THE TREATMENT of Libertas founder Declan Ganley by the media raises “very fundamental questions” about Irish journalism, Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche has said.
Mr Roche said that, notwithstanding the work of two journalists – Colm Keena of The Irish Timesand RTÉ's Katie Hannon – Mr Ganley's background in business was not "properly probed".
The Libertas leader has said that he will not be involved in a second campaign against the Lisbon Treaty.
“He suckered a lot of senior journalists all over this country,” Mr Roche said. “All you have to do is look at the simple improbability of his biography and at the suggestions that he was, at 20, 22 years of age, running the largest forestry operation in the former Soviet Union. You just have to look at any of these so-called facts and you could begin to ask serious questions.”
Mr Roche also asked what had happened to the funds Libertas had collected over the past year.
A Libertas spokesman said: “I have never known anybody in politics who doesn’t think that the other side is getting off too easily from the media, which probably implies to me that they [journalists] do a reasonably good job.
“Anybody who thinks that Declan got fair or positive treatment from the media for the last six months to a year is just deluding themselves, and that’s really not a first for Dick Roche.”
He said Libertas did not expect to have funds left over once its campaign bills were paid. He added that Mr Roche was a senior member of Fianna Fáil in the mid-1990s when Mr Ganley donated $25,000 to the party, “and his background was never of concern to Dick then”.
