Latest news with #ÉamondeValera
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Why would 35-year-old CEO Gareth Sheridan want to be entombed in the Áras for seven years?
You can probably name the big May 2015 referendum, the one about same-sex marriage. Now name the second proposal put to voters that day. It was the effort to reduce the presidential candidacy age from 35 to 21. Even two months out, seven in 10 were against it. More than half the youth group it was targeting were against it. In the end nearly three-quarters of the people voted No. As crazily time-wasting notions go, it could have been worse. Nearly 20 years beforehand, an Oireachtas joint committee had recommended a reduction to age 18. In 1937, Éamon de Valera referred to the president's role and powers as requiring 'the exercise of a wise discretion'. Surely only an insufferably self-important little twerp would deem themselves qualified at 21? It's also true, as Yes advocates were wont to argue, that the age barrier would have rendered Jesus Christ and Michael Collins (dead at 33 and 31) ineligible for the job, but why on earth would such busy, transformative young men have wanted it anyway? READ MORE The same question could be asked of Gareth Sheridan . Why would the 35-year-old co-founder and chief executive of an $80 million Nasdaq -listed company about to hit serious paydirt – Nutriband – want to be entombed for seven years in the diplomatic fustiness of the Áras ? His first outing post-announcement on Sunday was to Tullamore Agricultural Show, where there was a team and badges in evidence but little gladhanding by all accounts. It might have been just a practice run. Like every serious US presidential candidate, Sheridan has a book nicely timed for campaign season. From No to Nasdaq is the autobiography of a Terenure teenager who paints houses to buy a Nokia 3310, a TUD business and management student who spots a gap in the market (patch treatments for delivering medications and pain relief), emigrates to the US and drives an Uber to pay the bills while his wife works as a nanny to snitty rich kids, all while gaining US citizenship, dodging Wall Street sharks, being sued by US Securities and Exchange Commission regulators, and getting listed. He remains in the bottom five per cent of executives on the Nasdaq in terms of compensation – and that's how it should be, he told Hot Press in an pre-announcement interview last week, 'because we're not quite ready. Next year when we get FDA approval, we can see what the company is in a position to spend and afford'. That's when the company's first big product, an abuse-deterrent technology with the FDA-approved fentanyl patch, will be rolled out. The company he co-founded and leads is in big expansion mode and on track to become a billion-dollar business. [ Gareth Sheridan's presidential nomination is by no means certain Opens in new window ] In the context of Sheridan's presidential ambitions announced elsewhere just a few days later, that's the puzzling part. All this excitement – including his goal 'to put manners' on US Big Pharma – is due to unfold during his intended presidential term. Yet at 35, and after seven years in the US, he has chosen to step aside as chief executive to seek a seven-year sentence as Ireland's ceremonial president. There is a manifesto of sorts which so far resembles a Dáil hopeful's manifesto, focused 'on the pragmatic politics' of our old friend, 'common sense'. He had become obsessed, he said, 'with how we can fix this housing issue', and had been meeting lots of people who happened to include lots of county councillors. 'The system is broken. It's part and parcel of successive governments and their lack of foresight and preparation ... I've met with councillors and their frustration level is crazy,' Sheridan said. A couple of them flatteringly asked if he would put housing at the top of the narrative and have a crack at the Áras, he told Hot Press. From which he inferred that it was time for a younger candidate 'to keep these issues on top of the narrative'. And – as he says repeatedly – he's young. No-one could argue with the need to light a fire under housing policy, but this implies, a) that it hasn't dominated every national and local narrative to death for years and, b) that President Michael D Higgins could have tried a bit harder. That forceful, emotional speech three years ago – when Higgins described housing as 'a disaster' and 'our great, great, great failure' – notwithstanding, probably. Sheridan uses the word 'figurehead' for the job so is clearly aware of the limitations. Yet he has been working at it 'for well over a year', finding the time for face-to-face schmoozing with councillors crucial to his nomination. Which means he was dabbling deep in Irish politics well before last November's general election, with time enough to pack all that effort into a run for the Dáil and possible ministerial office from which to wield the fix of real executive power. There is the puzzle. [ 'Don't underestimate this guy': Who is Gareth Sheridan, the pharma millionaire running for president? Opens in new window ] The other question is why the Irish electorate would vote for a relatively unknown businessman to be its North Star. The 2011 candidacy of businessman Seán Gallagher – who almost made it to the Áras as an Independent until his campaign imploded on live TV – resonated because the economy was in ruins, leaving a gaping wound in the national psyche. Gallagher offered a fix, focusing on entrepreneurship and self-reliance. It wasn't poetry but it was a sorely needed dose of positivity. Since Gallagher served as Nutriband president for four years from 2018 to 2022, it's hardly a stretch to think that Sheridan might have at least noted Gallagher's nomination tactics, not to mention his business pitch, as a template when he says things like, 'We need to start looking forward. That's a mentality thing that needs to change.' But Sheridan has been remarkably adamant that he got no advice from Gallagher and told RTÉ that they 'parted ways ... after a year or two'. An advantage of being young is that there are fewer skeletons to fall out of the cupboard. Gareth Sheridan's candidacy will reveal as much about this Ireland as about the man himself. It will get interesting.
Times
12-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
The Times Daily Quiz: Friday July 11, 2025
1 Horseradish sauce is a classic accompaniment to which roast meat? 2 The stainless type of which alloy was created in a Sheffield laboratory in 1913? 3 In which year did the Second World War end? 4 The Royal Mile has been called 'the spine' of which capital city's Old Town? 5 An anvil is the famous symbol of weddings in which Scottish village? 6 Which role in the original Star Trek TV series was turned down by Martin Landau? 7 The beginning of which Chumbawamba hit samples a Pete Postlethwaite speech from the film Brassed Off? 8 Which future president of Ireland escaped from Lincoln Prison on February 3, 1919? 9 In which superhero comic strip did Eric Wimp, an ordinary schoolboy, live at 29 Acacia Road, Nuttytown? 10 Which shuttle line of the London Underground is nicknamed 'the Drain'? 11 In 1819, Caspar David Friedrich first painted Two Men Contemplating the … what? 12 Which Swedish composer won Oscars for scoring the films Black Panther and Oppenheimer? 13 Starring Peter Sellers, the 1962 film Only Two Can Play is based on which Kingsley Amis novel? 14 Which Scottish race car driver was married to the US actress Ashley Judd from 2001 to 2013? 15 Which member of the House of Lords is pictured? Scroll down for answers Answers 1 Beef 2 Steel, by Harry Brearley 3 1945 4 Edinburgh 5 Gretna Green 6 Spock 7 Tubthumping 8 Éamon de Valera 9 Bananaman. Nuttytown was changed to Dandytown after Nutty comic merged with The Dandy 10 Waterloo & City line 11 Moon 12 Ludwig Göransson 13 That Uncertain Feeling 14 Dario Franchitti 15 Peter Mandelson. He is the British ambassador to the United States
Irish Times
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Times
De Valera's condolences on the death of Hitler continue to provoke 80 years on
There was no book of condolences and it was a legation not an embassy, but the finer details hardly matter at this remove. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera's visit to the German representative in Dublin (not the ambassador as commonly presumed), Dr Eduard Hempel, on May 2nd, 1945, brought worldwide infamy on him and on Ireland. De Valera addressed the Dáil in the morning and then travelled to No 58 Northumberland Road to express his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler , who had died by suicide in his Berlin bunker two days previously. De Valera knew this would be controversial. Both the secretary general of department of external affairs Joseph Walshe, who travelled with him to the fateful meeting, and his deputy Frederick Boland tried to deter de Valera and warned of the consequences to the country's reputation, already low because of Irish neutrality during the second World War . READ MORE De Valera never deigned to offer a public explanation, instead telling his representative in the United States , Robert Brennan, that he would observe diplomatic protocols to the last irrespective of the consequences. He justified it on the basis that it would be an 'unpardonable discourtesy' to the German nation and to Dr Hempel as his conduct during the war was 'irreproachable ... I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat'. Last December the National Archives of Ireland released files covering Ireland's legation in Washington during the war, much of it surrounding the reaction to de Valera's visit. There was already a great deal of hostility towards Ireland in the US because of Irish neutrality, and some of the greatest criticism of de Valera's actions came from Irish Americans. 'I respectfully ask you to close the Irish legation. It is a standing insult to all of us. You stink, you are swine,' James O'Callaghan cabled, adding that he was from Donegal. 'Please give us full facts concerning de Valera's actions on the death of Adolf Hitler. Local controversy makes immediate answer imperative,' cabled Jack O'Loan, the secretary of the Gaelic League in Detroit. 'Every man and woman of Irish blood regrets the stupid action of prime minister [sic] Éamon de Valera of Éire,' wrote Irish-American lawyer Frank Hogan. Walshe and Boland accurately predicted the backlash. What they could not have predicted is how enduring that criticism would be. Eighty years on from that episode, it is still regularly cited as Irish perfidy. The Irish Times report of taoiseach Éamon de Valera's visit to the German legation on May 2nd, 1945, following the death of Adolf Hitler. Twenty years ago, during a visit to Auschwitz, then president Mary McAleese was asked if she should apologise for de Valera's actions. She declined. Cork City Council this year passed a resolution calling on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to issue an apology. The sponsor of the resolution, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran, stated that the original insult has been compounded by the failure of the State to atone subsequently. Two years ago, Russian ambassador to Ireland Yuriy Filatov marked International Holocaust Memorial Day by telling Ireland that it was in no position to lecture other countries on morality given its neutrality during the second World War. He wrongly stated that de Valera had wished Hitler a happy birthday in 1945 when 'Soviet and Allied soldiers were still dying in the battle against Nazis'. Ireland had observed neutrality during a war in which 27 million Soviet Union citizens had died, the ambassador pointed out, though he failed to acknowledge that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, which dismembered Poland and made the Soviet Union the biggest Nazi collaborators of them all until Hitler invaded in June 1941. The biggest backlash has come from the Israeli government and supporters of Israel , especially after October 7th where the de Valera incident is cited as an example of Irish anti-Semitism. 'Decades after Éamon de Valera offered Germany his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, the country he helped found seemed permanently stuck in time,' one commentator among many noted as Ireland agreed to join the South African case against Israel at the International Court of Justice . In December last year, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin. At the time minister for foreign affairs Gideon Sa'ar cited Winston Churchill's famous speech at the end of the second World War which was critical of de Valera and was seen as a direct rebuke of de Valera's visit to Dr Hempel. ' Winston Churchill , during the war, in his speech on V Day in Europe, noted how Ireland had carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany,' Sa'ar stated in his justification for the closure of the embassy. It is one thing to criticise de Valera's visit to the legation; it is quite another to claim that Ireland carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany. Churchill never said as much and there is overwhelming evidence now that Ireland was neutral on the side of the Allies. Last December the National Archives released a 1944 letter from the Jewish Representative Council of Éire which, at the time, described allegations that Ireland was an anti-Semitic country as 'false, irresponsible and mischievous'. 'The Jewish community live and have always lived on terms of closest friendship with their fellow Irish citizens. Freedom to practice their religion is specifically guaranteed in the Irish Constitution. No Irish government has ever discriminated between Jew and non-Jew,' the letter said. Letter signed in 1944 by the Jewish community in Ireland refuting suggestions that Ireland was an antisemitic country It has often been forgotten that de Valera was the subject of multiple anti-Semitic slurs throughout his career because of persistent allegations that his father was Jewish. It was first used when de Valera stood in the Clare byelection of 1917 and repeated while he was in the US fundraising during the War of Independence. The Gaelic American newspaper described him as a 'half-breed Spanish-American Jew' and a 'half-breed Jew from Bruree'. The slur was picked up by the Nazis themselves in July 1933 after they came to power. One Nazi newspaper described de Valera as a 'half-caste Jew'. De Valera's Constitution in 1937 explicitly recognised the Jewish religion. In 1966, a delegation of Irish Jews dedicated a forest near Nazareth to de Valera in recognition of his support for their community. The woodland remains today even while relations between Ireland and Israel remain at a historic low.
Irish Independent
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Independent
Donal Fallon: What the Israeli ambassador got wrong about Ireland's wartime neutrality
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Éamon de Valera, an era-defining politician and figure in public life. It was a political career of extraordinary longevity, taking him from the occupied Bolands Mills of Easter Week to the Ireland visited by John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963. Sitting beside the young American, De Valera looked like a relic of an earlier time. JFK, an aide noted, asked the Irish leader about the Rising, and then 'listened, spellbound'.
