Karl McDonald

6 days ago | irishtimes.com | Karl McDonald

Ireland’s universities hope to benefit from the US crackdown on academic free expression. ACivil Service special-ops squad has been deployed to San Francisco to talk up our merits and colleges are already well aware of the value of American undergrads, who pay top non-EU fees. In advance of the hoped-for arrival of exiles, Ireland’s oldest university, Trinity College Dublin, is cleaning up its act. This week it issued a €1 million tender for pest control.

2 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Karl McDonald

Fresh from the drama of the planning application near Bono’s house, leafy Killiney’s WhatsApp chats are ablaze again with a new debate: are goats really the best way to manage the local environment? Here’s how it works: a herd of old Irish goats – formerly farmyard favourites but now surviving mostly as marauding gangs of escapees in the uplands – is brought to a patch of hill under supervision. They chomp away, and the vegetation-less area becomes a fire break.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Karl McDonald

Exciting times for sports fan President Michael D Higgins last weekend when he met prolific former Juventus, AC Milan, Barcelona and Manchester United (among many others) striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic in Rome, posing for a photograph with the sizeable Swede. Higgins is, of course, a proper football man, having previously served as president of Galway United.

1 month ago | irishtimes.com | Karl McDonald

Former Dragon Niall O’Farrell, the entrepreneur behind the now-shuttered Blacktie tuxedo rental chain, is facing the loss of a substantial portion of his treasure after a judgment was registered against him by the Revenue Commissioners to the tune of €450,365. O’Farrell, with an address on Anglesea Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, became a familiar face to the wider public as a potential angel investor in the first four seasons of Dragons’ Den on RTÉ.

2 months ago | irishtimes.com | Karl McDonald

The war of words rages over the future of the Joyce-linked The Dead house on Usher’s Quay, but another remarkable Dublin dwelling is under the hammer unnoticed. Number 63 Baggot Street, in the heart of the city’s Georgian core, was the childhood home of the painter Francis Bacon. Over four storeys, a basement and a “turnkey” mews at the back, it’s 395sq m and comes with a weight-loss-oriented personal training business as a tenant.