Labour leader Ivana Bacik has defended her party sending legal warnings to several newspapers warning them against publishing an article about a party adviser.
The Sunday Independent reported last week that it received a warning from the party after it sought comment about an anonymous letter sent to Labour about Dermot Ryan. Mr Ryan is a close political ally of Ms Bacik.
Ms Bacik later spoke at an Anti-SLAPPs Conference in Trinity College on Thursday. A SLAPP is a “strategic lawsuit against public participation”. They are typically used in a bid to prevent people from publishing information and are often seen as a “warning”.
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Ms Bacik previously criticised the use of defamation cases by Sinn Féin and Mary Lou McDonald saying that it “concerns me somewhat to see extensive use of the defamation laws by elected representatives”.
When asked on the first evening of her party’s three day conference if speaking at the SLAPP event was not the “ultimate act of hypocrisy”, Ms Bacik said that there was “no suggestion at that conference, that there should be no libel law”.
She said: “In terms of letters, I don't engage with anonymous, untrue and defamatory alleged letters.”
When asked if she believed that issuing legal warnings had a “chilling effect”, Ms Bacik argued that it “didn’t seem to chill” the publications that published information about the letter.
She continued: “I think it's very valid for any political party to take issue with journalists who seek to rely entirely on an anonymous and anonymous alleged letter, but also untrue and it is defamatory.
“I think it's perfectly acceptable for a political party to take action.”
The three-day conference in Cork will debate 86 motions in total, with a strong focus on housing ahead of Labour’s motion of no confidence in the Government next week.
One motion says that the party’s role in the 2011 to 2016 Government “saved the State from financial disaster and serious social and industrial unrest” and that this should be acknowledged during future election campaigns.
When asked by the Irish Mirror if this motion was “delusional” given the fact that Labour lost 26 seats for its role in the austerity Government, Ms Bacik would not say if she agreed with the motion.
However, she argued that when Labour “left office more than seven years ago the country was back in a position of prosperity” after bankruptcy.
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