What the papers say: Sunday's front pages

Eva Osborne

Here are the stories making headlines this Sunday.

Coun­cils are pay­ing mil­lions of euro every month to private land­lords and investors in rent for thou­sands of prop­er­ties for social hous­ing, des­pite own­ing more than 3,500 vacant homes, the Sunday Independent reports.

Hun­dreds of coun­cil-owned prop­er­ties have been vacant for a year or more. Some have been idle for over a dec­ade, con­trib­ut­ing to derel­ic­tion and local decay.

The Irish Sunday Mirror leads with a man who suffered child sex abuse at the hands of Water­ford mon­ster Bill Ken­neally saying he believes there could be hun­dreds more vic­tims. He has urged them to come for­ward.

Barry Murphy has spoken out after an invest­ig­a­tion into com­plaints against the con­victed 75-year-old former bas­ket­ball coach who abused boys from 1979 to 1990, and said: “I believe the num­ber of boys he abused is in the hun­dreds.”

Lee McDon­nell tried to sub­con­tract shoot­ings from prison and boas­ted that he earned an exag­ger­ated €400,000 for mur­der­ing drug dealer Gary Carey - after double cross­ing him with the lead­ers of three organ­ised crime groups in West Dub­lin, according to the Sunday World.

Carey is under­stood to have offered McDon­nell, who died in Garda cus­tody, €100,000 to take out his rival Brian Rat­tigan in Spain after his release from prison a num­ber of years ago.

The per­cent­age of asylum seekers enter­ing the coun­try through the open land bor­der with the North has almost doubled since Brexit, the Irish Mail on Sunday reports..

More than nine in 10 Inter­na­tional Pro­tec­tion (IP) applic­ants who have sought asylum here this year arrived in the State via the bor­der.

Aer Lingus has told its staff that it must slash costs to win an IAG investment, according to the Business Post.