Mary Harney receives €450,000 libel payout after ‘alco’ slur

Larger-than-life ex-Tanaiste Mary Harney has received a €450,000 libel compensation payout from suing Newstalk radio station after being dubbed an 'alco' on a live broadcast.

The former Health Minister began legal proceedings in March 2010 after journalist Nell McCafferty made false comments about Harney on Tom Dunne's morning show on the radio station.

In the wake of the appearence, Newstalk declared the allegations untrue and withdrew the interview from their website.

In her defence, Cafferty has stated that she did not realise that she her conversation was being broadcast, instead she insisted that she thought she was having an “introductory chat over tea and a bun before we went live”.

Yesterday, Phoenix editor Paddy Prendiville told RTÉ News that Harney’s solicitors had sought a sum closer to €1m in damages against News 106 Ltd. The case was ultimately settled out of court for nearly half the politician's original sum.

Editor of The Phoenix magazine Paddy Prendiville, said that Newstalk's billionaire owner Denis O'Brien made a series of attempts to apologise to Harney but was did not receive a single response.

"I know Mary Harney wanted €1m and she got very nearly half that," he said.

"This is an enormous amount of money. It could close down a lesser station that wasn't owned by someone like Denis O'Brien," said one source at Newstalk," a source told UK broadsheet The Guardian.