The Trib leads with an exclusive by Mark Hillard on how Irish donor kidneys were sent to the UK as acute bed shortages barred those organs being offered some 580 patients on the donor waiting list in Ireland.

Hillard writes:

It is believe to be the first time kidneys have been given away because of the inability to offer them to patients in Ireland.

The incident is understood to have led to angry exchanges between a top doctor and health minister Mary Harney, sparking a crisis meeting to ensure such a failure of life-saving is never repeated.

On the numbers and destinations of the kidneys:

The incident occured on 26 January when four kidneys and one pancreas became available for transplant. While two if the kidneys were used in the Temple Street Children’s Hospital, the other organs were sent via Beaumont Hospital to the United Kingdom Transplant Service.

The minor lead on the front of the Trib is on #glee. Jennifer Bray’s piece details how George Lee spent just a day working at BCP Stockbrokers in the late 1990′s before fleeing back to RTE.

There’s also an interesting piece in the Trib claiming that Ireland’s new European commissioner, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn is refusing to give up her €100,000+ pension as a former minister and TD. Her current job yields a salary of €238,000 plus pension.

#gleelovers be comforted by the fact that there’s loads to read on all of the papers this weekend.

Sunday Independent

A Sindo/Millward and Brown Lansdowne poll leads the Sindo. The poll reveals that a majority (62%) the electorate want a national all-party government to lead the country for the duration of the economic crisis.

The piece by Jody Corcoran goes on to look at the standing of the parties:

When the headline finding is broken down, it reveals that supporters of Fianna Fáil (66 per cent), Fine Gael (56%), Labour (64%), Green (50%) and Sinn Féin (64%) want a national all-party government.

The Sindo also has a frontpager by Ronald Quinlan reporting that Ryanair honcho Michael O’Leary has “slammed” the Tanaiste for “the loss of 500 engineering jobs which the low-cost carrier had intended to create at Dublin Airport”.

O’Leary shared correspondence with the Sindo that reveal:

… how Ryanair offered to take over the former SR Technics facility at Dublin Airport and reemploy 500 of the aircraft engineers who worked there before it closed last summer.

In making the offer, Ryanair’s only condition that Ms Coughlan, as Minister for Enterprise, or the IDA would act as intermediary with the Dublin Airport Authoriy (DAA) as it negotiated the lease of the former SR Technics hanger.

The minor lead in the Sindo by Jerome Reilly reports about how Gay Byrne has “taken a sideswipe” at Brian Cowen’s social habits saying he “should not be seen sitting on a high stool of his local pub sipping pints.”

More papers as they come to hand. Links go live to the pieces as their sites get updated.

Sunday Independent

The Sindo leads with a piece by Jody Corcoran and Maeve Sheehan on a Sunday Independent/Quantum Research telephone poll to gauge public feeling on the Government and the economy.

The poll consisted a sample of just 500 households randomly selected.

The questions asked:

• Do you have confidence in the political system produce answers to our current economic crisis?
  • Yes – 24% / No – 76%
• Do you worry about your ability to earn or to continue earning a living?
  • Yes – 48% / No – 52%
• Are you concerned that you could possibly lose your home?
  • Yes – 20% / No – 80%
• Have you felt ashamed because you could not pay your bills?
  • Yes – 27% / No – 73%
• Have financial worries ever seriously affected your mood?
  • Yes – 54% / No – 46%
• Do you believe Ireland has anything to offer to those who will finish their education in the next few years?
  • Yes – 38% / No – 62%
• Would you see emigration as an option for yourself?
  • Yes – 22% / No – 78%

The Sindo also says it can:

reveal that officials empowered to seize goods to meet an undischarged debt are coming away empty-handed from the often palatial homes of wealthy developers, lawyers and celebrities.

Dublin County Sheriff John Fitzpatrick said: “A different class of individuals are coming into us. We are getting developers, lawyers, celebrities… and for very big money too.”

…

His current caseload includes a court order against a property developers for €18m, a judgment of €3m against a solicitor and one for €1.4 against a “celebrity”. He does not believe he has a “hope in hell” of getting the money back.

The minor lead is a piece on how the late Celine Cawley’s family is upset with her characterisation as a “ruthless, domineering businesswoman.”

Brendan O’Connor is kicked to the inside pages by Ann Harris with a piece on Brian Cowen’s speech to the Dublin Chamber of Commerce dinner last Friday.

Sunday Business Post

The SBP leads with a story by David Clerkin and Ian Kehoe on how a loophole allowed companies and the super-rich to avoid paying Capital Gains Tax to the tune of €400m in a single scheme. Some 26 taxpayers availed of the scheme.

Ian Kehoe follows up the lead with a front page piece how the owners of the Shelbourne hotel “may never see any return on their €230m investment in the St. Stephen’s Green property.”

He writes:

The consortium of investors, including Bernard McNamara, bought the hotel in 2004 for €120m and injected a further €110m into a redevelopment and refit of the property.

However, court documents filed by John Sweeney, the Galway businessman who owns one-third of the hotel, state that investors have earned nothing from the investment to date and there is no indication that there will be any return in the near future.

Another minor lead by John Burke says that the ESRI was forced to withdraw a “controversial report” on waste management in Dublin due to errors.

Professor Richard Tol said that the move was being taken after the institute identified significant errors after publication. He confirmed that the conclusions reached in the report would be reviewed in the light of the errors and could potentially be changed.

“Any errors identified will be corrected… we’re in the middle of redoing what needs to be redone,” Tol told the Sunday Business Post.

Burke follows this piece with a page 2 piece on how Dublin City Council has paid almost €15m more to consultants that gave it advice on the controversial Poolbeg incinerator.

The council agreed to pay €6.5m to the consortium, headed by consulting engineers RPS, in July 2001, according to documents seen by the Sunday Business Post. However, the local authority has paid more than €21m up the start of this year for services connected to the incinerator project.

Links go live as the pieces do, so do pop by and I’ll send you to the full stories!

Northern Editor Suzanne Breen interviews Gerry Adams’ niece, Aine Tyrell. Tyrell claims that Adams is lying when he says he couldn’t tell party colleagues that his brother was a suspected paedophile because she demanded anonymity from Adams.

Breen writes:

In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Tribune, Tyrell was scathing of both the Sinn Féin president and the PSNI over their handling of the case.

She said: “I didn’t know Liam was in Sinn Féin but had Gerry bothered to tell me, I would have waived my anonymity without hesistation. I’d have accompanied Gerry to meet his colleagues in Sinn Féin, to talk to the ard chomhairle about what Liam had done so they could expel him from the party. But Gerry never gave that option.”

The piece continues with Tyrell saying that she never asked Adams to protect her anonymity and had asked him to address the fact that Liam Adams working on youth projects over and over again to no avail.

Under the fold of the Tribune frontpage,  Conor McMorrow reports on Fine Gael’s plans to reshape the electorial system. McMorrow writes:

The Sunday Tribune understands that key figures in the party are finalising an audacious plan to have a ‘Mixed Electoral System’, where 12 TDs will be elected from four regions based on the constituencies used for the European elections. They would be elected on the basis of a list system, which would be a break away from the PR-STV system which has been used in elections since the foundation of the state.

He continues:

A further 134 TDs would be elected in the traditional constituency-based elections and the new slimmed-down Dáil would have 20 less TDs than the current 16 deputies. The party hopes to implement the mammoth changes for the general election after the next one.

The Sunday Business Post leads with a story by Cliff Taylor and Ian Kehoe on the banks and Nama. Titled “State to pay banks less for transferring loans to NAMA”, their piece claims that the state’s bill to transfer loans to Nama will be “considerably lower than the expected €54 billion”.

They write:

Detailed investigation of the first loans to be transferred from the banks to the new agency shows the loans are worth less than previously estimated. The initial Nama plan had said that loads were likely to be transferred at 30 per cent below their original worth, but the indications are that the final discount will now be higher.

Under the Post lead comes a small but interesting piece by Ian Kehoe on how the government plans to tighten up the rules governing the artists’ exemption.

He writes:

The Department of Arts, Sports and Tourism is working with the Revenue Commissioners and the Arts Council on a major review of the scheme, particularly who can qualify for tax relief.

Oh yes and I got the Sindo, but it’s all gangs and Brendan O’Connor has a piece called “Stokes twins: pillars of hope”, so we’ll just grab a pic and leave it there!

Links to follow when the pieces go live on the web!

Sunday Tribune

Tomorrow’s Sunday Tribune is leading with a shocking story alleging that Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams knew about two other abuse victims and did nothing to help them.

Suzanne Breen exclusively reports:

Women from two of Ireland’s best-known republican families have spoken for the first time about how they were sexually abused by republicans and of how that abuse was covered up by Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA.

A grand-niece of former IRA chief-of-staff Joe Cahill has told of how she was repeatedly raped at the age of 16 by a prominent IRA man in west Belfast.

The daughter of a now deceased IRA Belfast commander has spoken of how she was physically, mentally and sexually abused by someone who is currently a Sinn Féin elected representative.

She continues:

Both women said that Gerry Adams was aware of the details of their abuse but had failed to take action.

Sunday Independent
Tomorrow’s Sindo leads with a story on how former billionaire developers are quitting Ireland. It reports that Bernard McNamara has “taken flight” to his Marbella villa to “get his head around” the end of his 40 year career.

The lead story continues by reporting that Paddy Kelly (former head of Redquartz) has traveled to Africa and is having his Shrewsbury Road house cleared out so that the Chinese embassy can move in, as soon as. The majority of lenders to Redquartz have won over €100 million in judgments against it.

A adjacent sub-lead report by Jody Corcoran describes how Jean Tracey, the mistress at the centre of the Lillis murder case, is expected to take the stand this week at the Central Criminal Court.

The Sunday Business Post

The Sunday Business Post leads with a piece on how the proposed inquiry into the banking crisis will be held in private. Pat Leahy writes:

Rather than holding an Oireachtas inquiry or tribunal, the government will propose using a system similar to the Murphy Commission, which investigated the Catholic Church’s response to the child abuse in Dublin.

He continues:

The proposal is unlikely to satisfy the demands from opposition parties that an inquiry be conducted in public to ascertain the reason for the banking crisis, as well as the need to the publicly funded bail-out of the sector.

We’ll know on Tuesday when Government presents its plans to the Dáil.

Just have tomorrow’s Sunday Independent to hand this evening. It leads with the story of the Listowel sexual assault case. Consumer confidence is up following the Budget.

While below the fold, Brendan O’Connor moves into McWilliamslandia with easy turns on phrase metaphorising on Ahern, the Budget and our economic legacy.

Inside, in the Life Magazine The Apprentice’s Bill and Jackie plus the usual Irish renta-celebs (Lorraine Keane, Niall Quinn & Fam and Barry Egan plus newcomer the Breffmeister) share their Christmas Day. Mistletoelicious!

Sunday Business Post