Dublin Opinion

While looking into the Jim Flavin resignation and his connections to the McCann family of Fyffes fame, in order to update my History Repeating itself as Larceny post about the McCann acquisition of the Oldbridge Estate months before the State announced that it wanted to acquire the site, I came across this from a SBP article in 2002.

Several stories that appeared in the media last weekend had one thing in common: they quoted DCC sources as saying that champagne corks popped at a meeting between Flavin and the McCanns ahead of his proposed sale of his shares in Fyffes.

The meeting was held in the Great Southern Hotel on February 3, 2000, the day before DCC sold the bulk of its 10 per cent shareholding in Fyffes; the balance was sold on February 15.
A picture can be worth a thousand words and the cracking open of a bottle of champagne strongly suggested that back in February 2000, the McCanns were happy that Flavin was selling his stake.

It was apparently the McCanns who bought the champagne prompting Flavin to wonder if they were also celebrating getting rid of the man they had come to consider as “a thorn in their side”.

So I wrote an article about it for Irish Left Review.