Judge urged to step aside over ‘bias’

A High Court judge who, be- fore being appointed to the bench wrote a magazine ar- ticle uerying the source of funding of Libertas — the lobby group founded by busi-nessman Declan Ganley — has been asked not to deal with any pre-trial matters in Mr Ganley’s defamation ac-tion against RTÉ.

Mr Ganley says a Novem- ber 2008 RTÉ Prime Time programme defamed him in using words or innuendo which, he alleges, meant he had links to organised crime; had falsely claimed to be a paid adviser to the Latvian government; was somehow involved in the death of a man with whom he had a close business relationship; caused a fund to lose the life savings of thousands of Al- banian pensioners’ and was covertly working for the US Central Intelligence Agency and/or “an ill-defined group known as neocons”.

RTÉ denies defamation or that the words complained of meant what Mr Ganley alleges. The broadcaster has also pleaded truth or justifi-cation and that the “sting” of the words, taken as a whole, was that Mr Ganley had a endency to make false or exaggerated claims in respect of business or other matters.