Gerry Adams
'Taoiseach seeks to put further pressure on Adams' - that's the headline on the front of the Irish Times today as both it and the Irish Independent lead with stories on the Sinn Féin leader.
In the Irish Times, Sarah Bardon says that while Enda Kenny has repeatedly called on Mr Adams to reveal the identity of the person the Stack brothers met in 2013, he is now also urging him to name the driver who took them to the undisclosed destination. The piece reports Mr Adams response - that accusation that both the Taoiseach and Michael Martin are trying to exploit victims in the name of scurrilous political point scoring, and it also gives details of the confrontation at the media event, when Austin Stack accused Mr Adams of telling untruths about his knowledge of his father's murder.
The Irish Independent has coverage of that confrontation too - a piece on page two by Kevin Doyle is headlined: 'Stack walked into the room and stared at Adams. It felt as if anything could happen' but the lead story in the paper is about something else which Paul Williams believes is happening behind the scenes... 'One of Gerry Adams key lieutenants' says Williams in the big piece on the front page 'is facing charges over his alleged role in the establishment of the Sinn Fein / IRA Kangaroo court system'. We're told: 'Gardai believe a close associate of Mr Adams has perverted the course of justice after he sanctioned an internal IRA investigation into the alleged rape of two individuals'.
There's plenty more of course on page seven in the Irish Times, Fiach Kelly writes under the headline 'Mounting concern Adams past stunting party's growth', but the leader writer in the Irish Examiner is perhaps a little less sure.
'Same old story, same old doubts - Mr Adams' well-honed rebuttals have become standard, almost pantomime believe what you wills in our public landscape', says the writer there, before asking: 'Does any of this matter, in a post-factual world?'
Crime rates
'Major drop in rate of crimes solved' is the lead in the Irish Examiner. Cormac O'Keefe says that according to CSO figures, the crime solving rate has dropped substantially over a 5 year period up to 2014 and that the downward trend is understood to have continued in 2015 and 2016.
One crime which was reported this week of course, was the theft of a star greyhound, and the Irish Daily Mail has follow-up on the theft and recovery of the Clare's Rocket. On the front page and inside, the paper reports on an interview carried in the Limerick Leader with convicted drug dealer Christy Keane. We're told that after the dog was recovered, Keane told the paper he had nothing to do with its abduction but that through his own detective work he had tracked down those who had taken it. 'I saved that greyhound's life' is the headline over the piece on it all, on page one.
Culture Day
There's coverage in all the papers this morning of what the Independent calls 'the government's new plan to put culture at the heart of policy'.
The Irish Times front page picture is a lovely shot of a senior infant in Carlow at her music lesson - the caption underneath tells us that the initiative unveiled yesterday aims to give all children access to musical education within 5 years, while on the Independent Comment page, Richard Bruton writes about why, along with tuition in art, music, and drama, he is rolling out coding for every child.
