Former Irish Olympics president Pat Hickey is at the centre of fresh scandal after it emerged he signed secret ticket deals with ‘banned’ agent THG last year.

Standing in the lobby of a hotel in Rio last year, just days before his arrest by Brazilian police, Pat Hickey did an interview with RTÉ news.

A claim by former Irish Olympics chief Pat Hickey that he severed links with a ticket agent rejected for the Rio 2016 games are contradicted by emails showing his “long standing relationship” with its owner.

The Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI) has to date paid out €1.5m to cover the fallout from the Rio ticketing scandal, figures obtained by the Irish Examiner reveal.

Families were treated as irritants rather than members of the wider Olympic family, writes Michael Clifford.

An inquiry into alleged ticket touting at the Olympic games in Rio last year says it was hampered by the fact that many of the participants chose not to cooperate.

A report into the alleged ticketing scandal at the Rio Olympics which led to the arrest of OCI President Pat Hickey will be published later today.

The Government report into the Rio Olympics ticket- touting scandal may leave some questions unanswered.

The matter returns to the Court of Appeal next week to determine whether a retrial would be appropriate.

A draft of the report from the €300,000 inquiry into the Rio Olympics ticketing controversy is to be circulated to certain parties next Friday.

A judge in Brazil has allowed Irish ticketing executive Kevin James Mallon to return to Ireland, so long as he pays bail around €420,000.

The Government’s Olympics ticket touting scandal inquiry may be extended past its 12-week deadline if the scale of information uncovered makes the current schedule unworkable.

SPORTS Minister Shane Ross asked for submissions from the other political parties about the best way to deal with the inquiry into the controversy over the Olympic tickets.

Latest: Retired judge Mr Justice Carroll Moran has been appointed to lead the inquiry into the Olympics ticketing scandal.

Mr Justice Carroll Moran once said that when he arrived at Limerick Circuit Court every morning, his day was immediately brightened by Oliver (Ollie) McCarthy’s combined wit and insolence.

A mother who was pregnant and high on crystal meth when she beat and robbed a man, having lured him to an apartment, has been jailed for six months.

A move by the DPP to activate a suspended prison sentence given to a Limerick drug dealer failed yesterday.

The State is seeking to activate a suspended prison sentence handed down to a Limerick drug dealer who was at the centre of a political storm last year after he was the subject of representation by Fianna Fáil justice spokesman Niall Collins.

A restaurateur jailed for importing cannabis worth €79,000 has had his appeal against conviction dismissed.

Former Tánaiste and senior counsel Michael McDowell is to represent a Kerry County Council candidate who is challenging the results of the last local elections in a case which has the potential to affect all future elections, it has been confirmed.

A major figure connected with a feud of Limerick drugs gangs has survived a further attempt on his life, it emerged yesterday.

A man has been jailed for 10 years for raping a 14-year-old girl in a field as she walked to her friend’s house.

A British citizen who was found onboard a boat holding more than €400m worth of cocaine off the Irish coast has lost an appeal against conviction.

A Dublin man has been sentenced to life imprisonment for what was described today as the “brutal murder” of his uncle in 2013.

A local election candidate who disputed a county council result in Kerry is to have his case heard by five judges of the Supreme Court, as a matter of urgency in the first appeal of its kind in the history of the State.

A Dublin man who shot his uncle dead in the city will be sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of his murder.

The jurors in the trial of a Dublin man accused of murdering his uncle have been sent home for a second evening failing to reach a verdict.

The jury is deliberating in the trial of a Dublin man who shot his uncle dead but denies murdering him.

Ballistics experts fired bullets at tea towels to see if a murder accused was correct when he said he shot his uncle from 30 feet, a murder trial has heard.

A man who shot his uncle dead after a fist fight between two other people initially told gardaí that a gunman had come “out of nowhere” and shot him.

A man told gardaí that he shot his uncle dead ‘in the heat of the moment’ after his uncle made a comment about somebody who had made an allegation of sexual abuse against him (the deceased).

The widow of a man shot dead by his nephew said her husband came home from the pub ‘very upset and frightened’ the week before the killing, after the accused had ‘threatened him’.

A Tipperary man who raped and sexually abused a girl for almost a decade of her childhood has been sentenced to 12 years in jail.

A Munster man jailed for sexually abusing his nieces in-law as well as his son and daughter over four decades has moved to appeal his conviction.

Convicted double murderer Mark Nash has been found guilty of the “cold case” murder of two women, whose mutilated bodies were found in their sheltered accommodation in Grangegorman in Dublin nearly 20 years ago.

A forensic scientist has told a murder trial he has discounted the fact that DNA profiles from two women killed nearly 20 years ago were found on the sleeve of a jacket belonging to the murder accused.

A 22-year-old Clare man has again avoided jail for his role in two robberies which caused a pensioner to cycle nearly 50km through the night in terror to check himself into a nursing home.

A security guard of a ghost estate who attacked a woman unprovoked in her home has been sentenced to two years in prison following a finding by the Court of Appeal that his wholly suspended three-year sentence was “unduly lenient”.