The Irish Daily Star The Irish Daily Star is a tabloid newspaper published in Ireland by Reach Solutions Ireland, a subsidiary of REACH plc. The paper is known for its in-depth and often sensational coverage of crime, its heavy focus on celebrity news, and its extensive sports section.

The Irish Daily Star represented the first significant example of localising a UK tabloid for the Irish market. The UK edition had been launched in 1978 by owners Express Newspapers as a means of using spare capacity created by falling circulation figures for the previous flagship, The Daily Express. The UK edition of the Star fared reasonably well in the Irish market: a circulation of 33,000 copies in 1982 grew to 47,000 in 1987, making it the second most read UK tabloid in Ireland. 

In 1988, Express Newspapers entered into a 50:50 joint venture with Independent News and Media (INM) in Ireland to establish Independent Star Limited. Initially chaired by Sunday World co-founder Gerry McGuinness, the venture was largely funded – to the tune of £IR6m - by INM as a means of acquiring a then state-of-the-art web-offset printing machine (to replace the aging presses of INM’s Sunday World). From May 1988, the new press printed The Star (Ireland Edition) along with the Northern Ireland run and The Daily Express entire run for the island of Ireland.  The paper did not adopt the title “The Irish Daily Star” until 2002.    

While half the content of the Irish edition – especially that relating to UK sport – was repurposed from the UK edition, the paper invested heavily in local journalistic personnel, including at the outset a roster of celebrity columnists from the field of broadcasting: Gay Byrne, Mike Murphy, Derek Davis, Maxi and Jimmy Magee. 

Though not immediately achieving the ambitious 100,000 sales projected by Gerry McGuinness, the Irish edition immediately increased sales reaching 70,000 copies by the end of 1988. Circulation growth continued through the 1990s, reaching 92,000 in 1997 and peaking at 112,000 copes in 2007. 

The INM/Express partnership remained intact over the decades even after Express Newspapers was acquired by Richard Desmond’s Northern and Shell group in 2000. However, the joint venture came close to rupturing in 2012 following the decision of the Irish Daily Star (in contradistinction to its usually more prurient UK counterpart) to publish topless photographs of then Duchess of Cambridge, Kate Middleton. Both INM and Northern and Shell, condemned the decision to publish the pictures and then editor Michael O’Kane resigned from his post. Northern and Shell also expressed their intention to close down the joint venture. In the event partnership continued but INM assumed “full executive responsibility” for the paper and a wide-ranging “rationalisation” occurred involving  staff pay cuts, office relocation and redundancies in the circulation and advertising departments.

The paper continued but suffered the same circulation decline as other titles in the post 2008 financial crash environment. By mid-2014, circulation fell to 54,000, less than half the 2007 peak and by 2018 it had fallen to 37,000 copies a day. In February that year, Trinity Mirror acquired Northern and Shell’s print assets including the 50% share in Independent Star. A month after the acquisition, Trinity Mirror rebraned as REACH plc. By this stage INM iwas already well-advanced on its own retrenchment programme which had seen it divest all of its overseas subsidiaries. In 2020, it announced that sale of its 50% of Independent Star to REACH plc which became full owner of the Irish title.

As of mid-2025, the Irish Daily Star’s print circulation hovers around 15,000 copies with a readership of 118,000 adults each day. 

(Last updated in April 2026)