18/12 The Front Pages

The Irish Independent reports on a probe being carried out into a €500,000 ‘secret’ bank bonus. The Indo has learnt that a payment was made to a senior figure in the Bank of Ireland without the knowledge of Finance Minister Brian Lenihan.

The government is now demanding full details of the bonus – which would be one of the largest paid in the Irish banking system.

The Irish Examiner prints a chilling appraisal of former Dublin priest Tony Walsh from a 1988 psychiatrists report. “A very disturbed man who is always going to be dangerous. He could not be let near schools, children, confession without a grille,” it reads. Walsh in particular carried out a catalogue of abuse over three decades.

Thanks to a High Court ruling, the full details of chapter 19 of the Commission of Inquiry’s Murphy Report have now been published. The document reveals more details of sex abuse and shows the details that the Church went to in order to cover up details of the behaviour of a minority of its servants in its Dublin archdiocese.

The Irish Times makes the details of the Report their lead story, focusing in on the fact that it took 17 years for the archdiocese to report child abuse allegations against Walsh, who was only thrown out of the priesthood in 1996.

The Times also features news that the majority of us back the IMF/EU bailout, but believe that in accepting the bailout we’ve lost our sovereignty. In an Irish Times poll, 51 per cent said they welcomed the poll, 37 per cent did not, and 12 per cent didn’t know how they felt.