Irish Examiner

What is the Irish Examiner?

The Irish Examiner is a daily newspaper based in Cork, with its website at irishexaminer.com, where sport sits on the /sport path. On 25 September 2026 the site's footer read: “© Examiner Echo Group Limited, Linn Dubh, Assumption Road, Blackpool, Cork. Registered in Ireland: 523712.”^[1]

The paper's own page states: “The Irish Examiner is part of the Irish Times Group. The Irish Times DAC is a registered company with an address at 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, Ireland.”^[2] The Euromedia Ownership Monitor's Ireland report of December 2025, by Roderick Flynn of Dublin City University, records the Irish Examiner with The Irish Times under the Irish Times Designated Activity Company and the Irish Times Trust CLG.^[5] NewsBrands Ireland, which describes itself as “the representative body for all national newspapers, print and online”, lists the Irish Examiner among its member brands.^[6]

What does the Irish Examiner cover?

The sport section's page title on 25 September 2026 was “Soccer, GAA, Rugby and Golf analysis and reports - Irish Examiner”, and its navigation listed, among other items, GAA, soccer, rugby, racing, golf, Business Of Sport, Cork Sport and Other Sports. Its items that day included the Nations League and the Cork football championships.^[1] The page's description calls the desk “the award-winning team”; that is the paper's own phrase.^[1]

One report shows the kind of coverage it carries. On 12 February 2026 it published, under Paul Keane's byline, “GAA reports €45.7m gate receipts as Cork support boosts All-Ireland attendances”, on the GAA's accounts for 2025.^[7] The report sits under the /sport/gaa path of the site, which carries the paper's Gaelic games coverage.^[7]

How large is the Irish Examiner's audience?

No audited readership or circulation figure for the Irish Examiner was retrieved, and no current readership survey for Irish national titles could be found. NewsBrands Ireland's home page, which represents the national titles, publishes no readership figures.^[6] The paper's own page gives none.^[2]

The only audience figure retrieved is for the whole group. The Irish Times reported on 15 October 2025, of the accounts for 2024: “The group closed 2024 with 143,000 subscribers, including home-delivery customers.” The same report describes the group as publishing “The Irish Times, the Examiner and Echo titles based in Cork, and a number of regional publications.”^[4] That figure is the group's and is not broken down by title. The same report gives the turnover of The Irish Times DAC as €115.6 million in the 12 months to the end of 2024.^[4]

Since when has the Irish Examiner existed?

The paper dates itself to 1841. Its own page states: “The Irish Examiner was first published on August 30, 1841 - making it the country's oldest daily newspaper.” It adds that it was originally called the Cork Examiner, and states: “In 1996, the decision was taken to rebrand the title to The Examiner and subsequently in 2000 to the Irish Examiner to appeal to a more national audience.”^[2] The date, the claim of age and the reason given for the renaming are the paper's own account.

The present ownership dates from 2018. The Irish Times reported on 10 July 2018: “The Irish Times has completed the acquisition of all of the publishing and media interests of the Cork-based Landmark Media group”. It listed the Irish Examiner and the Evening Echo, seven regional weeklies, stakes in three radio stations and the websites breakingnews.ie and irishexaminer.com, and stated that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Minister for Communications and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland had approved the deal.^[3] The regional weeklies it named were the Waterford News & Star, the Roscommon Herald, the Western People and the Nationalist, the Kildare Nationalist, the Laois Nationalist and the Naas and Newbridge Nationalist.^[3]

Why does the Irish Examiner matter in Ireland's sport?

The Press Council of Ireland lists the Irish Examiner among the national newspapers in its member publications.^[9] It is one of the national titles NewsBrands Ireland represents, and its footer places its publisher in Cork.^[1][6] Its sport section reports Gaelic games, soccer, rugby, racing and golf, and it reported the GAA's 2025 accounts on 12 February 2026.^[1][7]

Its ownership is recorded by a monitoring body. The Euromedia Ownership Monitor places it with The Irish Times under the Irish Times Trust CLG, in a report of December 2025.^[5] The acquisition that brought it into that group was approved in 2018 by the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, the Minister for Communications and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, as The Irish Times reported at the time.^[3]

The Media Pluralism Monitor's Ireland 2026 page, assessing the market, states: “Irish competition law has never specified quantitative thresholds automatically limiting increases in concentration of media ownership.” It adds that “The Irish Times Designated Activity Company and Mediahuis Ireland both operate online advertising portals as subsidiaries”, in a sentence that continues with Virgin Media Television Ireland.^[8] Those are the monitoring body's statements.