A SINN Féin local election candidate is to seek a High Court injunction restraining Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea from slandering or making any defamatory comments against his character.
Limerick-city based Maurice Quinlivan claims he was defamed and suffered damage to his reputation in comments made by the Minister in a newspaper interview published on March 10th last, linking him to an apartment at Clancy Strand, Limerick, which gardaí found was being used as a brothel.
Mr Quinlivan (42) has strongly denied he has any interest with the apartment. While it is accepted the apartment was owned by his brother, he says his family has no knowledge or involvement with any illegal activity that occurred there.
Mr Quinlivan, who is Sinn Féin’s joint national treasurer and a local election candidate in Limerick’s north ward, has brought an action seeking damages against the Minister.
He is also seeking an injunction under a 1923 Electoral Act restraining the Minister from making false statements about Mr Quinlivan’s personal conduct and character and restraining the Minister from repeating comments, which, it is claimed, are made with intent to slander, similar to those made in an interview with a Limerick newspaper.
Yesterday, at the High Court, Mr Justice John Edwards refused to grant Mr Quinlivan an interim injunction against the Minister.
The court heard from Michael Fitzgibbon, for the Minister, that his client need time to prepare a replying affidavit. Mr Fitzgibbon said Mr O’Dea, who was not prepared to give any undertakings to court in the interim, intended to file “a full defence” to the action.
Séamus Ó Tuathail, for Mr Quinlivan, said the case was urgent due to the proximity of the local elections in June. The judge, who acknowledged the urgency and the importance, agreed to adjourn until next week to allow the Minister to submit a replying affidavit.
Next week the court will hear Mr Quinlivan’s application for an interlocutory injunction preventing the Minister from making alleged defamatory comments until the full action is determined.
In an affidavit, Mr Quinlivan said that earlier this year, he criticised Mr O’Dea for what he claimed was abusing the privileges of his office by having civil servants engage in his constituency work at huge expense to the taxpayer.
This was after Mr O’Dea confirmed in a parliamentary reply to Sinn Féin’s Arthur Morgan that he had six civil servants working on constituency matters at a cost of between €165,000 and €225,000 a year.
Mr Quinlivan criticised the Minister over unsolicited correspondence, to a Limerick resident making a planning application, on Department of Defence-headed paper.
In his response, published in the Limerick Chronicle, the Minister said Sinn Féin was “running a big campaign. The money from the Northern Bank must be stretching fairly far. Quote me on that. While occasionally we send out letters to planning applicants on the wrong paper, we have never been involved with anyone who shot anybody or robbed banks or kidnapped people.”
The Minister is then quoted as saying: “I suppose I’m going a bit too far when I say this, but I’d like to ask Mr Quinlivan is the brothel still closed?” Mr O’Dea was referring to a case heard last January where three women were found to be running a brothel from an apartment owned by Mr Quinlivan’s brother, Brixton prison escapee Nessan Quinlivan.