We break the BIG stories

LAST year was a year full of news – celebrity deaths, political upheavals and scandals. And we at the Irish Mail on Sunday have covered all of these and much, much more. We have brought you more exclusives, the best opinion and news analysis available on a Sunday – as well as the exciting addition of a brilliant second magazine every Sunday.

The coverage of the general election and its aftermath saw our stable of journalists and writers bring you the clearest and most accurate reportage of what it all meant – and continues to mean – to the average citizen.

We fearlessly investigated numerous scandals. The most significant of these revealed that chiefs at financially struggling disability charity St John of God were given secret one-off top up payments, worth €1.6m.

We also revealed that Taoiseach Enda Kenny has a private Gmail account, which he uses on a regular basis, apparently against FoI guidelines – on at least one occasion handling material of such commercial sensitivity that it still can’t be revealed.

We also showed how the Taoiseach’s appointee, US-based Senator Billy Lawless, was previously embroiled in a lobbying effort for a promotion for a sitting judge.

We uncovered the incredible €46,000-amonth sum spent on the residence of our Japanese Ambassador, despite the going rate for luxury rentals in the city being far below this. We also brought you exclusive details about the background and activities of Ireland’s first Isis suicide bomber, Khalid Kelly, the day after he died in Syria for the evil death cult.

And we even got inside an Iraqi prison to talk to another Irishman, Joshua Molloy, who went to fight Isis on the front line. He was subsequently released – largely due to the media coverage, according to Mr Molloy.

On this the first day of the new year, we would like to take this opportunity to wish all our readers a happy and prosperous 2017 – and we commit to continue to chase the stories that you need to know about this year.