Media silence over Niall Collins story

Probably some elaborate Russian honey-trap I'd imagine.

The criminal party here have the same agenda….

Which criminal party, you'll have to be more specific, white collar or blue collar?

He "sold" his shares to a company with one director who happens to be paddy cosgraves personal solicitor aka a holding company, these generally pay out consultancy fees to the real shareholders. Paddy likes to sit up on his high horse but he is actually just as dirty as those he hates, only someone with absolutely no morals would take Qatari money to host an event there.

That suggests that Cosgrave is the UBO tbh.

Cosgrave already owns shares why would he not take them into his name? There's really only 1 reason to hide the real owner and that's because it's Chay who works for RT.

Let's start with the simple fact that Niall is not his wife - so we are looking at a different fact pattern. This makes it pretty hard to give a concrete answer.

Assuming Niall in this case is Dr. Niall Collins who carries on a medical practice and is considering buying the land for use in his medical practice. Well for the reasons given already in respect of his wife, then there would be no breach of the LGA. A future intention to buy land isn't a "beneficial interest" or a "declarable" interest. Niall wouldn't be in the property development business in this hypothetical scenario. Would this be ethical? I don't think I ever claimed that it would be. Should we have stricter laws governing public life? Probably yes. Of course, it makes no sense to propose new laws without actually having the resources to enforce them so you could argue that it would be better to start by enforcing the ones that already exist, such as by auditing declarations of interest etc. But I'm always open to a good debate about political reform on this country.

However, that isn't what we were discussing - we're wondering whether Niall Collins would break the law. As you can already tell, it's hard to answer hypothetical questions. A lot depends on why he would consider buying it. If he wants to buy the land for property development reasons, then you have issues under section 175 LGA to consider. If he wants to buy it for non-commercial reasons or commercial reasons that don't fit into any of the declarable interests in section 175 LGA, and there are no other red flags, then it's probably not illegal.

Obviously once the transaction is at a more advanced stage, he would have to declare his interest and recuse himself. I'm discussing the Bruff Area Committee meeting specifically.