Mick Clifford: Sinn Féin's legal actions raise serious questions

Ten days ago in the Dáil the issue of funding for RTÉ came up in Leader’s Questions. Most observers believe that RTÉ, the primary source of news and current affairs on the airwaves, should not be beholden to government in this respect. The dangers of any such model are screamingly obvious.

There was back and forth between Tánaiste Micheal Martin and Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty on the issue. Then Martin has this to say: “Sinn Féin’s instincts in terms of media have been fairly well demonstrated by its very serial suing of media. The number of legal actions that have been filed by Sinn Féin members points to a co-ordinated campaign against the media in Ireland.” Those words, he said, were not his but from a letter signed by fifteen international press freedom organisations which “warned deputy McDonald that a spate of defamation cases being taken by Sinn Féin TDs is having a chilling effect on democracy".

Martin was touching a nerve with Doherty. There has been a series of legal actions by Sinn Féin personnel of late. Not just the media freedom organisation but also judges have commented on the dangers this poses to democracy. 

So it was no surprise when Doherty came back at Martin with the pot, kettle and black defence. 

He mentioned two former Fianna Fáil TDs and a former senator who had sued newspapers. Then he said: “What about Frank O’Rourke who is suing the media? That is just me googling in the last five minutes so do not start this nonsense.”

In reality, the nonsense was the allegation about O’Rourke, a former Fianna Fáil TD who lost his seat in the 2020 election. In the weeks leading up to the election, he had been subjected to a black propaganda campaign, disseminating baseless and damaging allegations about his private life. This was done through leaflet drops in his Kildare constituency and on Facebook. On polling day the material was spread wide through Twitter. The gardaí have investigated the matter and one arrest was made, although as of now no charges have been pressed.

Following the election, O’Rourke did take an action against Twitter and Facebook to identify the account which had spread damaging lies about him. Out of that, a man in west Dublin was identified. The Irish Examiner spoke to him at the time and he said that he wasn’t a member of any party but was very much in favour of parties of the “left” in the last general election. According to the detail uncovered in O’Rourke’s legal action, the Twitter account this man was operating sent offensive tweets from different parts of the country. For instance, the account sent tweets from Limerick, Donegal and Dublin over a period of twenty minutes. The account holder told the Irish Examiner he hadn’t been in Donegal in years and had never been in Limerick. It has never been established how this activity occurred.

That was the kernel of O’Rourke’s legal action against a social media company. He wanted to find out who had organised and executed a campaign of black propaganda to damage his electoral prospects. Then, on February 1 last, after he had apparently moved on from politics, his name gets dragged into a debate in an attempt by the Sinn Féin man to defend his party’s record suing the media. To be fair to Pearse Doherty, his Google first, ask questions later strike has all the hallmarks of a genuine mistake in relation to O’Rourke. But his cavalier use of Dáil privilege was a cheap attempt to explain away the high incidence of actions by his party colleagues.

Some of those legal actions have had worrying features. For instance, on two occasions in recent years Sinn Féin representatives have unsuccessfully sued individual journalists and a third such case is currently live. This is highly unusual. 

A judge in a case taken by former IRA man Gerry Kelly called his action “scandalous, frivolous and vexatious” and identified it as a SLAPP, a strategic legal action against public participation, designed as “an attempt to silence two bothersome journalists with the threat of legal costs".

A prominent Sinn Féin activist in Dublin recently lost a libel action in which he had claimed he was photographed next to a recognisable IRA man who belonged to a “criminal and terrorist” organisation. It’s a description many would agree with but never before has a Sinn Féin member been known to describe the Provos in such terms.

Party leader Mary Lou McDonald is suing RTÉ over comments made on air about the Maria Cahill case. Cahill was sexually abused by an IRA member and subsequently subjected to an internal IRA investigation. The matter has been an embarrassment to Sinn Féin for the last decade. Now, in an election year, presenters and reporters in RTÉ may well, understandably, be cautious about raising the case even if such an inquiry is perceived to be warranted. Is that healthy in a democracy?

Equally, what if Sinn Féin is in government following the next election? McDonald will be suing the national broadcaster and may well be simultaneously considering how RTÉ is funded into the future. 

The spectre of a Sinn Féin government having direct control over RTÉ’s funding would, in the current environment, certainly give rise to serious questions. There is no suggestion that any of these matters formed any part of McDonald’s motive in taking the case, but equally there are a whole range of issues, perceived or possible, that could arise as side effects of her doing so.

All of this stuff may be pure coincidence. Everybody is entitled to assert their good name in whatever way they wish to do so, even when there are choices as to how to go about that. Individuals in Sinn Féin may well have separately and without any consultation or corroboration within the party decided that they would pursue these matters in what is the most punitive manner possible. That is entirely possible, even in an organisation as tightly controlled as the party is.

Other political parties have, at various points, been aggrieved at how they were treated at the hands of the media. Over thirty years ago part of the motivation of the Haughey government in setting up Century Radio was to have an alternative to RTÉ, which Haughey and his associates considered biased against Fianna Fáil. There have been other times when Fine Gael, Labour, the Greens, the Social Democrats have been separately outraged at what they each perceived as unfair treatment. All, however, have long accepted that without a professional media, power goes unaccountable. The jury is out on whether Sinn Féin, at its current stage of evolution, fully accepts this awkward tenet of democracy.