Some questions about Monica Leech

1. The court has found Monica Leech was not libelled by an Evening Herald article which said she travelled to New York with a ministerial delegation and did not attend the UN. So, what was she doing there and how much did it cost the taxpayer?

2. You get a quarter of a million for a lost limb from the personal injuries board. What lunatics rate a married woman's virtue as worth nearly ten lost limbs?

3. Monica Leech was hired in a process found to be flawed and wrong in which no one else was allowed to apply for the position, was paid well in excess of going rates, and has not been replaced in her role since departing her job with the minister. Since then, she has worked on the Higher Education Authority - a ministerial appointment - despite having little knowledge of that sector. Given that the articles did not make any reference to any affair, how is it possible for a victim of an alleged libel to completely make up such an allegation and attribute its meaning to a series of articles that clearly and overtly describe cronyism?

4. Monica Leech said during the trial that the articles 'only got her name right' and afterwards that the Evening Herald 'made up a story'. Since the court has found that their article was true, what story does Monica Leech believe they made up?

5. When are Ireland's creaking libel laws going to be overhauled, and when are caps going to be put on libel damages?

Leech by name

Let us once again indulge that rare suspicion that there may indeed be a benign deity in this universe.

PR Puffmistress Monica Leech has been laughed out of the High Court after losing her libel action against the Irish Independent.

The woman, who was banking 650 euro of taxpayers money PER DAY while swanning around the planet on junkets in Martin Cullen's wake, now faces a 350,000 euro legal bill.

(Not that one need feel too sorry for her - her mammoth paycheque for sitting on the board of the Higher Education Authority and her chairmanship of Waterford Chamber of Commerce, as well as her ongoing PR work means that she's probably not shy of a few quid. Oh, and didn't she just take a quarter of a mill off RTE too?)

Leech's team had sought to argue that the offending article, published in December 2004, inferred that she had had adulterous sexual relations with the separated Minister, and that she had performed deeply intimate sexual favours for the minister for the sake of a well-paid and beneficial contract.

Leech, and I tread very carefully here because she is a notably litigious person, was the subject of a crass and coarse allegation, apparently made tongue-in-cheek by a caller to Joe Duffy's Liveline radio show.

It seems fairly obvious to me that few listeners would have for a minute thought that a random caller making such an accusation should be believed for even a second. He was clearly simply being crass and coarse.

RTE apologised immediately at the time, but it's not like you can do much about it when someone comes on the air. You assume they have a proper point to make and not crass insults to share. The Independent reported the incident the following day, mentioning the insult directed at Leech.

Monica's response has been to sue all around her. She sued RTE, despite the apology and the fact that the insult came from a caller. She banked a quarter of a million from that case a few weeks ago.

(Another victory for the TV licence payer. We're paying Bev Flynn's lawyers and Monica Leech's lawyers. No wonder 'Fair City' is so crap.)

Monica also sued the Independent for repeating the allegation in the context of an article about the phone-in incident. She lost that case yesterday. She's also suing at least another couple of media outlets over reporting the phone-in incident, and she's taken some further libel cases against Irish newspapers too, though it seems those relate to separate issues.

Monica is either extremely unfortunate when it comes to being libelled, the most libelled woman in Ireland, perhaps. Or else she is extremely litigious, with an eye to the quick bucks to be made by making yourself out to be a martyr of the Irish media.

It is worth remembering that Monica Leech got her contracts with Cullen in breach of the EU law that says such contracts should go out to tender. No one else was asked to tender for Monica's incredibly, spectacularly lucrative PR contracts.

Of course, all the departments that Cullen worked for have their own civil service press officers. He can also call upon the very able Fianna Fail press office at any time. Obviously those squadrons of spin doctors just weren't sufficient for his spinning needs.

Only Martin Cullen can explain the dire need for a phenomenally paid Monica Leech by his side, especially when on a goodly number of the trips abroad she accompanied him on, including that beautiful trip to romantic Langkawi, not a press release was issued nor a statement made to the media.

Certainly, the two government investigations into the conditions of her recruitment didn't really explain it.

Hopefully this welcome verdict will discourage people from treating libel actions like lottery tickets. Hopefully the Supreme Court, where Monica's headed next, will uphold this verdict, and hopefully her other libel cases against other Irish newspapers and publications will similarly be dismissed.

There is a need to overhaul Ireland's ancient libel laws, as Captain Moonlight cogently argues, which date from the early 1960s. Perhaps greater penalties for those who take frivolous and unsubstantiated libel actions should be incorporated into any future libel law.

They're laughing at us now

All empires bear within them the seeds of their own destruction, history informs us.

Even as Rome was in it's Imperial pomp, with Caligula appointing his horse as consul, or Nero blowing the entire Imperial fortune on interminable poetry contests, a bit like John O'Donoghue used to, we can see with retrospect that the fall of the Caesar family was inevitable.

So it will be with Fianna Fail and it's rum cast of dynasties.

As their grip on Ireland, or at least the 26 counties of it they still claim is Ireland, copperfastens, we have seen the many various dissenters come scampering back into the fold for the third term.

The Donegal Blaneys, who'd make a Shinner feel Unionist, have now signed up to the whip. So have the Kerry publicans the Healy-Raes, their ongoing feud with the former minister for poetry readings now ended in their favour with his demotion to head boy of the Dail.

And so to the Flynns. Pee Flynn, as Senator David Norris was wont to call him, was classic Fianna Fail through and through. Viscerally clientelist, he first showed up as a TD in the Dail wearing a white suit, not unlike that worn by journalist Martin Bell when he ran against the corrupt Tories as an independent.

Of course, it was the Tories rather than Martin Bell that Flynn intended to emulate if not surpass.

He was an early exponent of fundamentalist Fianna Faildom. That's one way of describing those within the Soldiers of Destiny who believe it is their divine right to rule Ireland without interference from anyone, whether it be the Opposition, the electorate, or god forbid, a coalition government partner.

He opposed the coalition with the PDs, not because the PDs are an evil bunch of political degenerates, but because the coalition 'hit at Fianna Fail core values.' He opposed Mary Robinson as President, not for the sane reasons that she was another party's candidate and a lefty, but because she was 'a wife and mother.'

By 1993, he was such an embarrassment, that Fianna Fail parcelled him off to Europe where he became part of the EU Commission that had to resign en masse due to allegations of malpractice in 1999.

That same year, he went on the Late, Late Show and openly boasted about taking bungs from developers. He, poor diddums, actually complained about the hassles of his millionaire lifestyle, his houses, cars and housekeepers.

The public's collective jaw dropped to hear how the Fianna Fail inner circle actually lived, for this was in the days before the full extent of Haughey's corruption and ferrying of Charvet shirts via the diplomatic black box was known.

And so to Beverly, the offspring, the one proud daddy Pee Flynn called 'a class act.'

Beverly worked as an investments advisor for a bank, and advised her customers to salt money away in off-shore accounts to hide it from the taxman. So while the rest of us were paying taxes through our noses to Fianna Fail governments, Bev's 'high net worth' customers were not.

RTE kindly let the world know that Bev had been up to this. This was important, as she was now a TD in her daddy's old constituency. Bev took a libel case against the national broadcaster. Bev lost, because she had been guilty of all the things RTE had alleged.

Bev now owed an awful lot of money in legal fees. If she'd been made pay it all, she could have been declared bankrupt. Then again, if she'd married her millionaire boyfriend who used to belong to someone else incidentally, she could have avoided bankruptcy, but would have been left with many fewer millions than she was used to.

If she'd become bankrupt, she would have been removed as a TD, and a by-election would have ensued in Enda Kenny's own constituency. That would have cost Bertie twice over in relation to his dolly mixture majority, as he'd have lost a vote and FG most likely would have gained one.

So suddenly RTE decides to settle the action for the legal bills. All of a sudden, like. Straight after the formation of Bertie's latest government. Sheer coincidence, you know.

And then Bertie's on the telly, talking Bev up to the skies, how it'd be great to have her back in the party with her troubles behind her, and sure, couldn't she be a great Minister some day soon?

They're laughing at us now. Caligula has just announced he wants to make his horse consul, and all of us are tugging at our togas in embarrassment, nodding dumbly and muttering, 'Well, if you must...'

But let us set aside our shock at the venality of this series of events. It should surprise no one if swine seek to put their head in a trough. We've seen decades of tribunals, we're all numb to the shock of such things now.

Let's instead consider the cost. RTE, the national broadcaster, are down around two million euro. That's a hole in their budget that's going to come from the licence fee. The licence fee paid by normal viewers like you and me, including many people who can barely afford it.

Let's consider the cost to our democracy. The good people of Castlebar, and they are good people, have elected the noxious Pee Flynn repeatedly, elevating him to the point where Fianna Fail behemoths start thinking in terms of Imperial dynasties.

Pee promoted the 'class act', and the Castlebar electorate duly voted her in. And then did it again, even after she had been bravely revealed by RTE to be assisting tax evasion.

We the people must shoulder the responsibility for the culture of excess, corruption, entitlement and arrogance that seem to hang around the upper reaches of Fianna Fail like a miasmic haze of smog.

Like the Roman Senate, we have permitted these people power and permitted their excesses to develop and degenerate.

And the next time the TV Licence Fee inspector calls round, remember how your hundreds of hard earned euro are paying Bev Flynn's lawyers in defending a libel case she lost.

And seek the same percentile settlement as Bev. Offer to pay half the money asked for. Tell them you want the same deal they gave Bev. And then drop me an email from Mountjoy Prison, which is where they'll send you.

But at least they have telly in Mountjoy, so if you behave, you might even get to see Bev being appointed junior minister in the next government shake-up on RTE news.

She'll be smiling. She'll be laughing at you.

P.S. Watch Pee Flynn's staggering hubris on the Late, Late Show at Public Inquiry's blog.