unpaid taxes by Europe's top court in 2024. Photograph: Getty Images Because they are small, small private businesses can't match multinational wages and public sector wages, which themselves are paid for by the multinationals' tax deluge. Small businesses lose workers or have to pay even more to keep their workers from moving. Rents are pushed up by the higher-paid employees of the high-productivity multinational sector, squeezing the incomes of the rest, pushing down their quality of life in an ever more expensive economy. As long as the tax money keeps flowing, this process reinforces itself at every turn. At the same time, as long as the tax torrent keeps cascading, the entire State apparatus becomes entirely dependent on the whims of corporate United States, and the State becomes captured. The numbers are startling. Apart from the infamous Apple tax money , we collected a total of €28.1bn in corporation tax receipts last year, with a whopping 88 per cent of that revenue paid in by foreign-owned multinationals – despite these companies accounting for only 11 per cent of all companies. But looking just at one side of the balance sheet doesn't give us the whole picture. The bigger picture is one of an excessively dominant and favoured sector bending the economy and the society to its whim. Ironically, the more tax money we get from the US, the more dysfunctional the general Irish economy becomes. [ Three positive metrics point to health of economy Opens in new window ] Some might say this isn't a bad problem to have, and that is absolutely fair enough, but the question remains: where does this end? Most of my economics colleagues are worried about the quantitative aspect. I am concerned about the qualitative aspect of the multinational dominance, what it is doing to the economy in general, innovation and start-up culture, house prices and immigration, as well as the broader society and the way we make public decisions that are supposedly for the greater good. Maybe more importantly, the way the exchequer has become hostage to various lobby groups who have only become more emboldened as the coffers fill up, means Government judgment has become impaired by abundance. 'Dutch Disease' might not be the worst economic malady, but it's a dangerous one and Ireland doesn't seem to have figured out a vaccine.
