THE PLAYERS
DENIS NAUGHTEN
COMMUNICATIONS Minister Denis Naughten first won his Dáil seat for Fine Gael more than 20 years ago.
From Drum, Co. Roscommon, he followed in the political footsteps of his late father, Liam Naughten, former Fine Gael TD and senator.
So far in his political career, he has held front bench positions, including transport, agriculture, immigration and integration, and enterprise, trade and employment. He was, however, expelled from the party in 2011 when he voted against the government’s decision to replace Roscommon Hospital A&E with an urgent care unit and out-of-hours GP service.
The Minister has also set his face against action to impose age limits on smartphones.
He has previously suggested that proponents of such a policy wanted to criminalise children, even though he has been told personally that this is not the case.
LESLIE BUCKLEY
CORKMAN Leslie Buckley is a close associate of Denis O’Brien, and until recently, was chairman of INM.
He stepped down after five and a half years last month after an investigation was launched into the company by the ODCE.
As chairman, Mr Buckley found himself at the centre of controversies which involved Mr O’Brien, who nominated him to the INM board. In 2016 INM attempted to purchase Newstalk, which is owned by Mr O’Brien. Former chief executive of INM, Robert Pitt and INM chief financial officer, Ryan Preston, claim that when they met with Mr Buckley to negotiate a selling price, he pushed to approve a deal for up to €35million – despite the fact that advisers to INM suggested that the station was worth around €12million.
Mr Buckley, 73, made his name as a restructuring expert and has an estimated fortune of around €90million.
EOGHAN Ó NEACHTAIN
THE director of public affairs with Heneghan PR has strong government ties, having previously been a spokesman for both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.
The Galway native acted as government press secretary for both Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen between 2007 and 2011 and was asked to stay on by Enda Kenny for the initial few months of the Fine Gael – Labour coalition in 2011.
He held his position during State visits from Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II.
During his time as head of communications with the Defence Forces, he held the rank of Commandant before retiring in 2000.
Before joining Heneghan PR in 2015, he spent three years at Ervia, the semi-state responsible for delivering gas and water infrastructure and services nationally.
He is also a TG4 rugby analyst and a broadcast contributor.
NIGEL HENEGHAN
MANAGING director of Heneghan PR, the firm caught up in Minister Denis Naughten’s controversial comments on INM’s proposed takeover of Celtic Media Group.
Specialising in corporate and financial public relations and crisis management, he counts INM among his clients, along with the Saint John of God Group, engineering company Actavo (formerly Siteserv) and Mutual of America Life Insurance.
Mr Heneghan is a Governmentappointed member of the Social Innovation Fund Ireland, and is on the compliance committee of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
His role in the BAI gives him partial responsibility for monitoring and enforcing compliance, reporting functions and investigating of complaints. It says he has declared comflicts of interest in relation to several complaints before the committee.
He’s also on the board of the Public Relations Consultants Association.
DENIS O’BRIEN
DENIS O’Brien is the wealthiest person born in Ireland and has a media and telecommunications empire worth around €5billion.
He is the largest shareholder in Independent News and Media, which publishes the Irish Independent and Herald newspapers, and he owns radio group Communicorp, which operates in Central and Eastern Europe and also has Irish stations such as Today FM.
Mr O’Brien made €317million in 2000 when he sold his Esat Telecom Group to British Telecom.
He was also at the centre of the Moriarty Tribunal, which looked into the awarding of Ireland’s second mobile phone licence in the 1990s, which was won by Mr O’Brien’s Esat Digifone company.
The tribunal found that TD Michael Lowry, when he was Communications Minister, ‘secured the winning’ of the licence for Mr O’Brien after the politician had first received a $50,000 payment from the tycoon through a labyrinthine route.
The judge found that the axis of Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry during the bid represented ‘an irregular and improper relationship between business and politics’.
He identified two payments to Mr Lowry by Mr O’Brien subsequent to the award, in 1996 and 1999, of Stg£147,000 and Stg£300,000, equivalent to some €620,000 today.
Mr O’Brien and Mr Lowry reject the tribunal’s findings and vehemently deny any wrongdoing.