A parliamentary assistant to former TD Paudie Coffey advised in the run-up to the last general election he should stay focused on trying to retain his seat rather than deal immediately with a response to an allegedly defamatory newspaper article, the High Court heard.
Paul Fox, who worked as assistant and adviser to the then deputy, now Senator Coffey, said the Kilkenny People article of January 2016 "was certainly not going to help" the election campaign over the following few weeks.
It was difficult to judge at the time because they were gearing up for the campaign and his advice was that was where the focus should be, he said.
He agreed with Barney Quirke SC, for Mr Coffey, that his advice at that time was “damage limitation in terms of the article”.
He was giving evidence on the sixth day of Mr Coffey’s action against Iconic Newspapers, publishers of the paper, over comments from Fine Gael Kilkenny colleague John Paul Phelan TD describing a proposal to bring part of the Kilkenny administrative area in Waterford city as “daylight robbery”.
Mr Phelan said there was a “bloodthirsty” 18th-century highway man in Waterford called “Crotty the Robber” and now “Coffey the Robber” was trying to do the same thing.
Mr Coffey says that was defamatory.
The publisher denies defamation.
On Wednesday, Mr Fox said, when they first discussed the article, Mr Coffey “wasn’t happy and described it as lies, he just wasn’t very happy”.
He advised Mr Coffey to deal with it later as they had an election campaign to win.
He said he also advised against seeking a retraction at the time because of the election news cycle and because they could have “got bogged down in the right to reply”.
Michael O’Brien, a lifelong friend of Mr Coffey and his ministerial driver for two years, said the Senator became very isolated and “went into his shell” as a result of the article.
Mr O’Brien, who also canvassed for Mr Coffey, said: “It was frightening, it was not the Paudie Coffey I knew.”
He said the two of them were walking to a hurling match shortly after the publication when one of a group of men shouted “Go away Coffey you robber” and there was a “big laugh”.
Mr O’Brien said he was taken aback and Mr Coffey didn’t think it was funny.
Breandán Coffey, the Senator’s older brother, said Paudie’s demeanour changed after the article and he “went into himself”. He said he told Paudie he needed to do something about it. It “impacted on him horrifically”.
Earlier, continuing cross-examination by Rossa Fanning SC, for Iconic, Mr Coffey said he was not aware of a revival in interest in "Crotty the Robber" shortly before the Kilkenny People article.
Counsel said some people referred to Crotty the Robber as a Robin Hood-type figure who robbed the rich and gave to the poor, while others said he was a bloodthirsty murderer.
Mr Fanning put to the Senator that not a single person will come and say they thought less of him as a result of the article.
Mr Coffey said: “I am not a robber and immediately someone reads that they associate me with it and I would argue it does lower me in a person’s view because of the charges made in the article.”
He agreed no defamation proceedings had been brought by former environment minister Alan Kelly, who was also named in the article as having “banded together” with the then junior minister Coffey to “commit daylight robbery”.
In re-examination by his own counsel, Mr Coffey said he would have responded if he had been given an opportunity by the paper before it published its article.
He became upset as he spoke of the Coffey name and the community service given by his father, who was a councillor for 32 years, and his mother who was a public health nurse.
The attack on him by the newspaper “affected me deeply and took my name away and my family’s good name”, he said.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Bernard Barton and a jury.