Lawlor's grieving son condemns newspaper coverage
The son of disgraced former Fianna Fáil TD Liam Lawlor today described the newspaper coverage of his father’s death as a shot at the open wound of the family’s grief.
Some Sunday newspapers reported that Mr Lawlor may have been with a prostitute when he died in a car crash in Moscow on Saturday morning.
But his family denounced the allegations as inaccurate, reckless and vindictive and it emerged Mr Lawlor and the driver of the car were killed as they travelled from the Russian capital’s airport, while a female Ukrainian interpreter in the vehicle was injured.
His son, Niall Lawlor, told RTE Radio from Moscow that the coverage of his father’s death had been a “shot at the open wound of his family”.
“The way I look at it is, a dead man has no recourse and scandal sells newspapers,” he added.
Minister for Justice Michael McDowell also described the newspaper coverage of Mr Lawlor’s death as cruel and grossly offensive.
Mr McDowell said legislation to set up a press council will be published before Christmas and will get a speedy passage through the Dáil and Seanad.
“It was grossly offensive, it was cruel and utterly lacking in any foundation of fact,” he said.
“I was very disappointed by it, because I thought that checking out the facts on something like that which could cause so much hurt to a family that was in terrible trauma in the first place, was a fairly simple thing to do.
“Apologies in the circumstances will probably never undo the trauma which has added to the family’s trauma.”
A Dublin West TD for more than 20 years, Mr Lawlor was jailed three times for refusing to comply with the Planning Tribunal into corruption.
Mr McDowell said a press council was needed to deal with such situations.
“The defamation law is not the answer to people whose privacy is stripped aside and whose dignity is totally undermined and mugged in this way,” he said.
“A press council is the appropriate way to deal with this.”
The editor of the Sunday Independent, Aengus Fanning, yesterday accepted full responsibility of his newspaper’s coverage and apologised to the Lawlor family for the distress it caused.
Junior Foreign Affairs Minister Conor Lenihan said the feelings of Mr Lawlor’s family now needed to be considered.
“It throws up the question of the appropriateness of the coverage relative to the Lawlor family,” he said.
“No matter what issues surround his public career, sensitivity to what the family is going through should be paramount.”
