Latest news with #GrandCanal
Times
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
The beautiful spot on my Grand Tour that left me speechless
Arriving in Venice by train feels like an entrance through a stage door. First comes the shipping town of Marghera, a behind-the-scenes tangle of scaffolding, gantries and harlequin-coloured containers. Then the metal and grime are rinsed away by the lagoon, and from the water ascend domes and towers like painted scenery on hidden props. I can see why Grand Tourists were so keen to get to La Serenissima — as I had been four hours earlier, fleeing the classical solemnity of Rome. Venice offered sensual release; a place to wear masks and play out comedies and tragedies. After drinking heavily in taverns, aristos were reeled into gambling dens, or ridotti, where they squandered inheritances and fell into the consoling arms of courtesans. In 1730 Charles Stanhope, later the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, complained that his brother had 'spent a great deal of money on a Venetian woman, whom he thought in love with him'. I emerge from Santa Lucia railway station and take a water taxi to Casino di Venezia, the world's oldest casino, founded in 1638. A red carpet runs from the jetty on the Grand Canal to the VIP wing in Ca' Vendramin Calergi, a Renaissance palace once home to Wagner. I store my suitcase at the coat check, pay a £40 entry fee and pass suits of armour before entering a salon of old-world glamour — cut-glass chandeliers, time-softened brocade, Italians in spiffy suits and gowns crowding round green baize. I whip out my phone. 'No pictures,' a doorman snaps ( I've never gambled, but I'm determined to act the part, so I strut to a roulette table and slide into a seat. The croupier looks at me and raises an eyebrow. 'It's my first time,' I say. The croupier raises both eyebrows. I slide my only chip, €100, onto red. • Jack Ling's Grand Tour part one: The most unusual way to see Paris As the ball clatters I feign indifference, adjusting cufflinks I've forgotten to put on. It lands: red. Elated, I go again: black — win. Red? Another win. Onlookers gather as my chip stack grows. A man in a velvet jacket claps me on the shoulder. I feel like a million ducats. Now I'm about £600 up — and cocky. 'I'll put it all on black,' I announce. 'Tutto?' the croupier asks. I meet his gaze. 'Tutto.' Spin, rattle … red. There is a collective groan. Head hung, I make for the jetty and hail a water taxi to the lido. The driver says that it will cost £100. I briefly consider swimming back, then pay up. The next morning I wake at the Hotel Excelsior to sea views framed by a Moorish arch — an orientalist flourish born of Venice's fascination with the East, kindled by Marco Polo's 13th-century travels. Today the hotel is quiet, but during the Venice Film Festival it teems with actors, who in Grand Tour days ranked low on the social ladder — somewhere between jesters and lepers. They arrive in water taxis at the hotel's private pier, from where I'm departing for St Mark's Square. Fifteen minutes later I'm passing shops of gilded carnival masks, synonymous with Venetian romance but once worn by noblemen waging bloody vendettas. I eat superb sea bream at Ristorante Marco Polo, where gondoliers slump at tables like extras between takes (mains from £16; • Jack Ling's Grand Tour part two: The off-piste way to see the Alps Then it's onwards to Santa Maria Formosa Square, which is dotted with painters touching up vedute, Venetian landscapes popularised by Canaletto in the 18th century. Like proto-Instagrammers, Grand Tourists hung vedute in cabinet rooms to flex on their friends. They also coveted selfies — Pompeo Batoni painted more than 200 milords, some of them dressed in 'exotic' costume: the scholar Richard Payne Knight was partial to a toga; the Cornish aristocrat Francis Basset preferred Turkish robes. This is why I've slipped into a photo studio in the Cannaregio district, where the owner, Leontine Hamer, squeezes me into breeches and a frock coat. She is transforming me into Casanova, the 18th-century Venetian who, like me, gambled, impersonated nobility and was cursed with great beauty. As Hamer snaps me against a veduta-style backdrop, I borrow poses from the nude male model I'd drawn in Rome (from £65; • Jack Ling's Grand Tour part three: A novel way to see Rome I reluctantly peel off the costume afterwards. Some Grand Tourists never did — swallowing up young aristocrats, Venice once spat out 'macaroni', the sneering nickname for those who returned to Britain in foppish Italian dress. This polyester patrician is about to be humbled. I've been invited for espresso with the author and hostess Servane Giol, an expert on Venice who has offered to point me towards its lesser-known places. Buzzed through an unmarked door near Ponte dell'Accademia, I enter a palazzo of stone walls washed in chiaroscuro light. We sit on a terrace above the canal, my Casanova photo tucked away in my pocket like a filthy secret. • 18 of the best hotels in Venice I'm asked about my travels by Giol, who is cultivated and graceful, so everything a Grand Tourist aspires to become. I admit that I'm exhausted by all the prancing and vice. 'Go to San Lazzaro degli Armeni,' she says, her voice smooth as Murano glass (it's an island monastery in the lagoon where Lord Byron went to scrub his soul clean). We finish our drinks and I bottle a courtly hand-kiss as I leave. The next morning I board a violin on water: a 1970s mahogany speedboat (tours from £520 for eight; The city retreats as my driver, Matteo, opens the throttle. Ahead, a bell tower points heavenward, a mute promise of absolution. 'Welcome to Byron island!' Matteo chirps. For once I'm speechless, overwhelmed by the beauty of it all. I step into water-lapped stillness — a monastery of Istrian stone cloistered among gently swaying palm trees. Monks in black cassocks drift through sun-scorched arches next to a garden where roses are grown for jam. I follow them towards the onion-domed campanile, entering a chapel of blue tilework and stained glass. Standing at the altar, I feel so spiritually awake that I might start speaking in tongues — or Armenian, which Byron studied here for six months in 1816 with the monks, Mekhitarists who have lived on the island since a Venetian decree in 1717. The poet's stay threatened to reform him, inspiring what he called 'conviction that there is another, better world, even in this life' (tours £9pp; +39 0415260104). *24 of the best things to do in Venice I return to the moor pier as night falls like a velvet curtain on my time in Venice. 'Where next?' Matteo asks. 'The railway station, please,' I answer. 'Then onwards to Vienna.' Tourists waiting for the vaporetto lift their phones as we pull away. I consider bowing, but the moment has passed. This article contains affiliate links that will earn us revenue Jack Ling was a guest of Byway, which has ten nights' B&B from £2,423pp, including rail travel from the UK ( and Hotel Excelsior, which has room-only doubles from £378 (
South China Morning Post
7 days ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
Meet the Chinese baristas keeping Italian cafe culture alive
At around 9:30 nearly every morning, 81-year-old Claudio Gatta passes the famous Accademia Bridge on the Grand Canal in Venice and steps into Bar Foscarini, ordering an espresso and a tuna sandwich for breakfast. He will have two more espressos there in the afternoon. True to his Italian roots, he has stuck to this coffee routine for as long as he can remember. Equally unmoving, Bar Foscarini has been around for more than 70 years, a quintessential Italian coffee bar, with a long, dark marble counter upon which sits an espresso machine polished to a mirror shine. The menu features what you would expect: coffee and sandwiches for the morning, aperitivo, pasta and pizza for later. Gatta takes a sip of the espresso and teases Sophia, the young barista. 'Hey, you went back to China last month to visit your family. How come you didn't bring back a husband?' Barista Sophia serves coffee on the terrace of Bar Foscarini, which sits beside the Grand Canal in Venice. Photo: Federico Sutera Sophia flushes and continues the banter like old friends, part of the well-worn rapport between local regulars and counter staff. 'Come on! I'm only 20 years old!' she replies in Italian. Born Li Jiayi, Sophia migrated to Italy from Putian, in Fujian province, when she was 11. The other counter staff and the owner of this Venetian establishment are all Chinese, too. Next to Sophia stands Zia, née Weng Qinglan, also from Fujian, prepping ingredients for the day's food service. The 47-year-old chef has worked in the food and beverage industry since she arrived 17 years ago. 'When I first came to Italy, there were hardly any Chinese people running cafes,' says Zia. 'Now there are more and more. Around St Mark's Square , most of the cafes are run by Chinese.'
Telegraph
20-07-2025
- Telegraph
Venice tourists targeted by child pickpockets
They come in all shapes and sizes and have an uncanny ability to blend in with the crowd. As thousands of tourists surge into Venice in the summer months, so do the pickpockets who shadow the holidaymakers cruising down the Grand Canal or winding through the Lagoon City's labyrinth of narrow alleys. But criminal gangs are cleverly exploiting a legal loophole and recruiting thieves as young as 12 or 13. Those under the age of 14 escape criminal prosecution. Police chiefs say gangs have turned away from using pregnant women – who can be prosecuted – and instead turned their attention on children. But even when the youngsters are caught and sent to a community centre for the night, they escape within hours, Marco Agosti, the commander of the Venice local police, said. 'They were invisible' Many of the pickpockets are known to police. Frustrated local activists catch them tailing their victims and later post their images on social media, as well as their names or nicknames such as 'Shakira', 'Mika' or 'Dodu'. 'I didn't feel a thing, they were invisible,' said one 50-year old British victim, who did not want to be named. She was targeted during the city's annual Carnevale festivities in February. 'I didn't realise my wallet was gone until I arrived at the railway station.' Local and national Carabinieri police say they have apprehended more than 150 alleged thieves since the beginning of the year and filled 15 large bags of stolen bags and empty wallets at the town hall. Despite more than 800 police cameras conducting surveillance across the World Heritage listed city, police say they are hamstrung by legal loopholes that allow criminal gangs to exploit the 'baby borseggiatori' (or baby pickpockets) as well as the transient nature of their crimes. 'Pickpocketing is only actionable on a party's complaint and if the robbed person does not show up for trial, the complaint is thrown out,' Gianni Frazoi, the deputy commander of Venice police, told the daily, Corriere della Sera. 'The victims are mostly foreigners and they hardly ever come to the hearing. And so there are no trials and no convictions.' Venice police said 41 people were caught pickpocketing or arrested between January and May this year but there were more arrests in June and July. In the first two weeks of May, police arrested 11 pickpockets. All were minors but five could not be prosecuted under Italian law because they were under the age of 14. Commandant Agostini rejected suggestions Venice was any worse than Italy's other tourist hotspots like Milan, Rome, Florence or Naples. But he did say it was sometimes difficult to get a conviction under Italian law, citing the recent arrest of an alleged Venetian burglar known as 'The Grasshopper' for leaping from one building to another and who has been in and out of jail for his alleged break-ins. In early July, Venetian activists called 'Non Distratti Stop Borseggi' (don't be distracted, stop pickpocketing) at a street march warning tourists and residents to be more attentive in the fight against pickpocketing. One of the leaders of the group, Monica Poli, known as 'Lady Pickpocket', could not be reached by The Telegraph but has been campaigning for years to fight pickpocketing and recruitment of children. She has been known to confront pickpockets on the streets when she finds them. Venice mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, is calling for an immediate change to the law and broader police powers to tackle the problem which police say has surged after the Covid-19 pandemic. 'We cannot resign ourselves to the normalisation of crimes that damage people's lives and the city's image on a daily basis,' Mr Brugnaro said this week. 'We need urgent corrective measures. The government has to listen to local communities and guarantee urban security.' Italy's national justice undersecretary, Andrea Ostellari, and interior undersecretary, Nicola Molteni, both from the far-right League Party, say they are looking at changes to the law. Meanwhile, other Italian mayors including Daniele Silvetti from the city of Ancona, and Nicola Fiorita from the southern city of Catanzaro in Calabria, have also called for wider police powers to stop pickpocketing and street robberies. The pickpocket victims reflect the global reach of Venice's allure. They include an 80-year-old British tourist, an Emirati sheikh fleeced by robbers near the Rialto Bridge, and a Chinese tourist targeted in St Mark's Square. In the past week there have been a number of targeted attacks on well-heeled tourists in Italy, including British peer and eminent surgeon, Lord Darzi. Lord Darzi was robbed of his £175,000 watch by thieves while he was on holiday on the Italian island of Capri this week. Turkish tourist, Nevzat Kaya, had his €300,000 (£224,000) Richard Mille watch wrenched from his arm by three thieves as he returned to his hotel in Milan on Tuesday. On the same day a 60-year old Milan man had his luxury Patek Philippe Aquanaut watch stolen on the street.
Irish Times
10-07-2025
- General
- Irish Times
Widened and enhanced walkway along Grand Canal weeks away from completion
Last summer various stretches of Dublin's Grand Canal hosted clusters of tents pitched by recently-arrived male asylum seekers who the State was unable to house. The tents had initially popped up a stone's throw from the International Protection Office on Mount Street, where their international protection applications were being processed. In response to the waterside encampments, Waterways Ireland , the all-island semi-State body with responsibility for internal waterways, erected a maze of tall metal fences . These fences restricted the already narrow tarmac walkways and caged off much of the green space along one of Dublin city's two major canals. READ MORE Now, significant works to transform and widen the walkway between Leeson Street and Baggot Street bridges are weeks away from completion, Waterways Ireland has said. The development has been in preparation since 2021, with ground first broken on the project last January, a Waterways Ireland spokesman said. 'This stretch of canal is a unique area in Dublin city, boasting one of the widest urban canal towpaths and a number of Dublin city's finest tree specimens,' he said. Tents were pitched along the Grand Canal in Dublin last summer. File photograph: Sam Boal/ Collins Photos The stretch being upgraded is located within a Georgian conservation area and is 'strongly associated with literary Dublin', he said. It contains a 'much-loved' statue of poet and novelist Patrick Kavanagh, which is 'one of the most photographed locations in Dublin', he said. Waterways Ireland envisages the area will be a 'high-quality urban space' that will 'create space in the city for people to fully engage with the canal and its environs and positively contribute to making Dublin a climate resilient city'. The new walkway on Wilton Terrace, at Dublin's Grand Canal, beside the Patrick Kavanagh statue. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill This week there was visible graffiti on the development's roadwork signage along Leeson Street bridge. The graffiti labels the works 'anti-homeless architecture'. Waterways Ireland's spokesman said the organisation's 'over-riding concern ... has been, and continues to be, public safety, public health and the health and safety of operational teams, including Waterways Ireland staff'. 'The canal is a wonderful amenity for responsible recreational use – it is not a safe place to sleep,' he said. The spokesman said the canal is 'deceptively dangerous' with 'deep water in places, up to 800mm of sediment on the bottom of the canal and steep slopes'. 'Waterways Ireland are obligated to uphold the highest standards of public health and safety. Anyone promoting the occupancy of tents by the canal needs to be very mindful of the serious risks they are encouraging people to take,' he said.
Irish Times
04-07-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
David McRedmond: ‘An Post has been brilliant. I've never been remunerated less and enjoyed a job more'
An Post chief executive David McRedmond probably has the best view of any chief executive in Dublin. 'I think so, yeah,' he says, as we admire the view from the rooftop of An Post's funky new headquarters at the Exo Building beside the 3Arena in Dublin's north docks. We are looking south across Grand Canal Dock towards the Aviva Stadium in Ballsbridge. It's where the river Dodder, the Grand Canal and the Liffey all meet. 'This spot I love. This is Dubh Linn, the black pool,' he says, in a nod to the origins of the city's name. Does the music from concerts at the Aviva travel across the Liffey? READ MORE 'I don't know. I wanted to do a [rooftop] party for the Taylor Swift concerts but we couldn't do it for insurance reasons,' he says. An Post moved to the Exo two years ago, quitting its historic GPO headquarters (although the post office and museum remain, along with about 200 staff). Although centrally located, McRedmond says the GPO was 'just not fit for purpose at the moment' as an office and most of it needs to be 'knocked down and rebuilt'. He would like to see a museum of the Irish nation opened there, a place of pilgrimage for the diaspora. Exo Building, headquarters of An Post. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw An Post is paying annual rent of just over €7 million for the Exo, which houses 1,000 staff and is more than paying its way for the company, he says. 'Just in the pure marketing value, we get a multiple of that. If you bring in someone like Amazon or M&S, they come in and go 'Wow, this is a company that's really good on technology, really forward-looking. They don't think we're just an old postal service. That means we win their accounts ... They do tend to look on postal companies as a bit old-fashioned so it completely changes the perception.' McRedmond's ninth-floor office looks into Dublin Port, which is apt given that parcel deliveries, turbocharged by Covid lockdowns, are now a big driver of growth at the State-owned postal group. It delivered just over a million parcels a week last year, with growth of 20 per cent in this space already this year. That would be another 10 million parcels on an annual basis if that run rate continues. He says it earns about €3 for each parcel delivered. By contrast, letter volumes, traditionally the company's cash cow, fell by 7 per cent last year, with a similar decline expected in 2025. An Post's pivot away from letters to parcels (and financial services to a lesser degree) has defined McRedmond's nine years in charge. 'My general philosophy is that all businesses are dying; you have to find the new thing. This year letter volumes will probably fall 7 per cent. So each year we have to find more and more [other business]. We've got to grow and that's the challenge.' [ An Post named most reputable organisation over last 15 years as RTÉ suffers greatest decline Opens in new window ] Amazon is a big customer of its parcels business, along with the Chinese ecommerce giants Temu and Shein, 'who are massive companies'. British online retailer Asos is another big customer, along with Vinted, a platform for selling unworn clothes that launched into Ireland last October. According to McRedmond, Vinted had its best ever launch here and is already An Post's fourth-biggest parcels customer. 'It's such a cool idea. Vinted is the future. We're getting a whole new cohort of young people going into post offices to post or collect their Vinted,' he says. 'We brought Vinted into the country and it was our marketing team who did it. I have the best marketing team in the country by a distance,' he says with a touch of hyperbole. 'We have the best brand, we have brilliant relationships with our customers and we work day and night to make sure that our customers know that we know what they want.' It's not all good news when it comes to parcels. Customs rules post Brexit have been a 'nightmare' in terms of moving parcels across the Irish Sea. 'For us it's a nightmare. We still return 5,000 parcels a week to the UK [typically parcels that go over the counter] and that's got to stop. We have no choice. Customs say, 'That's got to return to the UK', because there's some mislabelling, or the value wouldn't be correct. He says parcels aren't being returned to Britain with the same gusto by other EU countries, which simply turn a blind eye to the issue. How does he know this? 'Every year I get PwC to send a whole load of parcels with incorrect information to their European offices and we see what gets returned, and only Ireland is returning. One or two do stop the parcels and a person has to come in and correct the stuff but that's it.' He wants Ireland to follow Europe's lead by tweaking the Universal Service Obligation that requires it to offer a daily postal service to each house in the country from Monday to Friday. 'It's changed in every European country, one way or another. Some of the countries have that obligation but they just bend the rules.' Ireland was once famed for ignoring rules but McRedmond argues that we've become 'too bureaucratic' and 'risk averse'. 'The Government has fallen into the trap: centralise everything, regulate everything, control everything, have rules for everything. It's not good and it needs to change now. We have an entrepreneurial spirt in this country and built brilliant world-class businesses, and can continue to do so, but not if we stay in that risk-averse, control mentality.' David McRedmond. Photograph: Nick Bradshaw McRedmond's forthrightness tell the story of a man who will be 63 next week and is due to step down in September 2026. He was extended for three years following the expiry of his original seven-year contract, which is usually the ceiling for a public-sector boss. An Post's annual report for 2024 has yet to be published but it had a 'brilliant year', says McRedmond, who adds that its revenues exceeded €1 billion for the first time. Its Ebitda (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) rose to €52 million, up from €38 million a year earlier. It's after-tax profit was €10 million. 'We need that because we need to invest typically about €25 million a year,' he says, citing how An Post needs a new, big parcel hub to keep up with the growth in deliveries. An Post also now has about €100 million tied up in working capital. 'And the faster we grow the more that will be tied up in working capital because we are a trading company now,' he says. He is trying to persuade the Government to change the borrowing cap of €85 million, which dates back 40 years. 'That needs to increase.' If McRedmond had a free run, he would scrap the obligation to deliver to every household each weekday. Instead, he'd have a 'brilliant next-day service that could be quite expensive, maybe another euro on it [the price of a stamp]', using a digital stamp, probably with a later cut-off time for posting and a text alert when the mail is available to be delivered. 'A courier-level next-day service,' is how he describes it, while also acknowledging that such a move would cannibalise its existing Express Post revenues. 'But we would also have a [regular] two- or three-day service, which is where the bulk of the mail would go. What do people use a next-day service for? Usually birthdays and condolences. 'What we need to do with our delivery network is not have people visiting every house, every day when there's fewer and fewer letters. It's just not economical. And it doesn't make a service sense either. An Post has about 5,500 postmen and postwomen as part of its 10,000-strong workforce. Its overall headcount is due to be reduced by 1,800 by 2028 through efficiencies and great automation. 'We have to put labour on parcels and take it off letters, but at the moment we can't do that,' he says. On McRedmond's watch, the price of a stamp has risen from 72 cent to €1.65. Some would argue that this has hastened the decline of letter volumes but he's not for bending on the need for the service to pay its way. 'Letter volumes decline because of digitalisation, not because of the price of a stamp. We have to put up the price of a stamp because the number of letters has halved and you've got a fixed cost network so you have to put up the price. Every other postal service in Europe has followed us. I don't make any apology about it because what's way more important to an elderly cohort is that they have a local postman or -woman, and that they have a next-day service. I have to do it in a way that's economic so that's why the price has gone up.' RTÉ does a lot more that is good than is bad. At the same time I think it needs to transform a lot more — McRedmond Financial services is the other leg to the growth story at An Post. McRedmond says its agency banking arrangements with AIB and Bank of Ireland means that the post office is now 'the high-street bank' in many parts of rural Ireland, facilitating basic cash transactions. 'That is good business, good for postmasters. The cost of that to the banks is a fraction of the savings from not having to run cash operations. The reason the banks can get so many people digitised is because we exist.' An Post also offers current accounts (which 'needs to scale up'), foreign exchange, insurance options and a range of State savings products (€25 billion) but it has yet to offer mortgages, despite flagging its intention to do so a long while back. 'We need a partner to do that and I'd be hopeful you'd see something relatively soon. Not necessarily in mortgages but in terms of a banking partnership to grow our range of products.' McRedmond will have completed a decade in charge of An Post by the time he leaves the company next year. Looking back, he's most proud of the role the company played during Covid lockdowns and the way 'we found new life for the company'. [ Christmas sorted: How An Post is coping with record demand in its first pandemic festive season Opens in new window ] It seemed a strange move for him in 2016 after a successful career in the private sector with book retailer Waterstones, telco Eir and broadcaster TV3 (now Virgin Media), where he would have earned a lot more money than his current annual salary of €250,000. 'An Post has been brilliant. I've never been remunerated less and I've never enjoyed a job more,' he says. 'It is a really fascinating insight into Ireland and the world. We've moved from being a company that delivers letters to a trading company. It's all about ecommerce now.' A little over two years ago he was linked with the top role at RTÉ, amid the fallout from the Ryan Tubridy payments scandal. He was approached by a headhunter but fell at the first hurdle, after which his candidacy was widely reported by media. 'I thought I could do a good job at RTÉ and I think it is really important to the country. I like media, I miss media and I think it needs transformation. 'RTÉ does a lot more that is good than is bad. At the same time I think it needs to transform a lot more. The world outside is changing too fast so if you're making small moves you're becoming irrelevant. And I think RTÉ still has some big moves to make. 'Kevin Bakhurst has really steadied the ship. But now he needs to make some big moves.' McRedmond was not happy about the public way in which his candidacy 'became very public'. 'And nobody did anything about it. It was disrespectful to An Post and to the people and I didn't like that. The nature of work is that sometimes you get approached for a job and of course I'm going to take a look at it, but it doesn't mean you don't like your current job or that you don't want to stay in your current job.' He says the board of An Post was 'very supportive and the department was supportive so people were good about it'. One final thing on RTÉ: he believes the broadcaster should quit its 'immensely valuable' Montrose site, relocate its TV studios to Ballymount (where Virgin is based) and move its radio operations to a newly revamped GPO. 'That would be fantastic for the city,' he says. He was also the independent chairman of the Dublin City Taskforce that was formed in the wake of the riots in the city centre in November 2023. It was tasked with recommending ways to rejuvenate the city and drew up 10 big recommendations covering everything from policing and housing to street cleaning. And a plan to tax tourists, to generate revenue for Dublin City Council. Needless to say, hoteliers are against the idea. 'I think it's not a bad idea. Everywhere I go I get taxed. I don't see why tourists coming into Ireland shouldn't get taxed here. '[The council] only controls 12 per cent of the expenditure in the city. In most cities the local authority typically controls 35-45 per cent. It's very difficult if you have no financing control and you have to go to a department to do something. It doesn't work. I'm still awaiting decisions [at An Post] that are four or five years old. 'If [the council] could raise €50 million and invest it in public realm, I think that would be worthwhile and you'd get a good return on it.' Having had a brush with cancer in recent years, he's keen to remain active once his time with An Post is finished. He stepped down as chairman of Eir last October and is looking to secure a couple of nonexecutive directorships to keep him active over the next few years. For his remaining time with An Post, he would like to 'reopen the UK' for Irish SME exports, which have declined in the wake of Brexit. 'SME exports I think only account for 7 per cent of revenues of SMEs, and in most countries that could be somewhere between 15 and 20 per cent. 'We're working very closely with Enterprise Ireland and we expect to do a major launch on that in the autumn. I would love to see An Post become an active engine to help Irish exports.' CV Name David McRedmond Job Chief executive of An Post Age 63 on July 9th Lives Glasthule, Co Dublin Family Married to Penny McRedmond (an adviser to Minister for Health Jennifer Caroll MacNeill) and three adult children – son Ben and daughters Georgia and Finn (an Irish Times columnist). Hobbies 'Reading. I'm becoming more obsessed with fiction. I've just finished For Whom the Bell Tolls [by Ernest Hemingway]. It was extraordinary, a fantastic book.' Something we might expect 'I love sending letters.' Something that might surprise 'I wrote my history thesis on church building in the 19th century in Dublin. It was one of the great urban programmes. It was after Catholic emancipation [1829], they had to build churches. There weren't any. They built 30 churches. It was a phenomenal work programme.'
