Dating back to 1892, the archives of the Southern Star newspaper can now be searched and viewed free of charge via the paper's website at www.southernstar.ie. Just click the link next to the Star logo.
The archives are held at www.irishnewsarchive.com which offers a variety of subscriptions to view historical papers from across the country. It's well worth a look.
I was lead to believe that the Southern Star archive collection was viewable, free, via the host site, but this didn't turn out to be the case. The only free route I found was direct from the newspaper's header. This may have been caused by a temporary problem. I've contacted the Irish Newspaper Archives; if there's any update on this, I'll make a note here.