Mr Concubhar Ó Liatháin and the Limerick Leader

The Press Ombudsman has decided that the Limerick Leader made an offer of sufficient remedial action to resolve a complaint by Mr Concubhar Ó Liatháin that an article published on 23 February 2014 was in breach of Principle 1 (Truth and Accuracy) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

The article was published following a protest march in Dublin by people who were concerned about the lack of State services in the Irish language, and about the recent resignation of the Irish Language Commissioner in relation to the same issue. It concentrated its criticisms on what it said were privileges and facilities that it believed were available to “Irish language communities”.  

Mr Ó Liatháin complained that the article,   entitled “Opinion: Our next storm is coming from the Gaeltacht”, was in breach of Principle 1 because, he said, it was based on prejudice rather than on hard facts.  He referred to one statement in particular - that there were special housing grants for Gaeltacht dwellers – which he said was inaccurate because these grants were no longer available, and said that other statements were inaccurate because they failed to make clear that grants and other privileges the article said or implied were available only to Irish language communities were also available to people living elsewhere. The complainant sought a right of reply to the article, but declined to accept an offer to consider a letter for publication.  

The newspaper maintained that the article had been the expression of its writer’s views on the Irish language, and quoted from the Údarás na Gaeltachta website in support of its contention that special industrial grants were available in the Gaeltacht.  It said that there had been a strong reaction to the column, and that it had published several letters critical of it in the weeks following publication.   It did not, however, offer any evidence to controvert the complainant’s assertion that special housing grants were no longer available in the Gaeltacht.

The Press Ombudsman decided that the statement about Gaeltacht housing grants, even if  inaccurate, was not, of itself, a sufficiently significant error to warrant a decision that the article was in breach of Principle 1 of the Code.   He also decided that the offer of a continuation of the debate in the letters column of the newspaper concerned was sufficient to resolve the complaints about other aspects of the article

16 May 2014

The complainant appealed the decision of the Press Ombudsman to the Press Council of Ireland.