The Front Pages
It’s the Sunday of a Bank Holiday weekend. A time to relax and take things easy. A time to leave the worries of the working week behind.
Eh, not if your name is Ivor Callely it isn’t. We’re guessing the Dublin/Cork based Senator will have had a bit of a rude awakening today as he cast his eye across the Sunday papers. One paper in particular will have caught his attention – The Irish Mail on Sunday. Emblazoned across their whole front page is the headline ‘CALLELY CLAIMED EXPENSES ON FORGED INVOICES’.
Referring to a ‘phone scam’ and calling it ‘the story even Cowen can’t ignore’, the Mail goes on to claim, in an exclusive, that the former minister submitted receipts for four mobile phones from a Dublin telecoms firm that went bust 16 years ago. Callely is pictured in his running gear holding a Westie dog in his arms.
Elsewhere on the front pages, the Sunday Tribune leads with ‘Secret Report: HSE cutbacks put patients at severe risk. The Tribune says that a recruitment freeze means that staff are stretched across a number of department with cancer care among the departments suffering.
At the end of a week that saw Arnotts get taken over by the banks, another Irish high street institution has come out to say that the Cabinet is leaving retailers to rot. The Sunday Independent leads with the story that a report from Clerys implicitly blames the Government ‘s policies for prolonging the current economic crisis.
Also on the front of the Indo is the story that golf champ Padraig Harrington has lost €4million in a failed UK technology firm, U4EA Technologies, of which his brother Columb was a director. Billionaire financier Dermot Desmond has also taken a hit of more than €14.3million following his investment in the company. Big losses, but they’ve both still got a few million/billion to go before we need to start worrying about them being able to scrape together the change from the back of the sofa for a snackbox from the local chipper.
For cheery news we need to look to The Sunday Times which features a picture of Derval O’Rourke who bagged a silver medal in the 100m hurdles at the European Athletics Championships on Saturday night.
The Sunday Times also has the story that the German Ambassador wants to shut down the set of RTÉ’s Fair City, because he and staff at his residence, which backs onto RTÉ’s Donnybrook campus, are kept awake by the banging of set designers through the night. Amusingly it has emerged that RTÉ no longer has consent to operate the set as planning permission lapsed in 2005.
Tales from the Tabs
Stop what you’re doing today. The big news in the tabloids is that Shane Lynch is to quit as a judge on the pisspoor All Ireland Talent Show. This major exclusive appears on the front page of the Irish News of the World. We’re expecting a phone call to be made from President Obama to the head honchos at RTÉ offering his support at this difficult time.
It is believed that Lynch wishes to spend more time with his family. We wish him well.
Also in the News of the World, Paul Williams has an exclusive interview with Veronica McGrath, the daughter of Vera McGrath who is the woman convicted of butchering and burning Veronica’s father in Coole, Co Westmeath in 1987.
The Sunday World has the headline ‘Oh Danny… Boyle!’ over pictures of Daniel O’Donnell and Britain’s Got Talent phenomenon Susan Boyle appearing on stage together at the TF Royal Theatre in Castlebar. We’re gutted we missed what must have been quite some rocking gig.
But forget all that, we’re still in bits after hearing that Shane Lynch will not be a judge on the All Ireland Talent Show. How will we go on?
The Sports Pages
GAA dominates the back pages and sports sections today, and so it should after the shock results in both of the quarter-final football clashes at Croke Park on Saturday. The back page of the Irish News of the World shows Dublin’s Eoghan O’Gara celebrating after scoring the only goal in the game against Tyrone (Dublin 1-15 Tyrone 0-13) and reports on Down’s thrashing of champions Kerry by six points (Down 1-16 Kerry 1-10).
The Sunday World carries the headline ‘It’s D Day… O’Gara and Coulter fire Dublin and Down to shock victories’. Dublin will face the winner of Cork and Roscommon in the semi-final, while 1994 champs Down will meet the winner of today’s Meath v Kildare game.
The Sunday Times has the headline ‘Down and Out’, which is odd since Down did not go out. We’re guessing they’d come up with the headline before the game and despite the result they went with it anyway.
There’s more of the same leading the sports coverage on all the other papers, the only other stories getting a look in being reports of Rory McIlroy’s bad form at the 3 Irish Open in Killarney and of Derval O’Rourke getting a silver in the 100m hurdles at the European Championships.
