The Sunday Business Post has apologised to Judge Patrick McCartan at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court over an article on March 19th last which caused the abandonment of a scheduled criminal trial.
Mr Seamus O Tuathail, on behalf of the Sunday Business Post, told Judge McCartan his clients had no prior knowledge that the trial of a man on an alleged fraud matter had been scheduled to start last Monday. If they had been so aware, the article would not have been published. Mr O Tuathail said the paper would make an ex-gratia payment of £2,500 to Victim Support without admission of liability.
Judge McCartan, who had directed earlier this week that both the paper's editor, Mr Damien Kiberd, and its crime correspondent, Mr Barry O'Kelly, should attend the court, accepted the explanation offered as well as the proposed payment to Victim Support.
The article noted that a man due to go on trial for a fraud-related matter earlier this week was currently serving a sentence for a similar matter and contained other alleged information on him.
When the trial was called before Judge McCartan, Mr Barry White SC, defending, revealed the contents of the Sunday Business Post article to the court. Consequently, the trial was not proceeded with and it will be allocated a new date later in the year.
Judge McCartan commented on what he called the "gratuitous reference" to the accused man in the abandoned trial in an article which appeared to have been well-researched and dealt with activities by people in a foreign jurisdiction.
The judge said he found it difficult to accept that no research had been done to ascertain if the accused in the proposed trial had other matters pending. The prosecution had 28 witnesses in court for the aborted hearing and the accused man now had to wait many more months for his trial.
Mr O Tuathail earlier told Judge McCartan that publication of the article was "an unfortunate conjunction of events". He agreed the material contained in it was "highly prejudicial" to the accused man but neither Mr O'Kelly nor Mr Kiberd had prior knowledge of the pending trial.
Counsel said Mr O'Kelly had spoken to a number of gardai in researching the article but had not been alerted to the trial. He was aware that the accused had been recently jailed for five years. "We ask the court to accept our bona fides in this matter. What happened was entirely unintentional and coincidental. It was not deliberate," he said.