THE Director of Public Prosecutions has decided not to bring charges against a journalist, Ellen Synon, for incitement to hatred against the travelling community.
A travellers' group had sought action against Ms Synon under the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 for an article published by the Sunday Independent last January.
The group, Pavee Point (formerly the Dublin Travellers' Education and Development Group), says it is disappointed at the decision and has called for new legislation.
Ms Synon said last night that Pavee Point wanted her prosecuted even though the Garda and the DPP both said there was no evidence of any kind that she had broken any law. This, she said, says more about Pavee Point than it does about me".
Ms Synon's article, headed "Time To Get Tough On Tinker Terror Culture", described the traveller life as "a life of appetite ungoverned by intellect".
"It is a life worse than the life of beasts, for beasts at least are guided by wholesome instinct," she wrote. "Traveller life is without the ennobling intellect of man or the steadying instinct of animals.
In a letter to Mr John O'Connell of Pavee Point, Mr Barry Donoghue, legal assistant at the office of the DPP, writes that "the Garda investigation file has been received in this office and following a consideration of same a decision has now been made that there should be no prosecution in this matter".
The letter, in keeping with the practice of the DPP, offers no reason for the decision.
"This is proof of the ineffectiveness of the Incitement to Hatred Act," said Ms Ronnie Fay, of Pavee Point. "If that isn't valid under the Act, what is? There has never been a successful case since 1989 because you have to prove intent. What it really highlights is the need for strong equal status legislation.
Ms Synon's article was written at a time of public concern over attacks on rural elderly people, and the murder of a 68 year old Co Galway farmer, Mr Tommy Casey. This was one of three murders that occurred at about the same time. The others were those of a Co Kildare woman, Mrs Joyce Quinn, and a Co Kerry farmer, Mr Patrick Daly.
Gardai questioned some members of the travelling community in relation to the death of Mr Casey. Charges were subsequently brought in relation to the deaths of Mrs Quinn and Mr Daly. None of those charged was from the travelling community. Two travellers were charged in relation to a burglary at Mr Casey's home but no one has been charged with his murder.
Ms Synon has been a controversial figure since she wrote a series of articles for The Irish Times in 1989 in the first of which she attacked the "carrying on of the Irish Anti Apartheid Movement", stated that "Ireland ought to stay; quiet" about apartheid and declared that "apartheid is merely the Afrikaans word for partition".
She was in the headlines internationally last year when the deputy governor of the Bank of England, Mr Rupert Pennant Rea, resigned after Ms Synon revealed that she had been having an affair with the banker. She is the daughter of an American journalist and studied fine art at Trinity College Dublin.