{"id":115734,"date":"2025-11-01T09:46:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T09:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/115734\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T09:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T09:46:11","slug":"its-a-great-story-about-ireland-and-how-weve-changed-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/115734\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s a great story about Ireland and how we\u2019ve changed\u2019 \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The unreliable AI-generated interview transcript on my phone thinks Matt Cooper<\/a>\u2019s new book Dynasty is about Dull Stories, which is exactly what the Dunnes Stores<\/a> saga is not. Power battles, political fallout, a globally historic strike, a notorious cocaine blowout \u2013 the Dunnes drama has everything, including a cameo role for the IRA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuccess, scandal and schisms, tragedy, disaster and disgrace\u201d is how the Today FM<\/a> broadcaster and Path to Power podcaster puts it on page one.<\/p>\n

His slogan-invoking contention is that Dunnes is \u201csimply better\u201d than any other business story in the history of the State, and the Dunne family its most successful corporate dynasty.<\/p>\n

So, I ask him, has anyone been in touch about a Netflix<\/a>-style House of Dunne?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot yet,\u201d he says. He has been lured into some fantasy-casting conversations, typically involving mention of Brendan Gleeson, but thinks it\u2019s \u201csuch an Irish story\u201d it might not translate.<\/p>\n

Cooper remembers not believing the Sunday Tribune\u2019s 1992 scoop on Ben Dunne\u2019s humiliating arrest for drug offences in a hotel in Orlando, Florida, when he saw it. Then a young journalist with the Sunday Business Post, he had heard industry talk that the Tribune was preparing a redesign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was out with friends at home in Cork the night before, and when I staggered downstairs the next morning and looked at my parents\u2019 papers there before me, I thought: \u2018Jesus Christ, they\u2019re after publishing the dummy [mock-up] edition.\u2019 This can\u2019t be real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not only was it real, there were more \u201cwhat the hell\u201d headlines about Dunne\u2019s golfing holiday to come. This set in train events that began with his ousting from Dunnes, culminating in years of tribunals into payments made to Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry.<\/p>\n

Cooper was initially approached to write a biography of Dunne after he died in November 2023. \u201cBut when I started thinking about it, I thought \u2018there\u2019s a bigger story here than just Ben\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BenBen Dunne jnr leaves the Moriarty tribunal into the financial affairs of Charles Haughey and Michael Lowry, May 2000. Photograph: Marc O’Sullivan\/Collins Dublin <\/p>\n

The story, he decided, should also be that of the wider Dunne family, in particular Ben\u2019s media-averse sister Margaret Heffernan (83). She is the eldest of six children born to Ben Dunne snr and his wife Nora Dunne (n\u00e9e Maloney), who has transformed Dunnes into the retailer it is today.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd when I got into it, it struck me that it\u2019s a great story about Ireland and how we\u2019ve changed,\u201d says Cooper.<\/p>\n

Delving into newspaper archives, he discovered that the family\u2019s policy of not engaging with the media \u2013 adhered to by everyone except Liveline-frequenting Ben \u2013 hadn\u2019t always been in place. Ben Dunne snr even staged press conferences, once discussing his strategy for responding to the shortening length of women\u2019s skirts.<\/p>\n

In his compelling and often revelatory history, Cooper outlines how a high volume of press coverage generated by two forgotten 1960s court cases \u2013 which saw the acquittal of six young Dunnes workers arrested for shoplifting \u2013 was the likely catalyst for the family\u2019s subsequent distaste for publicity and intransigent style of industrial relations.<\/p>\n

Despite many flashpoints, most consumers never shunned the retailer, not even in 1984 when it suspended checkout operator Mary Manning for refusing to handle goods from South Africa, sparking a landmark three-year strike by a group of Dunnes workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsn\u2019t that interesting as well? Everyone would say they supported the anti-apartheid workers, but it didn\u2019t stop people going into Dunnes in ever increasing numbers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MargaretMargaret Heffernan: Matt Cooper says by the metric of pure business success, no Irish woman has done more. Photograph: Colin Keegan\/Collins <\/p>\n

Although he has seen and said hello to Heffernan in the Swan Centre in Rathmines over the years, she \u201csort of ignores\u201d him, he says. She did not reply either to his texts or a letter, hand-delivered to Dunnes head office, requesting an interview for Dynasty.<\/p>\n

Cooper shops at the Swan Centre\u2019s Dunnes \u2013 it\u2019s close to the home he shares with his wife, Parentline chief executive Aileen Hickie, and four of their five children \u2013 but didn\u2019t always. \u201cI never used to until they did it up in the last decade.\u201d <\/p>\n

This push to revamp stores, introduce mid-market brands and attract new customers is part of Heffernan\u2019s legacy. The latter chapters of Dynasty, devoted to her reign (32 years and counting), also feature an unflattering portrait of how Dunnes has used the legal system to assert its power. But by the metric of pure business success, Cooper is unequivocal: no Irish woman has done more.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to think of many Irish men who have been more successful. To have maintained family ownership with no dilution after 80 years, to have done it in circumstances in which the siblings were squabbling, and to have also majorly changed Dunnes Stores, is a phenomenal achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n

That her leadership prowess wasn\u2019t recognised by her father was, unsurprisingly, a product of prevailing attitudes to women.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis two sons, Frank and Ben, had major problems, but it was always the idea that the boys take over.\u201d<\/p>\n

He could be very amiable and gregarious. He had that sort of personality that drew people to him, as long as you didn\u2019t fall out with him<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u00a0Matt Cooper on Ben Dunne jnr<\/p>\n

Frank, who died in 2022, encouraged his father to make sound property development choices in the 1960s and 1970s, but had struggles with alcohol.<\/p>\n

For Cooper, it is likely that Ben \u201cwould have had his own issues\u201d with addiction even without the defining event of his life: his kidnapping for ransom by the IRA in October 1981. It is never easy to be the child of a mogul.<\/p>\n

\u201cBen was obsessed, I think, with proving himself. I think it\u2019s quite clear that Ben snr and Nora didn\u2019t really have a relationship with their children as children. They had a relationship with them from their teenage years onwards as future owners and managers of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

But because the Florida story was \u201csex and drugs and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll\u201d \u2013 the rock \u2018n\u2019 roll provided by U2, who happened to be staying in the same hotel \u2013 the importance of the kidnapping is sometimes underplayed, Cooper says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re doing a biography of Ben, you have to acknowledge that the kidnapping is actually more significant to his life, and the rest of the stuff that happened, well, who knows, but it might not have happened without the kidnapping.\u201d<\/p>\n

Held hostage for almost a week, then released, Dunne returned to work the next day at the insistence of his father, receiving no counselling. Volatile behaviour and cocaine followed.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Caroline Flack\u2019s mother on the death of her daughter: \u2018I always say no one can do anything worse to me now\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Cooper spoke with him many times in the 1990s. On one memorable occasion, he drove out to his house in Porterstown in west Dublin after he was dethroned from the family company. Haughey, the former taoiseach, rang Dunne when Cooper was in the room.<\/p>\n

What did he make of Dunne?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could be very amiable and gregarious. He had that sort of personality that drew people to him, as long as you didn\u2019t fall out with him,\u201d he says. At one point, Dunne started telling him what to write and Cooper had to remind him he was not his PR man.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just sort of used to the idea that he could tell people what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper is from Cork, the city where the first Dunnes Stores opened in March 1944, but that link was never to the fore, perhaps because the family, sensing opportunity, abandoned Cork for Dublin.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I knew Ben [jnr], I\u2019m not sure Cork ever really featured in our conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n

A crunch point looms, not least because it is unclear how long the third generation of Dunnes directors, Heffernan\u2019s daughter Anne Heffernan (57) and her niece Sharon McMahon (55), will want to continue or who comes after them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter Margaret finally lets go of it, who knows what?\u201d<\/p>\n

As for what\u2019s next for Cooper, I meet him near the end of a presidential election campaign that has lured new listeners to Path to Power, his podcast with Ivan Yates<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Matt Cooper\u2019s acerbic presidential election remark pays offOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

This was thanks to Yates\u2019s much-repeated, much-hashtagged remark \u2013 made on a separate Newstalk podcast \u2013 that he would have advised Fine Gael, if asked, to \u201csmear the bejaysus\u201d out of Catherine Connolly<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe usual inadvertent Ivan thing. I think he felt he had to say something to justify what Newstalk were paying him for that podcast, but what he actually did was help the numbers for Path to Power. I was sort of slagging him, saying I\u2019d never have allowed him to say that on our podcast.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MattMatt Cooper: ‘I do feel sad that newspapers have probably diminished in the rational consciousness compared to where they used to be.’ Photograph Nick Bradshaw <\/p>\n

His co-host\u2019s claim in 2023 that the pair had signed \u201cthe biggest sponsorship deal ever\u201d for an Irish podcast \u201cwasn\u2019t quite true\u201d, he admits, but Path to Power is financially worth its while. <\/p>\n

He has other important business to complete the weekend after the election \u2013 he will be out of contract at Today FM at the end of 2025 and has a new offer to review.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve already done basically a handshake deal. I just need to go through the contract. But they are committed to the programme for another three years with me at the helm as presenter and editor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u201d are the German-owned Bauer Media Audio<\/a>, which acquired Today FM and the rest of Denis O\u2019Brien\u2019s Communicorp radio group in 2021, resurrecting the question of whether The Last Word with Matt Cooper, the only current affairs programme on the station, would survive.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve lost count of the times that there has been speculation as to whether the programme would continue, or whether I would continue. For some reason, I\u2019m still there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, his occupancy of drivetime since January 2003, where he has 181,000 listeners, is a constant of Irish radio. <\/p>\n

We discuss other media trends, from the rise of video podcasts to the popularity of audiobooks. He\u2019s baffled that as many people watch Path to Power on YouTube as listen on Apple and Spotify combined \u2013 \u201cLike, what?\u201d \u2013 and sounds incredulous as he describes people telling him they\u2019ve listened to the Dynasty audiobook (which he voiced himself).<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the printed word,\u201d he says. It\u2019s the newspaper man in him. He was editor of the Sunday Tribune from 1996 until 2002 and his 14 years in the industry were happy ones.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was only the frustrations on the business side that persuaded me to take the jump and try radio. I mean, I was so lucky that I did, and I say that as somebody who still loves reading newspapers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cooper (59) still writes newspaper columns because he likes \u201chaving the chats with the editors every week\u201d, and not just about what he\u2019s going to write. \u201cI do feel sad that newspapers have probably diminished in the national consciousness compared to where they used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dynasty is his seventh book, and he has \u201ca list\u201d of business figures whose biography he would like to write for his eighth. He is \u201ca bit of a sucker\u201d for business stories, he says. His shrewd telling of extraordinary drama at Dunnes Stores may well convert a few more.<\/p>\n

Dynasty by Matt Cooper is published by Eriu<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The unreliable AI-generated interview transcript on my phone thinks Matt Cooper\u2019s new book Dynasty is about Dull Stories,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[47725,69746,28995,93,61,60,8942,69745,47179,976],"class_list":{"0":"post-115734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-bauer-media","9":"tag-ben-dunne","10":"tag-dunnes-stores","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-ivan-yates","15":"tag-matt-cooper","16":"tag-today-fm","17":"tag-weekendreview"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}