Enda gets facetime with Elon Musk

On June 12, Enda was pencilled in for a chat with Musk, according to his 2014 desk diary, which I got under a Freedom of Information request last week. It shows just who gets facetime with the most powerful man in Ireland. Musk knows Ireland well, having shared a stage with Enda at the Web Summit last year. But it was the nightlife that was of more interest. Musk headed to Copper Face Jacks nightclub by himself, having escaped all his Summit handlers. He posed for a selfie with revellers, which ended up in the Sunday Independent.

Apart from superhero technology billionaires, Enda had time for some other top Hollywood suits. In March he met with a high-level delegation from Disney in the dining room of his offices. Disney went on to film a chunk of the upcoming new Star Wars movie on the Skelligs off Kerry, with the aid of the Naval Services.

The diary also showed that the Taoiseach met up with Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo and Intel president Renee James and vice-president Doug Davis. In January, Enda hooked up with Etihad boss James Hogan in Abu Dhabi. Doubtless the airline's 4.9pc stake in Aer Lingus came up.

Then there were Rupert Murdoch's lieutenants - calls from Newscorp CEO Robert Thomson and News UK & Ireland boss Mike Darcey. Enda also chatted with Guo Ping, CEO of Chinese giant electronics group Huawei. And Stephen Hester, boss of RSA and former chief of RBS (owners of Ulster Bank), called in for a chat.

Private equity giant Apollo, which is advised by former BOI boss Brian Goggin also got a "courtesy call".

The corridors of power offer easier access if you're in big, big business.

Kennedy is making room for the Pope's visit to Philly

Tom Kennedy's accommodation-matching business Homestay.com is going to play a key role in the visit of the Pope to Philadelphia in September next year.

Kennedy - who built up Hostelworld with serial tech entrepreneur Ray Nolan before selling out to Hellman & Friedman for over €200m in 2011 - first set up the Homestay.com business to tap into the demand for language-student accommodation.

It turned out to be such a good idea that, under chief executive Alan Clarke, it has now moved into matching up home-stay accommodation with demand for big events.

Pope Francis is going to attend the World Meeting of Families over one weekend in September 2015.

"The organisers say that they are expecting something of the order of 1m people to turn up for the period the Pope is there," he said. "But there are just 13,000 hotel rooms in Philadelphia - so that creates a shortage."

The plan is for the Delta backed Homestay to show how it can fill the gap by matching visitors with local homeowners. Things are flying for Homestay, Clarke added, with the volume of hosts listed rising 30 to 40 times and bookings up 30 fold. "It lets us showcase the events solution side of our business."