{"id":540254,"date":"2026-07-09T02:18:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T02:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540254\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T02:18:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T02:18:08","slug":"mason-hayes-curran-chair-was-going-to-attend-thiel-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/540254\/","title":{"rendered":"Mason Hayes & Curran chair was going to attend Thiel event"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two senior tech lawyers at Dublin law firm Mason Hayes & Curran \u2013 including its chairperson and Meta\u2019s external Irish counsel \u2013 were going to attend Peter Thiel\u2019s cancelled secret Dialog event in the Powerscourt Hotel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mason<\/p>\n

Two senior tech lawyers at Dublin law firm Mason Hayes & Curran \u2013 including its chairperson and Meta\u2019s external Irish counsel \u2013 were going to attend Peter Thiel\u2019s cancelled Dialog event in the Powerscourt Hotel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to records obtained by The Ditch, chairperson and partner Philip Nolan and partner Ois\u00edn Tobin were set to go, with Nolan having attended more than 30 previous Dialog events.<\/p>\n

Both practice in technology and privacy law at the firm that counts Meta, Twitter, Adobe, Qualtrics and Verizon Media among its clients.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Last week the Powerscourt Estate announced the event \u2013 first reported as taking place in Wicklow by The Ditch \u2013 won\u2019t take place.<\/p>\n

It had been scheduled for August<\/a> and other Irish registered attendees included senator Lynn Ruane and energy regulator Tanya Harrington.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Bill Clinton has a better hand shake\u2019<\/p>\n

Dialog kept lengthy profiles on both Philip Nolan and Ois\u00edn Tobin<\/a> noting both are experts in Irish tech law.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Firm chairperson Nolan had attended 34 previous events and moderated <\/a>two sessions and four meals over approximately two to three years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The sessions Nolan took part in at previous Dialog gatherings included talks titled Does Might Make Right?, War in the Middle East, America Post-Exceptionalism, China’s Global Reach and Playing the Global Power Game.<\/p>\n

His LinkedIn profile\u00a0 says he focuses on \u201cglobal data structuring, privacy enforcement and litigation having worked across many areas of data protection\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tobin, also a partner in Mason Hayes & Curran\u2019s tech department, according to his LinkedIn profile \u201cfocuses on advising and defending leading web and cloud computing companies and counselling high potential start-ups\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dialog’s profiles rate members, gather biographical information about them and store written sections each has submitted. Both Nolan and Tobin are listed as having a “Bio grade” of “B.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nolan’s profile, where he was asked to give a fact, says, “Bill Clinton has a better hand shake and holds better eye contact when shaking hands than Mikhail Gobahev\u201d and that his “first job was on a farm and I reckon my last one will be a farm based one too\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a prediction submitted before a previous event, Nolan told Dialog that “the 2040s will be a post-war decade where globalisation will be back” and that the UN “won’t exist” with its successor centred on managing the climate crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tobin’s profile notes his first business was a video production company making short YouTube-style videos “before YouTube was a thing” \u2013 he had to delay incorporating the company until his 18th birthday so he could legally sign the paperwork.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It “failed miserably,” he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tobin also said he is approaching 40 years old and “currently working out what to do for the second half of my life\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Records show that Nolan nominated Tobin to attend the Dialog Powerscourt event.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Previous attendees of the secret society’s events include Palantir CEO Alex Karp, Anduril’s Palmer Luckey and US senator Ted Cruz. <\/p>\n

Nolan and Tobin have been contacted for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two senior tech lawyers at Dublin law firm Mason Hayes & Curran \u2013 including its chairperson and Meta\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-540254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540254","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=540254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540254\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}