Other side of the fence is always interesting: This email came from a well known character:
For those of you who do not know this gentlemen, I would like bring to your attention a couple of points. This gentlemen is notorious. Everyone from the Irish travel trade all know him and for not necessarily the right reasons.
I've known of him when I was Chief Executive of Ryanair and the rumour is that he is still banned from travelling with Ryanair. I will not add any of my own opinions on this gentlemen and just provide you all with a couple of details that are in the public domain. It is stated by the press that by December 2000, he had 35 convictions against him. I do not know what that figures stands at now.
I will leave you with some quotes from an article written in the Sunday Business Post in July 2001 about a trail taken against him:
"The Judge in the case , Mr Justice Smyth said in his judgment that Grimes had "sought to justify a course of conduct which displays a most serious lack of commercial probity". Grimes displayed a sense of "gross negligence or total incompetence". Smyth described Grimes's actions as "reckless and in disregard of ordinary business ethics". They were "not mere oversight or misjudgement" but were "quite deliberate". Grimes, described by Smyth as "well-seasoned as a personal litigant" -- has taken a number of legal challenges in recent years. Last September he failed to win an injunction blocking consideration of a resolution at last year's Eircom agm granting share options to company directors. In February 2000 he argued before the High Court that a national newspaper should be banned for carrying advertisements for "adult massage". In 1998, he pursued a High Court action against Cork county council to overturn a rule limiting the number of motor tax applications to four per person at one time. Cork engineer Dr Michael Grimes has been disqualified by the High Court from acting as a liquidator, receiver or examiner of a company for seven years. Mr Justice Thomas Smyth said the Cork man had acted "in gross dereliction of his duty" and "in serious breach of commercial morality".