The High Court has heard an article about businessman Denis O'Brien in May 2010 which appeared in the Irish Daily Mail was "nasty, spiteful and defamatory".
Mr O'Brien is claiming the article, about his appearance in RTÉ news reports on the relief effort after the earthquake in Haiti, accused him of hypocrisy motivated by self interest.
The article referred to an impending report from the Moriarty Tribunal and described Mr O'Brien as "acting the saint in stricken Haiti".
It described him as "the reluctant star of the Moriarty Tribunal… and… the all too willing star of the international aid effort for Haiti".
This morning the jury was told Mr O'Brien's company Digicel was the biggest employer and investor in Haiti. Mr O'Brien and Digicel were involved in and contributed to the relief effort after the 2010 earthquake that killed 316,000 people.
The earthquake was a huge international story and many charities and journalists had difficulty getting there.
Digicel had assisted a number of charities and then RTÉ reporter Charlie Bird to secure transport to Haiti on a Jamaican government jet after requests for help were made.
Mr O'Brien gave a brief interview to Mr Bird about the relief efforts. It occupied three and half minutes of a total of 65 minutes broadcast over a week of reports from Haiti on RTÉ news, the court was told.
The article described him as having "quickly hooked up with Charlie Bird and spending so much time telling him what he was doing" which would take the sting out of the Moriarty report.
Senior Counsel Jim O'Callaghan told the jury it was "a nasty spiteful and defamatory article" claiming he was using his activities in Haiti to deflect from the Moriarty report.
"To say he was involved for his own self interest was unfair and grossly defamatory. It was a spiteful piece of nonsense," he said.
He said Denis O'Brien would say the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal against him were wrong and he would go to his grave saying it was wrong.
However, this case was not about that, it was about whether or not he was defamed in the article.
A number of witnesses will be called in the case including Mr O'Brien and a former government minister from Haiti.
Charity workers who will say Mr O'Brien never looked for photo opportunities for his charitable work are also due to give evidence.
The Daily Mail is denying the article was defamatory and will say it was fair and reasonable comment on a matter of public interest.
Mr O'Callaghan said Denis O'Brien had been awarded and commended a number of times for his contribution to the relief efforts in Haiti.
He was not suggesting Denis O'Brien was a saint but his involvement in Haiti was motivated by humanitarianism.
He said if the jury found he had been defamed by the article the only remedy was one of damages and any award must be significant.
Mr O'Brien said he spent less than ten minutes in the company of Mr Bird in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
He has been outlining the scenes of devastation he witnessed in Haiti and his efforts to help Digicel staff and others after the disaster killed more than 300,000 people.
He said comments in the article that he "kept popping up" in RTÉ reports indicated the journalist knew nothing about what was going on in Haiti.
He said he was not thinking about the Moriarty Tribunal in the weeks and months after the earthquake.
Suggestions that he was using it as a public relations exercise could not be further from the truth, he said.
Describing it as a crescendo of nastiness towards the end of the article, Mr O'Brien said to suggest he was following Mr Bird around Haiti like a lap dog could not be further from the truth.
The article was offensive and insulting, he added. Before the earthquake he visited Haiti every five to six weeks and after the earthquake he has been there 59 times.
He said his was a different form of capitalism, which not only sought to make a profit but also invested in education and healthcare to try to improve a country.
This, he said, was unlike other foreign direct investment which "just robbed the place and did no good whatsoever".
He said the shocking part of this article, which commented on how his business interests operated in Haiti, was a lack of knowledge about economic development.
As lines of the article were read to him he described one as "another box in the kidneys to criticise me for investing in a poor country".
In response to points made in the article that he had taken out a series of ads criticising the cost of the Moriarty Tribunal including what tribunal lawyers spent, he said this was "childish fun" on his part.
Asked if he had any reason to disbelieve what the article contained was Paul Drury's opinion he said: "Qell he wrote it, it must be his opinion."
He agreed that allowing someone to express an opinion was the basis of freedom of the press.
However, he said there were certain facts and research which could be done on which to base opinion.
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