Coffey: ‘I’m clearly being compared to a highwayman’

Senator is suing Iconic Media for defamation over article likening him to an 18th-century villain, published three weeks before general election

Senator Paudie Coffey (left), leaving the courts last week with his constituency rival, Alan Kelly of Labour PIc: Collins

‘Are you asking the jury to take it literally?” Fine Gael senator Paudie Coffey was asked in mid-cross examination.

“Yes,” he replied. The “it” in question was an article published in the Kilkenny People in January 2016 under the headline Coffey the Robber, a pun on the 18th-century highwayman William Crotty, known as Crotty the Robber, who hid out in the Comeragh mountains before being hanged in Waterford.

The senator is suing the ...