What the papers say: Thursday's front pages

Eva Osborne

Here are the stories making headlines this Thursday.

A row has erupted between An Post and Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan over pay for its new chief executive and key elements of its development strategy, according to The Irish Times.

The Irish Examiner leads with a former army apprentice breaking down as he recalled being forced to eat cigarette butts by an officer, and how he saw one of his fellow cadets crying in his bed before he later took his own life.

Padraic Lenaghan, a former radio technician cadet at the Army Apprentice School at Devoy Barracks in Naas, told the Defence Forces Tribunal how the unnamed second lieutenant — known as 2LTB — swore in his face and ordered him to eat used cigarette butts from an ashtray after discovering a card game in progress at the apprentices’ dormitory in November 1989.

More Garda resources are needed to tackle e-scooters, councillors have said, as fewer than 50 people in Cork city were fined for breaches of legislation introduced over two years ago, The Echo reports.

The Irish Independent leads with two of the main Fianna Fáil lead­er­ship con­tenders voting against the Taoiseach’s pos­i­tion on a Dáil bill on abor­tion.

The Sinn Féin bill, seek­ing to remove the three-day wait period for access to abor­tion ser­vices, was passed by 86 votes to 70 in the Dáil last night.

A doctor told a court on Wednesday that he rushed to help a young child injured in a knife attack in Dublin city centre, the Irish Daily Mirror reports.

Peter Harper, a consultant at Temple Street Hospital, had been cycling near the scene at Parnell Square and attended to the girl.

The CAB have said James 'Mago' Gately reduced a home's value by €117,000 by tearing out many fittings and even the stairs before it was seized as the proceeds of crime, according to the Irish Daily Star.

The Irish Daily Mail leads with the num­ber of scans tak­ing place in hos­pit­als here at the week­end being so low that the aver­age rate was recor­ded as 0% last year, a damning internal HSE report reveals.

Health Min­is­ter Jen­nifer Car­roll MacNeill has now ordered con­sult­ants to fix their rosters after the report showed barely any hos­pital scans were car­ried out on Sat­urdays.

Lux­ury retail­ers will be encour­aged to share inform­a­tion on high-spend­ing cus­tom­ers sus­pec­ted to be involved in money laun­der­ing, under new meas­ures aimed at crack­ing down on fin­an­cial crime, The Herald reports.