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The Irish Daily Mirror launched in the mid-1990s as a sister publication to the UK tabloid The Mirror (which had previously been selling directly into the Irish market).  The  Mirror was originally founded in 1903 by Alfred Harmsworth (Lord Northcliffe), the Irish-born newspaper magnate who had previously set up the Daily Mail in 1896. In 1913 Harmsworth sold the paper to his brother Harold Harmsworth (Lord Rothermere). Originally aimed at a  middle-class readership, the quest for a wider circulation saw a deliberate re-orientation towards working class audiences in the early 1930s. In 1963 a restructuring of the media interests of the Harmsworth family led to the Mirror becoming a part of International Publishing Corporation and – following IPC’s 1970 merger with Reed Group – Reed International.  By  the mid-1960s, daily sales of the Mirror were exceeding 5 million copies, a unique feat in UK newspaper history.  In 1984, Czech-born magnate Robert Maxwell acquired The Mirror from Reed via his Pergamon Holdings retaining it until his death in 1991. In 1999 the Mirror Group merged with the regional newspaper group Trinity in 1999 to form Trinity Mirror. In 2018, following Trinity Mirror’s acquisitions of Northern & Shell—publisher of the Daily Express and Daily Star – the company rebranded as REACH plc. 


Dating the “official” establishment of the Irish edition of the Daily Mirror is somewhat complicated. The Mirror had long been the best-selling UK Daily in Ireland: as early as 1982, 57,000 copies were sent to the Republic of Ireland every day, nearly twice the figure (33,000) associated with the second-placed UK title, The Daily Star.  Current owners, REACH plc point to 1997 as an establishment date but it is evident from a scan of pre-1997 stories that even before this the Mirror maintained some journalistic presence in Dublin: in the 1960s and 1970s for example, the paper maintained an office in Dublin’s Liberty Hall. As early as 1996, the Daily Mirror reported selling nearly 60,000 copies in Ireland, although this was dramatically revised downwards – to 42,000 – by the end of 1996 after an Audit Bureau of Circulation established that Mirror Group Newspapers (along with virtually every other UK print media group selling titles into Ireland) were basing their circulation figures on the number of copies sent to Ireland rather than the number actually sold. 


Nonetheless, a gradual increase in Irish journalistic personnel, reflected in the adoption of the “Irish Daily Mirror” saw actual circulation grow through the 1990s and 2000s, reaching 67,000 in 2000 and peaking at 76,000 by the close of 2007. 


In Ireland the paper’s politics have maintained the UK edition’s left of centre stance, describing itself as the “voice of working class people in the Republic of Ireland campaigning for better pay, better working conditions, better education for everyone and a better health service for all”. Beyond politics and social issues, the paper publishes celebrity news, and sports coverage, as well as tv listings, horoscopes and travel and lifestyle pieces.


The paper launched an online version - Irishmirror.ie - in April 2013 which the paper maintains alongside the print edition. As of mid-2025, the Irish Daily Mirror was selling approximately 14,000 print copies each day, reaching just under 100,000 readers. 



(Last updated in April 2026)

Key Facts

Audience ShareMissing Data
Ownership TypePrivate
Geographic CoverageNational
Content TypePaid
Data Publicly Available
ownership data is easily available from other sources, e. g. public registries etc.

Ownership

Ownership StructureThe Irish Daily Mirror is owned by Reach Solutions Ireland, a subsidiary of the British publicly traded company Reach PLC.
Voting RightsMissing Data
Individual Owner
  • Board of Reach PLC

    As a publicly traded company Reach PLC does not have any direct owners. It is managed by a board comprising a Chairman, two executive directors and five independent non-executive directors.

Operating Company

Facts

Founding Year1997
Founder
  • Missing Data
    Missing Data
CEO
  • Jim Mullen
    Was born in Glasgow in 1970. He studied computing in Glasgow Caledonian University and has a Master’s degree in Software Engineering from the University of Westminster. Prior to becoming CEO of Reach PLC, Mullen was the CEO of high street bookmakers Ladbrokes in 2015, having worked there as a Managing Director since 2013. He also previously worked as the Chief Operating Officer of William Hill Online, and Director of Digital Strategy and Product Management at News International. He is currently a Senior Independent Non Executive Director at Racecourse Media Group.
Editor-In-Chief
  • Neil Leslie

    Neil Leslie is the Group Print Editor for the Irish Daily Mirror and the Irish Daily Star at Reach PLC. He grew up on the north side of Dublin, attending Ard Scoil Rís in the 1980s and has cited his first after-school job selling evening newspapers as his “unexpected education in the news”. After school he  completed a degree in Journalism at then Dublin Institute of Technology (now the Technical University of Dublin) from 1992 until 1994. On graduating he did a year long stint in local journalism with the Westmeath and Offaly Independent newspapers before moving to the Irish Mirror in 1996 to work as a News Editor. In 2001 he moved to an assistant editor position at the Irish Daily Star before, one year later, commencing a long stint at the Sunday World where, between 2001 and 2017, he graduated from Assistant Editor to Magazine Editor and ultimately to Managing Editor, in which role he oversaw the launch of sundayworld.com.

    In 2017 he returned to the Irish Daily Star as Head of News and Content before in 2019, taking a brief hiatus step from senior editorial positions (though he continued to work as a journalist at the Irish Mirror) to concentrate on an MSc in Climate Change, Media and Public Policy at Dublin City University. In December 2020 he was appointed Editor at the Irish Daily Star immediately after the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission gave the go ahead for REACH plc’s acquisition of the 50% of the paper it didn’t already own. He was subsequently appointed as Group Print Editor for both the Irish Daily Mirror and the Irish Daily Star.

ContactIndependent House
27-32 Talbot Street
D01 X2E1 Dublin 1
+353 (0) 1 868 8600
www.irishmirror.ie
RevenueMissing Data
Operating ProfitMissing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)Missing Data
Market ShareMissing Data
Meta Data

Within the media industry in Ireland reporting on income levels are generally at group level rather than individual title level. On top of this, overall revenue details for the market as a whole are unavailable. Due to these factors it is not possible to report accurately on market share for individual titles or groups.

There is currently no standard audience measurement available for print and online news titles in Ireland. Individual titles publish data on readership or users but measurement parameters and sources vary between organisations, therefore it is not possible to report an accurate audience share for the purposes of this project.

Sources