Journalist 'quite certain' John Waters was referring to Kitty Holland in speech, defamation trial hears

'Irish Times' reporter Kitty Holland is  suing Mr Waters for up to €75,000 damages for defamation of character

John Waters arriving at the Four Courts. Picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie

Journalist Justine McCarthy told a judge on Thursday that as soon as she heard John Waters’s alleged defamatory speech at a political conference in 2017 about the death of Savita Halappanavar, she was quite certain he was referring to Irish Times reporter Kitty Holland.

Ms Holland is suing Mr Waters for up to €75,000 damages for defamation of character. 

She claims that, although not specifically naming her in an address to a Renua Ireland conference, he was referring to her when he allegedly accused a journalist of lying.

Ms McCarthy, a former Sunday Times journalist who is now a columnist with the Irish Times, told Judge John O’Connor she had been tipped off about Mr Waters’s address to the conference and watched it on Facebook. 

She told barrister Shane English, counsel for Ms Holland, that her initial reaction was that the journalist was Kitty Holland.

“Once I heard the words I was quite certain it was a reference to Ms Holland who had just won Journalist of the Year,” Ms McCarthy said. 

She said she had contacted Ms Holland who later confirmed she was suing Mr Waters for libel.

Ms McCarthy said every journalist in Dublin had associated Kitty Holland with the Savita Halappanavar story.

The Circuit Civil Court has already heard that Ms Holland, by suing him, was calling Mr Waters, an unemployed journalist of Sandycove, Dublin, “a bare-faced liar”. 

'Irish Times' journalist Kitty Holland is suing Mr Waters for up to €75,000 damages for defamation of character. File picture: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie

Ms Holland, a journalist of almost 30 years, of Ranelagh, Dublin, told Feargal Kavanagh, counsel for Mr Waters, that she did not accept his explanation in a letter to her solicitors that he had been expressing his honestly-held beliefs.

She described the letter, which runs to more than 100 pages, as “quite an assault… on me and the Irish Times”. 

Andrew Walker, senior counsel, who appeared with Mr English and Lavelle Solicitors for Ms Holland, told Judge O’Connor that Mr Kavanagh, in opening several pages of the letter to the court, had not referred to its penultimate sentence which stated: “… in the event that it goes to a full hearing… I will take the opportunity offered to demonstrate how, with the carefully-orchestrated assistance of the Irish Times, the unforeseeable, appalling and saddening death of a young Indian woman in 2012 was cynically used to assist in the nefarious enterprise of bringing abortion into Ireland six years later”. 

Ms Holland spent more than three hours under cross-examination by Mr Kavanagh, who appeared with barristers Greg Murphy, Conor Rubaclava, and Brendan Maloney, solicitors for Mr Waters.

The trial, set down for four days, will resume on Monday morning.