19/12 The Front Pages

The main headline in the Sunday Independent is '‘Corrupt’ gardai hid Gerry Ryan coke habit'. Sources in the Gardai and in the Department of Justice have informed the Indo that Gardai have protected figures in the media over the years with drug habits and that others have been warned off making an investigation for that very reason.

Gerry Ryan's drug dealer is said to be well known and, according to the Indo, half of all his trade is with RTE. 68 per cent of people are convinced of a 'conspiracy of silence' at RTE, according to a Sunday Independent poll, something former RTE DJ Gareth O'Callaghan is convinced of.

“It's been the biggest shock of my career that people who I have worked with for 18 years have formed a solid, impenetrable wall of silence,” he said. “Since I have spoken out the phone has stopped ringing. I would usually be asked out for a drink — this week the invites have stopped.”

RTE's vow of silence is also the main headline in the Sunday Tribune - 'RTÉ closes ranks on star's years of sustained drug use'. Another story in the newspaper is 'Defrocked priest charged with possession of child pornography'.

Oliver O'Grady, who was the subject of the 2006 documentary Deliver Us From Evil, raped dozens of children in the United States between 1971 and 1993, a fact which was covered up by authorities in the Catholic Church who were aware since at least 1976. He was been living in Ireland since 2001.

O'Grady was arrested at his Dublin hostel on Friday morning just after 7am on child pornography charges. "We are talking about thousands upon thousands of images of child pornography," Garda Johanna Doyle told the court. "Children from the age of two and three up to teenage boys and girls."