{"id":84339,"date":"2025-10-16T12:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/84339\/"},"modified":"2025-10-16T12:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T12:54:07","slug":"heather-humphreys-faces-court-action-from-paul-murphy-after-rte-debate-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/84339\/","title":{"rendered":"Heather Humphreys faces court action from Paul Murphy after RT\u00c9 debate remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paul Murphy has formally lodged defamation proceedings against Fine Gael presidential candidate Heather Humphreys, <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.irishexaminer.com\/news\/arid-41723883.html\">after comments she made on an RT\u00c9 debate<\/a> about the People Before Profit TD.<\/p>\n<p>Filings say Mr Murphy\u2019s solicitors issued formal legal proceedings at the High Court on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Humphreys made the comments during a debate on  RT\u00c9 Radio on Sunday, referring to an incident in Jobstown in 2014 involving former Labour Party leader Joan Burton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">In 2017, Mr Murphy was found not guilty of false imprisonment of Ms Burton.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">A legal letter was sent to Ms Humphreys on Monday evening, calling on the Fine Gael candidate to withdraw the remarks and apologise to Mr Murphy. It also calls on Ms Humphreys to meet Mr Murphy\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">In the letter, Mr Murphy\u2019s legal team said Ms Humphreys had accused him of engaging in \u201cviolent criminal conduct\u201d, that he had committed \u201can act of gender-based violence\u201d and that he was a \u201cmisogynist.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Mr Murphy\u2019s solicitors added Ms Humphreys&#8217; comments were \u201cgrossly defamatory\u201d and he had \u201csuffered in his character and reputation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">The letter adds Mr Murphy had been exposed to \u201codium, ridicule, and contempt.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">It is understood Mr Murphy has retained two senior counsel who worked on the Jobstown trial, with both Michael O\u2019Higgins SC and R\u00f3is\u00edn Lacey SC taking the case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Asked on Tuesday if she would be withdrawing the remarks, Ms Humphreys said: \u201cWhat can I say only, you know, I remember looking at the videos of that particular incident where two women were trapped in their car.<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">\u201cAll I can say is that, well, Paul Murphy wasn&#8217;t sitting at home watching television that day.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"\">Ms Humphreys has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Murphy has formally lodged defamation proceedings against Fine Gael presidential candidate Heather Humphreys, after comments she made&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84340,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5658,61,60,43,978],"class_list":["post-84339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-irish-examiner-instagram","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-presidential-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84339\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}