Wicklow defamation case centres on purchase of €3m site

Two members of Wicklow County Council have alleged they were defamed by county manager Eddie Sheehy, in a row over the council’s purchase of a €3 million housing site at Charlesland, near Greystones.

In the first day of a defamation action, councillor Barry Nevin yesterday told Wicklow Circuit Court that a number of councillors had concerns about buying the site in 2011 because of allegations that it was land-locked and prone to flooding and that there was a dispute over title to the land.

But, he said, the county management had already conferred a compulsory purchase order on the site, and the legal advice was that the deal must go ahead as it was enforceable by the vendors. A majority of councillors approved the executive raising a loan from the Housing Finance Agency to fund the deal.

Mr Nevin told his counsel, Colm P Conlon SC, that he and councillors Tommy Cullen and James O’Shaughnessy were not satisfied with information they received from the management, particularly after they discovered the management was aware of “a second valuation” of the site amounting to €697,000.

Mr Nevin said he and his two fellow councillors complained to Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, and a number of Wicklow TDs raised the issue at the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee.

Shocked
Mr Hogan appointed Seamus Woulfe SC to investigate the deal. Mr Nevin acknowledged Mr Woulfe found "almost all" of the concerns were "not well-founded or are misconceived". But Mr Nevin said he was "shocked" when the county manager issued a press release, in April 2013, claiming in effect that the complaint from the three councillors had caused a delay in the land deal, which, together with the investigation, had cost the council €200,000. Mr Nevin said he believed material was presented in this way to give "ammunition" to his political opponents and that he was jeered about it at council meetings.

He agreed with Mr Condon that the press release had attributed the cost to “unfounded and misconceived allegations of Councillors Cullen, Nevin and O’Shaughnessy”.

Mr Nevin said he had a duty to seek full transparency on borrowings, but given that the press release was broadcast on local radio and published on wicklownews.net and in the Wicklow People, he felt he was being held up as someone who had wasted council money and was not fit to represent his constituents

'Get it on'
Mr Nevin and Mr Cullen initiated legal proceedings. Mr Nevin said at a subsequent council meeting Mr Sheehy had asserted that "every single word [of the press release] is true". He said Mr Sheehy acknowledged that he wrote the press release and told councillors if they wished to pursue him for alleged defamation, "what I would say to you is, get it on".

In cross examination Luan O’Braonain SC for Wicklow County Council put it to Mr Nevin that the councillors involved had written a confidential letter to Mr Hogan, but had not seen fit to send that letter containing their concerns to the county manager. Mr Nevin replied that he had lost confidence in the manager.

Mr O’Braonain told Judge Thomas E O’Donnell the issue of whether the councillors were fit to represent their constituents was one for the electorate to decide. But he said he would argue a defence of truth; a defence of qualified privilege in that the manager had a duty to report to the public; and thirdly he would present a defence of honest opinion.

The judge undertook to read Mr Woulfe’s findings overnight. Mr Nevin’s crossexamination is to continue this morning at 10am.