The contraction of the All Ireland senior championships, with the football final being played on July 30th, is bad news for O’Neill’s, the sportswear brand synonymous with the GAA. Sales of replica county jerseys are down by 4 to 5 per cent this year, following a 20 per cent decline in 2022.
Energy prices have also been a drag on the business, with bills doubling last year. O’Neill’s knitting factory is in Strabane, while the greige fabric is dyed and finished in Dublin, a process that needs high heat from gas. “Energy prices have come back down in the South somewhat, but remain at the same level in the North,” Towell says. “Overall, energy costs are still over 50 per cent above 2021 levels.
She will be joining Sinead Crowley, the former RTÉ journalist who is director of media development at the regulator. Another of its recent hires is Calum Fabb, who had been a policy adviser to the Oireachtas media committee and is now, according to his LinkedIn page, contributing to the development of regulatory policy for online safety.
The schedule included a speech giving a “fascinating insight” into the bankruptcy of Rembrandt, followed by a “cyber game session”, which one delegate described as “eye-opening”. The insolvency experts were then encouraged to “let their hair down at our gala drinks reception and dinner”, but not let it down too much because next morning, at 7.20am, delegates gathered at the hotel reception for a 5km run around Amsterdam.