Mr Patrick Kelly and The Irish Times

The Press Ombudsman has decided The Irish Times took sufficient remedial action to resolve a complaint made by Mr Patrick Kelly that an article published on 25 June breached Principles 1 (Truth and Accuracy) and 7 (Court Reporting) of the Code of Practice for Newspapers and Magazines.

The article in question was a synopsis of a High Court Judgment involving Mr Kelly.   Mr Kelly complained that

1.    the Court of Justice of the European Union did not ”rule against him”, as stated in the headline;

2.    an undertaking he gave in the High Court  was not an undertaking “not to make further interlocutory applications”, as reported in the article;

3.    his application for the recusal of a High Court Judge was not based on  an earlier comment made by the Judge,  but on a great deal more than that;  

4.    he had not sought to have three questions (later increased to five) concerning his entitlement to the information referred to the European Court of Justice for ruling”, as reported,  but had sought to have four questions referred, that UCD had sought and obtained the referral of a fifth, and that not all of the five questions referred concerned entitlement to the information on the qualification of other applicants; and

5.    opinions expressed by the High Court Judge which were reported in the article were obiter dicta but were not identified as such in the article.

The newspaper responded that the article under complaint was published in the newspaper’s “Law Matters” page and was only a relatively short synopsis of the judgment, with a reference to the Courts Services website at the end where the entire judgment is available.  For this reason, it said, there would always be detail in the judgment that was not contained in the synopsis.   It offered to edit its online edition to replace the headline complained about by Mr Kelly, and offered to publish a clarification in its print and online editions drawing readers’ attention to Mr Kelly’s assertion in relation to the headline. It also corrected the online article in relation to the three other alleged inaccuracies complained about by Mr Kelly, and offered to amend its online edition to detail the nature of the four questions referred to the European Court of Justice by him.

The action that the newspaper undertook, and the further action it offered to take, were not acceptable to the complainant.

The newspaper’s response to Mr Kelly’s complaint, in the opinion of the Press Ombudsman, amounted to sufficient remedial action on its part to resolve the alleged inaccuracies numbered 1, 2 and 3 under Principles 1 and 7 of the Code of Practice.

Mr Kelly’s complaints numbered 4 and 5, although they involved minor factual errors or omissions that annoyed him, were not significant enough to justify a decision that they amounted to a breach of the Code of Practice and the complaint about these is not upheld.   

14 August 2012

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