Editor to face questions over leak

IRISH TIMES editor Geraldine Kennedy and the paper’s public affairs correspondent Colm Keena are to appear before the Mahon Planning Tribunal this morning over their leak of payments to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

It is expected the tribunal will refer the matter to the High Court. The tribunal already has a High Court order prohibiting the publication of details given to it in private.

Yesterday it emerged financier Dermot Desmond gave an instruction — as chairman of the Aer Rianta board — that staff pay no more than the agricultural price on land near Dublin Airport sold for £1 million in April 1991.