{"id":566530,"date":"2026-07-03T07:13:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/566530\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T07:13:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T07:13:12","slug":"social-democrats-td-daniel-ennis-sues-campaigner-nick-delehanty-over-social-media-posts-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/566530\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Democrats TD Daniel Ennis sues campaigner Nick Delehanty over social media posts \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Social Democrats<\/a> TD Daniel Ennis<\/a> is suing an online campaigner he claims attempted to smear him in advance of the Dublin Central byelection<\/a> in May.<\/p>\n

Ennis, who won the D\u00e1il<\/a> seat, initiated High Court<\/a> proceedings against Nick Delehanty on Wednesday. He is being represented by Terence F Casey and Co Solicitors.<\/p>\n

In a letter sent to Delehanty in May, Ennis\u2019s solicitor Dan O\u2019Connor accused the activist of sharing a \u201cstring of malicious and grossly defamatory posts\u201d on X (formerly Twitter) that month.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have directly sought to damage our client\u2019s reputation through baseless innuendo of wrongdoing,\u201d the solicitor wrote.<\/p>\n

Delehanty has denied defaming Ennis. <\/p>\n

The May letter included details of a number of posts Delehanty shared on X related to Ennis.<\/p>\n

Some of the posts sought to link Ennis with an individual who Delehanty claimed acts as a director of several companies providing accommodation to asylum seekers<\/a>. Another post claimed Ennis was \u201cat fault\u201d for not disclosing his position as secretary of a company when elected as a Dublin city councillor in June 2024. This assertion was a \u201cfalsehood\u201d as Ennis was not required to do so, the letter said.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor said Delehanty\u2019s posts suggested Ennis behaved unethically, which he described as a \u201cslur\u201d and \u201cfalse and untrue and clearly defamatory\u201d.<\/p>\n

The letter said the posts were \u201cclearly designed to cause maximum reputational damage\u201d in the lead-up to the byelection on May 22nd.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor said Ennis was requesting \u201ca full and unequivocal apology\u201d and \u201cwritten undertakings that the allegations will not be repeated\u201d. <\/p>\n

The letter concluded: \u201cIf you do not agree to the above, our instructions are to issue High Court proceedings against you for defamation and necessary Injunctive reliefs without further notice or correspondence and we shall use this correspondence to ground our application for the costs of same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Delehanty on Thursday said he \u201cwas not expecting proceedings to issue\u201d and was taking legal advice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI deny defaming Mr Ennis and will be defending the proceedings,\u201d he said in a statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy commentary concerned public records, company filings and matters of public interest relating to a candidate for elected office.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Irish Times has contacted Ennis and the Social Democrats for comment.<\/p>\n

Ennis became the party\u2019s 12th TD in May, securing the seat vacated by former minister for finance Paschal Donohoe.<\/p>\n

Before entering politics, Ennis was best known for his football career<\/a>, during which he played for League of Ireland sides Bohemians, Shelbourne and Bray Wanderers.<\/p>\n

Delehanty, a critic of multiculturalism, unsuccessfully tried to get on the ballot for last year\u2019s presidential election<\/a> and has previously run in local and general elections. He is a former solicitor and currently runs a day care service for dogs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Social Democrats TD Daniel Ennis is suing an online campaigner he claims attempted to smear him in advance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":566531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,4767,211641,106968,18,13,14,6,10476,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,18578,7,8],"class_list":["post-566530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-dail-eireann","tag-daniel-ennis","tag-dublin-central-constituency","tag-eire","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-headlines","tag-high-court","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-news","tag-social-democrats","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116854810617228140","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566530","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=566530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}