In The News

When Ellen Coyne heard her phone buzz in bed on a dark October night in 2022, she couldn’t have known that answering it would lead to the “biggest thing to happen to Irish dancing since Riverdance.”

A dossier of messages and WhatsApp screen grabs claimed to uncover what had long been suspected about the sport and art-form; that competition-fixing between teachers and adjudicators was widespread, and that the practise hadn’t just been a problem in recent years but rather stretched back over decades.

The feis-fixing scandal as it came to be known revealed a global culture of lobbying judges to promote or demote a given dancer with the implicit understanding the favour would be returned.

“If a judge had marked up your students, let’s say a major competition six months previously, [and] it’s your turn to judge when it comes to the Al-Irelands, there’s an expectation that you have a debt that needs to be repaid.”

Despite the spotlight suddenly being shone on the alleged practise, Coyne came up against a wall of silence.

“A lot of people kept drawing parallels with the mafia, which I initially thought was a little bit over the top.”

But the longer she spent researching the claims the more she realised that those who put their heads above the parapet felt genuine fear of retribution.

“There was always this theory that dancers would get bombed, basically, where one judge would mark them down so significantly that it would obliterate their chances of competing.”

Coyne paints a picture of a world that has lost itself to toxic competitiveness. Rather than being a joyful expression of Irish culture the sport has simply become about winning, at the expense of the youngsters taking part.

“Children were put in the position of looking at the medals and trophies on their bedroom wall and starting to question what is probably the single most important trusting relationship they have with an adult outside of the ones that they’re directly related to.”

The governing body abandoned disciplinary hearings in 2024 but has the cheating scandal changed the culture for good?

You can listen to this episode on the player above or search for In the News wherever you get your podcasts.

Presented by Aideen Finnegan. Produced by Andrew McNair.
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Notorious Dublin criminal Robbie Lawlor was shot dead in Belfast in 2020, when he arrived at a house in the Ardoyne area of the city, to collect a drug debt.

Lawlor was a 36-year-old father originally from Coolock, Dublin, though he had relocated to Laytown, Co Meath, for the final years of his life. He was the chief suspect in a number of gangland attacks, including five murders over a 15-year period to 2020.

Now new details have emerged, which outline the alleged planning of the killing, and the economics that underpinned it. They are contained within a legal document, seen by Irish Times crime and security editor Conor Lally. It alleges a three-way coalition acted together to murder Lawlor and how the main players in this plan stood to gain financially because debts they owed would die with Lawlor, or would be cancelled as a reward for his murder.

In this episode, Lally explains how the murder took place and the impact it had on the gangland scene.
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Sally Hayden reports on her visit to south Lebanon, where weeks of war between Israel and the Iran-linked paramilitary organisation Hizbullah have left a trail of destruction. Thousands were killed or injured in strikes. Buildings and entire villages have been left in ruins and an exclusion zone established by the Israeli military has left up to one million people permanently displaced, many of them now homeless.

Meanwhile a week-old ceasefire has been extended for another three weeks, with further meetings due to be held between Israel and Lebanon in Washington. But can the ceasefire hold? The Lebanese government is in a precarious position as it seeks to rein in Hizbullah without being seen to take too weak a line with Israel - who increasing numbers of Lebanese citizens hold responsible for the scale of the destruction.

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Former British prince Andrew fell further from grace in February with his arrest as part of an investigation into whether he abused power by sharing confidential information with his friend Jeffrey Epstein.

Up to then, the scrutiny of Andrew's relationship with the notorious Epstein focussed on allegations of sexual exploitation. But this affair shifted the focus onto Andrew's conduct while working as a trade envoy for Britain. In that time he travelled the world at British taxpayers expense, promoting British business but also making plenty of connections that he would use to his own advantage.

So what did Andrew get up to in those years? And how much did his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth, and his brother King Charles know about the way he was behaving and the people he was associating with? The answers could determine the future of the Royal Family.

In this episode of In the News from February Bernice Harrison talked to Andrew Lownie, author of Entitled, a biography of Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson.

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Daniel Kinahan, the leader of the Kinahan cartel and a member of the “super cartel” that runs about a third of the European cocaine market, was arrested last week in Dubai, where he has lived openly for years.

In today’s episode Irish Times Crime Editor Conor Lally talks about the significance of this arrest, what charges Kinahan will face and what this means for the future of the cartel.

Presented by Conor Pope. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.

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