{"id":228877,"date":"2025-12-12T08:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/228877\/"},"modified":"2025-12-12T08:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T08:09:08","slug":"former-politician-ordered-to-pay-e50000-damages-for-defaming-sinn-fein-councillor-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/228877\/","title":{"rendered":"Former politician ordered to pay \u20ac50,000 damages for defaming Sinn F\u00e9in councillor \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 51-year-old former Navan<\/a> councillor has been ordered to pay \u20ac50,000 damages after falsely claiming a Sinn F\u00e9in councillor had threatened to arrange a punishment beating.<\/p>\n

Eddie Fennessy, Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> councillor for Meath County Council<\/a>, took legal action against former independent councillor Wayne Forde, of Parnell Park, Navan, at Trim Circuit Court.<\/p>\n

In making the award against Mr Forde, Judge Mary O\u2019Malley Costello said the case was \u201cat the highest level of defamation\u201d. <\/p>\n

Barrister David Lennon, instructed by Cosgrave solicitors, for Mr Fennessy, said certain allegations were posted by Mr Forde on Facebook and Tik Tok around the time of last year\u2019s local elections. He said the most serious of these claimed Mr Fennessy had threatened to arrange a \u201cpunishment beating of the defendant by his IRA comrades and the petrol bombing of his home\u201d. <\/p>\n

Mr Lennon said the defendant accepted he made the posts but he challenged the interpreted meaning of those posts and made a \u201csomewhat unclear\u201d challenge whether or not he identified Mr Fennessy in the posts.<\/p>\n

Mr Fennessy said in evidence that he had been engaged in politics since he was aged 11 and was co-opted to Meath County Council in 2018. It was alleged, and it was accepted by Mr Forde, that in a post of November 2023 he had said that he \u201ccould see why EF is getting a bit of a belly after getting \u20ac50,000 and \u20ac7,500 as Mayor. Nice, nearly \u20ac60,000, over \u20ac1,500 a week\u201d. In fact, Mr Fennessy earned \u20ac42,000. He took those remarks as an attempt to try to damage his election campaign.<\/p>\n

Mr Fennessy said in the witness box that he had never said anything about a \u201cpunishment beating\u201d to Mr Forde. <\/p>\n

He described as \u201cpreposterous\u201d any suggestion that he might be responsible for organising punishment beatings. He said it was \u201ceasy pickings\u201d because there was a history that might have been there 40-50 years ago but it was certainly not in the history of the Sinn F\u00e9in party he joined in 2004\/2005. <\/p>\n

He said these allegations had an effect on his family. His wife in particular would meet people on the street and they would mention them to her. <\/p>\n

Mr Forde, who represented himself, said in evidence that Mr Fennessy had threatened and intimidated him and left him \u201cpetrified\u201d. He said he had put up on Facebook about Mr Fennessy\u2019s wages \u201cbut I never mentioned his name\u201d. He said he was claiming the publications were true and he did not believe they were in any way damaging to Mr Fennessy. <\/p>\n

The judge said the publication of incorrect figures of Mr Fennessy\u2019s council salary would not attract a huge amount of compensation and that might have arisen through misunderstanding. However, all the other matters were very serious and they were going to have very serious consequences for both parties involved, she said.<\/p>\n

There is no question but that Mr Fennessy was an upstanding member of the public, she said. <\/p>\n

She found there was no truth in the allegation that he might have links to an illegal organisation and there was no truth in the allegation that he threatened to have anyone be subjected to a punishment beating. <\/p>\n

She told Mr Forde he was \u201csomewhat of a fantasist\u201d. <\/p>\n

The judge made an order directing Mr Forde to pay \u20ac50,000 damages to Mr Fennessy for defaming him. She also made an order restraining Mr Forde from defaming or disparaging Mr Fennessy in any way whatsoever in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 51-year-old former Navan councillor has been ordered to pay \u20ac50,000 damages after falsely claiming a Sinn F\u00e9in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,1873,53062,64812,5,47,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-228877","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","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-meath","21":"tag-meath-county-council","22":"tag-navan","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-sinn-fein","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115705581739783789","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228877","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=228877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}