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Risk patients' medical data affected by HSE ransomware attack 'will be abused', government warns

Since Friday, the health and security arms of Government have been scrambling to take control of the situation.

LAST UPDATE | 17 May 2021

THERE IS A risk that medical and other patient data affected by the ransomware attack on the HSE “will be abused”, the Government has warned. 

In a statement this evening, the government said: “These ransomware attacks are despicable crimes, most especially when they target critical health infrastructure and sensitive patient data.”

Since the HSE announced on Friday that it had been the target of the ransomware attack, in which patient and staff data may have been compromised, the health and security arms of government have been scrambling to take control of the situation.

On Friday, the Master of the Rotunda Maternity Hospital announced on Morning Ireland that its IT system was down, and that it was operating by the “traditional”, paper-based system until further notice.

Minutes later, it was revealed that the issue affected the whole HSE patient system – and all national and local IT systems involved in transferring or storing data needed to be shut down as a precaution.

Around 86,000 computers have been turned off, and a security team are going through 2,000 systems within the HSE to decide what level of access has been gained in the attack. The HSE has said publicly that it is still unclear what data hackers gained access to, whether that be administrative data, patient data, or staff data.

The HSE’s IT systems were hit by a Conti ransomware attack, where attackers enter into a computer system, study how it works, and encrypt the private data before announcing their attack to the victim and demanding a ransom for it not to be published online.

This particular attack was carried out by an international cyber-crime gang, the Government said in a statement this evening. 

“It is aimed at nothing other than extorting money and those who carried it out have no concern for the severe impact on patients needing care or for the privacy of those whose private information has been stolen,” it said, adding: 

“These ransomware attacks are despicable crimes, most especially when they target critical health infrastructure and sensitive patient data. The significant disruption to health services is to be condemned, especially at this time. 
“Any public release by the criminals behind this attack of any stolen patient data is equally and utterly contemptible. There is a risk that the medical and other data of patients will be abused. Anyone who is affected is urged to contact the HSE and Garda authorities.”

The Government said its main concern is to secure as speedy a resumption of all medical services “as can possibly be achieved, consistent with ensuring that the HSE’s systems can be safely and robustly restored”. 

There is currently hundreds of people deployed to tackle this attack in accordance with the predetermined plan for such cyber attacks, according to the statement.  

Minister for Justice Heather Humphreys today met with the Garda Commissioner and the head of the Garda Cybercrime Bureau Chief Superintendent Paul Clearly in relation to the attack.

Garda Commissioner Drew Harris informed Humphreys that An Garda Síochána is providing its full support to the National Cyber Security Centre, which is leading the State response to the attack, and is also liaising and cooperating with international law enforcement partners. 

Taoiseach Micheál Martin, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar, Transport Minister Eamon Ryan, Justice Minister Heather Humphreys, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly and Minister of State for Communications Ossian Smyth also met this afternoon to discuss the attack. 

Tomorrow morning, the Oireachtas Transport and Communications Networks committee will hear from officials from the Department of Communications and the National Cyber Security Centre after requesting an “immediate meeting”.

TDs and Senators will raise issues such as how the breaches occurred, the strategy in place to fully repel the attacks and timescale involved for the resumption of normal operations.

As with all security issues, information about the exact amount being sought is scarce and muddled: particularly around what data the hackers have gained access to, and what ransom amount has been sought by hackers.

Ransom speculation

Reports in Sunday newspapers yesterday indicated that hackers may have had access to the HSE system up to two weeks before a ransom was demanded, and reported widely varied ransom amounts being demanded.

The Business Post reported that the hackers demanded three bitcoin or $150,000, while others cited $20 million – a figure first reported by tech website Bleeping Computer.

Neither amounts have been confirmed as accurate by the HSE or Government.

What services are affected

The main crux of the problem for the HSE is that its core patient system, and its radiation diagnostic system ‘Nimis’, are down.

Yesterday on Newstalk’s On The Record, HSE Chief Operations Officer Anne O’Connor gave a general overview of what had been cancelled, including: X-ray appointments, paediatric services, and hospital outpatient appointments in the west were more severely affected.

O’Connor said that the voluntary hospitals – including the Mater, Beaumont, James’, Vincent’s, Tallaght, Mercy and South Infirmary – operate on a different IT system, so that they were impacted, but not as severely.

Beaumont and Connolly appointments are also going ahead, but similar to the voluntary hospital, radiology is still affected. 

Hospitals in the West – Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, and Galway – have cancelled all outpatient appointments; if your appointment is proceeding they will contact you, O’Connor added. The same is the case with children’s health appointments: Crumlin, Temple Street, and Tallaght have cancelled appointments.

Almost all radiation appointments, including X-ray, MRI, and CT scans, have been cancelled, as computers are needed to assess scans.

At Mercy University Hospital in Cork, the ongoing cyber attack has caused “considerable delays” in the emergency department and has affected outpatient services. All radiology OPD appointments and the processing of GP urgent bloods have been cancelled for the remainder of the week. Any patients with an appointment between now and 21 May are urged to contact the hospital to reconfirm their appointment.

The Covid-19 vaccination programme and testing regime is largely unaffected, as it is a newer, separate IT system. 

O’Connor said that there was a risk for the HSE in treating patients with a purely paper-based system.

We can’t order lab tests or radiology electronically. So normally, if you’re in a hospital, it’s all done through computers, and results come back. So for anybody coming in, its back to manual, hand-written notes. We have people in hospitals delivering pieces of papers with lab results, so it really is going back many, many years. There’s a risk with that.
Our priority has got to be to get a patient system back that gives us access to people’s information. So even things like blood transfusions, matching bloods, looking at previous records with medications, allergies, etc – we don’t have access.

The child and family agency Tusla has also been impacted by the attack. Over 90% of the agency’s connectivity, databases and operating systems are on the HSE platform. 

Speaking to RTÉ’s News at One today, Tusla CEO Bernard Gloster explained that the agency’s main casework in child protection, welfare and children in case work is hosted on the National Childcare Information System (NCIS). 

“All the case management information is on that system and that system is currently not available to us. It was switched off as part of the HSE containment, correctly, on Friday morning,” Gloster said. 

Gloster said Tusla has about 20,000 cases open between child protection, welfare and children in care. Those case files are located on the NCIS system, and as a result, are not currently available to Tusla. 

“We can do a significant amount of our work today in terms of engaging with the public, but in terms of having all of the necessary information, the tools to do that, we are quite limited,” he said. 

Anyone who wishes to make a referral about a child can currently do so by contacting local Tusla offices, phone numbers for which are located on the agency’s website. 

People having difficulty locating a phone number of a local Tusla office can call the main office number on 01 771 8500.

What progress has been made

The HSE’s website page of what health services are still available at what hospitals will be updated every hour.

The statement from Government this evening said: “The HSE is continuing the make the necessary arrangements in the interim to provide the maximum possible availability of services to patients across the State. 

“While the process will, inevitably, take some time, the HSE and its partners are working to ensure that the maintenance and restoration of care for patients can progress in the coming days.” 

HSE CEO Paul Reid said on Morning Ireland today that progress had been made over the weekend in going through all of the HSE’s systems and clearing them out one by one. 

He said it would cost “tens of millions” to fix and rebuild the HSE’s IT system from ‘clean’, back-up data. Even after all systems are cleared, it’s possible that hackers could publish any data they obtained if a ransom is not paid.

He said that the capacity of private hospitals will be used, particularly in oncology, to ensure that patients continued to receive the care they needed.

“The risks increase every day as we progress, it’s having very serious impact on people and has very severe consequences for us,” he said, adding that it would impact the HSE “well throughout this week”. 

When asked whether private information could be published online by the hackers, Reid said “that’s what these organisations set out to do”. 

Everything we’re doing since we became aware of this on Friday is setting out to mitigate that, to rebuild our services, to reassess what has been accessed, what may have been accessed, taking back security – but it’s a really difficult process we’re in.
With reporting by Hayley Halpin

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    Mute onlybuzzinwitcha
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    Sep 14th 2013, 1:52 AM

    DIT – The city is our campus…….HA

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    Mute David O Brien
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    Sep 15th 2013, 2:35 AM

    The Edge studied in DIT. Kevin street for a while – then go a better offer

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    Mute Ciara McArdle
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    Sep 14th 2013, 3:10 PM

    Samuel Beckett did not describe Trinity students as ‘rich and thick.’ He in fact said that in response to a reprimand by the Head Master at Campbell College in Belfast who told him he was teaching “the cream of Ulster.”
    “Yes,” replied Beckett, ‘rich and thick.”

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    Mute Brian
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    Sep 14th 2013, 1:07 AM

    TheDublinJournal.ie

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    Mute Conor McGuinness
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    Sep 14th 2013, 9:06 AM

    Not defending trinners or anything, but Russian-English Dictionaries of Diplomacy have probably been very handy this last week.

    UCD is like Fianna Fáil.. It skilfully combines the rural gombeen with the south Dublin jackeen. Accent and appearance aside they’re pretty much the same thing.

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    Mute Alan Lawlor
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    Sep 14th 2013, 6:17 PM

    “Oh my gawd, Fintan. They have compoiled an article in thejourno which bundles us Trinners with the loikes of UCD. Even worse, they mention the college the girl you met last week was from when you really decided to rough it – was that DCU or DIT?”

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    Mute ThomasFrancisMeagher
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    Sep 14th 2013, 10:27 AM

    A report last year showed that the colleges with the highest % in employment 6 months after graduation were UL & WIT so take that Dublin.

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    Mute Niall McCarthy
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    Sep 14th 2013, 12:24 PM

    Tesco check-out doesn’t count.

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    Mute Liam MacSuibhne
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    Sep 14th 2013, 4:16 PM

    A fact they don’t like to face up to. I went to UL for my degree and did my h.dip in UCD. I was honestly gob smacked at people in Dublin telling what ‘an amazing’ campus UCD has. It is, by comparison with UL, ugly, insufficient and out dated. Also, the standard of lecturing and organisation left a lot to be desired. The academic standard in UL was very competitive, more along the lines of the ethos of the old RTCs, which was a really healthy thing.

    Maybe UL has an advantage as it secured a lot of private funding over the last 25-30 years, especially from Irish-Americans. However, that’s down to their own hard work and genius. No offense to UCD, but it simply doesn’t compare in most facets.

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    Mute Niall McCarthy
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    Sep 14th 2013, 4:31 PM

    TCD 61st in the world, UCD 139th….UL 451-500. Bit you’re right, UL is pretty.

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    Mute Liam MacSuibhne
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    Sep 14th 2013, 4:51 PM

    I’m afraid it’s about more than being pretty, which UL certainly is. UCD focuses hugely, probably disproportionally, on publications of papers and this is one of the core criteria of QS ranking of universities. This was an expressed opinion of a h.dip supervisor from UCD I spoke to a couple of years back. It’s a financial strategy more than an educational aim. And that is the problem with UCD. Maybe that clarifies it somewhat for you. My experience of both was vastly different. All institutions have their problems, but UL seems to have a very clear, structural development alongside very high academic standards. Sorry if it that doesn’t sit well with your assumptions .

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    Mute Niall McCarthy
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    Sep 14th 2013, 5:02 PM

    I spent a year in UL, left because of those much-vaunted standards you speak of. I don’t see how having a staff that focus primarily on the publication of research is a negative, but then again an institution like UL with a local/regional outlook really can’t be compared to national and international institutions like TCD and UCD.

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    Mute Conor
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    Sep 14th 2013, 5:47 PM

    UL and WIT may have higher employment rates at first because they teach fairly specific degrees which can be directly applied to the job market.

    The NUIs and Trin teach broader degrees across a wider spectrum of fields which can’t in many cases be directly applied to the Irish job market. This is why there is a difference.

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    Mute Len Raynor
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    Sep 15th 2013, 12:25 AM

    Source please?

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    Mute Stephen Doyle
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    Sep 14th 2013, 6:32 PM

    Adverts.ie should stick to advertising unwanted sofas and not writing “funny” articles. That was cack

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    Mute Liz Burke
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    Sep 14th 2013, 11:07 AM

    The Ugg Boot winner in BESS in Trinners by a long shot, DBS a mere runner up

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    Mute Producer
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    Sep 14th 2013, 12:15 AM

    In a way we all have a Doctor of something in life, be it a father a mother a hard working grafter, or just even in a simple dog walker.

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    Mute Maria Pearse
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    Sep 14th 2013, 1:27 AM

    What?

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    Mute Pádraig O'hEidhin
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    Sep 14th 2013, 6:53 AM

    A love doctor maybe?

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    Mute Montys Moonshine
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    Sep 14th 2013, 8:21 AM

    Definitely a trinity head

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    Sep 14th 2013, 6:28 PM

    Think your doctor is looking for you, it’s happy pill time

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    Mute Mark
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    Sep 14th 2013, 6:58 PM

    DAFUQ you on about lad?!

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    Sep 14th 2013, 8:44 PM

    Shut your hole

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    Mute John Johnson Kcco
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    Sep 14th 2013, 9:04 AM

    Learnt all I needed to learn in the bestest collage in ireland. Mount Joy.

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    Mute Rob Mackey
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    Sep 14th 2013, 12:28 PM

    bestest ? im dubious bruv

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    Mute Rob Hunt
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    Sep 14th 2013, 2:27 PM

    Also collage.

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    Sep 14th 2013, 7:49 PM

    Mountjoy is one word…

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    Sep 14th 2013, 10:38 PM

    * I learned

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    Mute censored
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    Sep 15th 2013, 2:20 AM

    He’s a collage artiste for chrissake, stop taking him to task on his grammar.

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    Mute Niamh Ní Fhoghlú
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    Sep 14th 2013, 12:42 AM

    NCI – NOT a COMPLETE INSTITUTE

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    Mute Karen NíDhochartaigh
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    Sep 14th 2013, 10:36 AM

    Sounds about right. Just hope its inproved sunce my day

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    Mute Mari Madigan
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    Sep 14th 2013, 10:47 AM

    Conor if only I’d remembered dublin jackeen when I called my brother’s new girlfriend a dublin jackass….haunts me to this day

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    Mute David Gazeley
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    Sep 14th 2013, 9:47 AM

    I am going to ucd and as a lad who lived out in the countryside all my life,it was a big change

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    Mute Rob Hunt
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    Sep 14th 2013, 2:27 PM

    Indoor toilets took a while to get used to?

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    Mute Michal Boleslav Měchura
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    Sep 14th 2013, 1:33 PM

    Since when is Russian “obscure and ultimately useless”!?

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    Mute Luca Costa
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    Sep 14th 2013, 7:34 PM

    Since the 80s

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    Mute Alan Lawlor
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    Sep 15th 2013, 8:51 AM

    Russian: Spoken and used by over 200 million people as a first language
    Irish: As a first language : less than 100, 000

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    Mute Garreth Fitzpatrick-Pothin
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    Sep 14th 2013, 9:16 AM

    I know it isn’t true but when I was younger we used to joke that if you weren’t in an NUI you graduated with a hard-hat, a box of crayons and the keys to a hiace!!! Friendly banter is brilliant!

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    Mute Paddy Reid
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    Sep 14th 2013, 12:49 AM

    Eh…Griffith. Worth a mention? Thanks a bunch :P

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    Mute Rob Hunt
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    Sep 14th 2013, 2:28 PM

    Griffith’s Private, the others on the list aren’t.

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    Mute Conor
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    Sep 14th 2013, 3:31 PM

    Pretty sure Griffith sums up Rich and Thick a lot better than Trinity.

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    Mute Paddy Reid
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    Sep 14th 2013, 5:21 PM

    DBS is private.

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    Mute Neil O'Leary
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    Sep 15th 2013, 1:09 AM

    It was a good while ago when I did the leaving, but that year was the first year DBS were included in the CAO system. Griffith to my knowledge is not. So if that’s still the case, it’s at least part-public, so to speak.

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    Mute Conor
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    Sep 15th 2013, 3:36 AM

    They’re all included on the CAO these says, however no matter what you get you can still but yourself in regardless of points anyways.

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    Mute Conor Bredin
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    Sep 15th 2013, 4:44 AM

    No grá for St Pats? It’s a small college but jaysus Coppers would go out of business if it weren’t for it!

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    Mute Chris Dunne
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    Sep 14th 2013, 5:21 PM

    I srarted in trinity last week as a mature student and I was completely overwhelmed by the place

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    Mute Ping Pong
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    Sep 14th 2013, 2:19 AM

    The towel flickers! South side homos just don’t get it

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    Mute James Keane
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    Sep 15th 2013, 8:30 AM

    The article was both terrible and offensive in equal measure. Consolidates my view never to read these sponsored stories…curiosity got the better of me this time.

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    Mute Jason Weir
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    Sep 15th 2013, 12:17 AM

    dire article cut and paste gone down the jacks

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    Mute Michael Evans
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    Sep 15th 2013, 6:54 AM

    Get a job! Load of bums won’t be ready to start working until they’re 35 years old.

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    Mute nicole
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    Sep 14th 2013, 1:30 AM

    Go IAU – best college in Dublin :)

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    Mute Julie O'Connell
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    Sep 15th 2013, 1:46 AM

    ITB – Forever dodging the clampers!

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    Mute Liz (10) (^_^)
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    Sep 15th 2013, 8:55 PM

    St Patrick’s College Carlow all the way lads. Not much to do in the town though.

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    Mute Keith Gaule
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    Sep 16th 2013, 11:08 AM

    That’s predominantly a priest’s college … Carlow has a pretty big IT, where you won’t find Dub 4 knob-ends guffawing about the “Lass” they ‘snogged’ in Coppers, like .. ya … Also there’s tonnes to do in Carlow town. Did you ever leave the college grounds??

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    Mute Jim Healy
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    Sep 16th 2013, 9:51 AM

    This song probably sums up the NCAD stereotype:

    https://soundcloud.com/bennysmiles/ncad-girl-day-draft-benny

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