PAPER ROUND/Declan Fahy: The unfortunate saga of the Jeanie Johnston Famine replica ship, now impounded in Fenit, Co Kerry, was detailed in the region's press this week.
"What began as a noble aspiration to celebrate the millennium with a real Famine commemoration has become mired in financial recriminations and doublespeak," said the Kerryman's editorial.
Just two weeks from completion, the final cost of the project, excluding a voyage, is expected to be just under €16 million, the vast bulk of it public monies. It has run to four times its original budget.
The Kerryman noted that the high-profile project had always found it difficult to attract funding, despite the support of many leading figures of Co Kerry life, as well as many politicians.
The paper's highly critical editorial said: "While we were told repeatedly that everything was on track, we now know conclusively that this was patently not the case. We were misled, we were misinformed and now we are paying for it". Future projects in the region, the paper says, will suffer financially because of the saga's legacy.
The Kingdom and Kerry's Eye also gave extensive coverage to the project, dubbed a disaster by the Minister for the Marine, Mr Fahey, and what the Kerryman called "an unsalvageable financial mess that threatens to be this Government's biggest white elephant".
The Government's management, meanwhile, of another transport concern, the rail link between Mullingar to Dublin, was criticised in the Westmeath Examiner.
The top of its front page read: "The train from Mullingar to Dublin travels at 25 miles an hour . . . there's no rail link between Mullingar and Athlone and the National Transport Museum project is stuck in a siding . . . do we really have a Minister for Transport in this constituency?"
Another report on the paper's front page, with an accompanying photograph of the Minister, Ms O'Rourke, details what it calls the "embarrassing" results of a survey, jointly carried out by a member of Young Fine Gael, of Mullingar to Dublin commuters which found the service to be generally inadequate and unreliable.
In a week where unprofitable and inefficient ventures were described at length, some local papers remain viable ventures, as they proclaimed in their pages.
The Longford Leader, which was recently sold to Scottish Radio Holdings for €9.1 million, had an editorial this week headlined "A change for the better".
It noted that 10 or 20 years ago, such a commercial move would have had a negative reaction among local people as "the 'invader' syndrome of Irish history still lingered on in some people's minds". But times have moved on since then, it said.
The editorial continued: "It is often forgotten that newspapers and other media outlets such as radio stations are first and foremost commercial operations.
"They must survive by making a profit just like any other business and the amount of resources they plough back into their business often defines how good or bad the newspapers or radio stations are.
"In this regard, readers of the Longford Leader have been the beneficiaries of solid investment by the company in the newspaper over many years."
Another regional paper told readers this week that it, too, is "very definitely thriving, prospering and expanding". The Echo, which is this year celebrating its centenary, boasted of being "an independently (with a small 'i') owned newspaper that is now the only weekly newspaper printed in Co Wexford".
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, visited the paper's offices where he was shown a picture of Robert Brennan, the Echo's correspondent in 1916 who, the paper said, later became the first Irish Ambassador to America. The paper's "involvement in national affairs and its intimate role in historic events in days of serious civil strive and unrest" has been well-chronicled.