Irish Examiner defamation case: Journalist tells court he based articles about Planning Institute on EY report

Former IPI executive director Orla Purcell claims that allegations about her in EY report were presented as fact in the two articles, and that they damaged her reputation

Irish Examiner editor John O'Mahony and journalist Mick Clifford leaving the Four Courts on Tuesday's hearing in the defamation case brought by former IPI executive director Orla Purcell. Picture: Collins Courts

A senior Irish Examiner journalist has said the basis for two news articles he wrote about the Irish Planning Institute had been details contained in a confidential report compiled by a major consultancy firm.

Mick Clifford told a High Court defamation action that he had written the two pieces after hearing “on the grapevine” that there were issues within the institute — the representative body for planners in Ireland — and after coming into possession of the confidential report, compiled by EY, which had been commissioned to investigate certain matters which had arisen at the IPI.

He described EY as “one of the top consultants in the country”. 

“They do all sorts of consultative work in industry, in finance,” he said.

The defamation action against the Irish Examiner has been taken by former executive director of the IPI Orla Purcell, who claims that allegations made about her in the EY report were presented as fact in the two published articles and that they damaged her reputation.

The Irish Examiner has denied the allegations, and claims the articles were published in the public interest and comprised fair and reasonable publication.

Mr Clifford, who has worked in journalism for 32 years but is also a trained civil engineer, said he had been writing about planning and housing in Ireland for several years, and that the IPI story was a natural one for him to do given it concerned the structures of planning and given that the shortage of housing is the greatest issue currently facing the State.

He described the two stories, detailing issues in the IPI at the time together with several allegations against Ms Purcell made in the report and found by EY to have been both substantiated and unsubstantiated, as “what we call public interest journalism”.

“Let’s face it, it’s not the kind of thing that would sell a pile of newspapers,” he told counsel for the defence Brendan Kirwan SC.

Journalism in 'public interest' 

“That might sound high-minded,” he said. “But on a basic level, the function that media has in any democracy is to hold power to account and to put out into the public domain that which is public interest.”

Of the plaintiff, Mr Clifford said: “I have no ill-will towards Ms Purcell whatsoever.”

Asked by counsel for Ms Purcell, Mark Harty SC, if he agreed that a number of texts sent to him by Ms Purcell in the aftermath of the articles’ publication in January 2023 were “pathetic” or those “of someone in distress, desperate”, Mr Clifford said: “No, I think that’s unfair”.

Ms Purcell's side of the story was sought before publication

“They were angry,” he said. “Confused is the word I would use. 

"I had asked for her side of the story [before publication] and was told it wouldn’t be forthcoming… I didn’t pay an awful lot of attention to them after that.”

Asked by Mr Kirwan on what basis he had detailed certain allegations against Ms Purcell, including that she had altered a press release signed off on by the then president of the IPI Conor Norton without his knowledge and that she had attempted to create a false narrative of a membership unhappy with Mr Norton’s performance, Mr Clifford said in each case that he had written what was in the EY report. He said: 

It was a report run by a very reputable firm at arm's length from the IPI. That to me suggested a process that was scrupulously fair. 

He said that he would have found the idea that EY “would have engaged in something underhand” — Ms Purcell having previously alleged that the report was influenced from within the IPI itself — as “difficult to fathom”.

“Absolutely I reported accurately. And if it was tomorrow, I’d report the same thing,” he said. 

“If you’re saying to me that because it upset Ms Purcell, and I can understand why, therefore it should not be put out there, I don’t accept that,” he told Mr Harty.

“I tend to focus on being fair. If there is one thing that keeps me awake at night it is if I was scrupulously fair or not to anybody I may have reported on,” he said.

EY forensic accountant 'not aware' of attempts to influence report

The court later heard from Simon Rattigan, a former forensic accountant with EY who managed — but did not personally conduct — the investigation into the IPI.

Asked — as alleged by Ms Purcell — if the IPI’s oversight committee had “improperly influenced” the findings by EY, Mr Rattigan replied: “I don’t know what that means, but I’m not aware of any attempts by anyone to influence” the report.

Mr Rattigan said that, in his opinion, the report seen by Mr Clifford was a final one, not a preliminary draft, adding that EY “were the only ones who came up with the findings”.