A senior figure in the Andersonstown News Group has hit back robustly following controversial remarks made last week by Irish Justice Minister Michael McDowell about the Group's new paper, Daily Ireland which launches on 1 February.
In a statement posted on the Department of Justice official website on Thursday night last, Minister McDowell accused some journalists of pandering to the IRA and attacked Daily Ireland.
NUJ Irish Secretary Seamus Dooley reacted angrily to the statement. He said it was an outrage that the Minister "should be guilty of mutilating his language to such an extent that the lives of journalists could be put at risk."
The attack by Minister McDowell has been rebuffed by Andersonstown News Group Managing Director Mairtín Ó Muilleoir.
"I met our lawyers on Friday afternoon to discuss this attack on our reputation and our standing in the community. I have informed Irish government representatives of my outrage that this statement should have been made. I have also written to Minister Michael McDowell to seek a meeting with him in regard to his scurrilous and dangerous comments about our new national daily newspaper Daily Ireland.
"The Andersonstown News Group, which is behind the Daily Ireland project, is well known for its nationalist views and as a business success story. As an Investor in People company, audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers, and the publisher of national and local titles, we stand on our record of community service and of consummate probity in all our business affairs.
"Daily Ireland will be assertively pro-United Ireland, anti-violence domestically and internationally, and pro-peace process. That combination has led to attacks from extremists North and South. It has also led to a series of death threats against our newspaper group from loyalist paramilitaries.
"The Minister's statement increases the risk to our staff as they go about their work but the Minister must know that we will publish this newspaper."
