Ms Humphreys made the comments during a debate on RT\u00c9 Radio on Sunday, referring to an incident in Jobstown in 2014 involving former Labour Party leader Joan Burton.<\/p>\n
In 2017, Mr Murphy was found not guilty of false imprisonment of Ms Burton.<\/p>\n
Mr Murphy\u2019s solicitors formally sent a legal letter to Ms Humphreys on Monday evening, saying the TD intends to issue defamation proceedings in the High Court within seven days if the remarks are not withdrawn.<\/p>\n
The letter called on Ms Humphreys to withdraw the remarks, and apologise to Mr Murphy. It also calls on the Fine Gael candidate to meet Mr Murphy\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n
In the letter, Mr Murphy\u2019s legal team said Ms Humphreys had accused him of engaging in \u201cviolent criminal conduct\u201d, that he had committed \u201can act of gender-based violence\u201d and that he was a \u201cmisogynist\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr Murphy\u2019s solicitors added Ms Humphreys’ comments were \u201cgrossly defamatory\u201d and he had \u201csuffered in his character and reputation\u201d.<\/p>\n
The letter adds Mr Murphy had been exposed to \u201codium, ridicule, and contempt\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked if she would be withdrawing and apologising for the remarks, Ms Humphreys said she had not yet seen the legal letter from Mr Murphy\u2019s solicitors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat can I say only, you know, I remember looking at the videos of that particular incident where two women were trapped in their car. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll I can say is that, well, Paul Murphy wasn’t sitting at home watching television that day.\u201d<\/p>\n
In response, Mr Murphy said her latest remarks were correct, but this was not what she said during the radio debate on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, that isn\u2019t what she said. What she said was an out and out lie,\u201d Mr Murphy said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe repeated it when the RT\u00c9 presenter David McCullough was then trying to ensure that RT\u00c9 had no liability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t think that you can go around lying about people, defaming people as part of a smear campaign against Catherine Connolly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Murphy said it was \u201cnot acceptable that people just feel free to tell blatant lies in opposition to what a jury found as part of an attempt to smear somebody else\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked if he expected to be in the High Court beginning defamation proceedings next week, Mr Murphy said he hoped Ms Humphreys would apologise, commit to not do it again and make appropriate compensation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ms Humphreys made the comments during a debate on RT\u00c9 Radio on Sunday, referring to an incident in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":121875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,70374,74256,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-121874","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-person-heather-humphreys","22":"tag-person-paul-murphy","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}