€100k settlements for Higgins and Yates

FINE GAEL MEP Jim Higgins and former Fine Gael Minister for Agriculture Ivan Yates have secured €100,000 each, plus their legal costs and an apology, in settlement of their libel action over two articles in the Sunday Independent newspaper.

Mr Higgins and Mr Yates had complained the articles, published in 2004, had defamed them by publishing untrue allegations by a man styling himself Kevin Fulton, a man referred to by the newspaper as a “rogue former spy”, which meant or was understood to mean the two men were British MI5 agents who had colluded with the IRA in a multi-million pound EU milk fraud.

They claimed the newspaper knew well, at the time of publication, that the allegations were false.