From: Free Stater [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: 30 July 2006 21:29
To: [email protected]
Subject: Údaras Email Firing

"Dear Editor,

On Sunday 30th July 2006 the Sunday Independent ran a piece entitled "State agency forced to apologise in email misuse incident" by a Daniel McConnell, dealing with the firing of a summer student who had been employed by Udaras. The student - one Ultan o hAodha - had sent an email using an Udaras address in reply to a posting by a UCD employee (one Richard Waghorne) on Mr. Waghorne's own online blog.

i) It is not unreasonable to guess that Mr. Waghorne posted his original derogatory comments concerning the Gaelic language using UCD facilities.
Does UCD allow or endorse Mr. Waghorne using their facilities to promote his ideological positions?

ii) Mr. Waghorne has a number of stated policies at his blog, accessible
here:

http://siciliannotes.blogspot.com/2006/01/sicilian-notes-policies.html

I draw your attention in particular to the following:

"Quoting policy on Emails
Unless you ask otherwise, emails will be regarded are quotable. However,
unless you state permission, it will be assumed that identity is not to be
published."

Nowhere in the Sunday Independent article in question is Mr. Waghorne's
failure to honour his committment of confidentiality to his email
correspondents noted. I feel that this is a serious flaw in the reporting on this particular incident, and I hope that the Sunday Independent will print
a correction to that effect in the next issue.

Yours faithfully,
EWI"

--
Thanks to the reader who sent in the link to the Sindo article. Some related links:

http://freestater.blogspot.com/2006/07/public-health-warning-for-silly-notes.html
http://www.sluggerotoole.com/index.php/weblog/comments/o_manamse/P25/
http://siciliannotes.blogspot.com/2006/07/email-from-udaras.html
http://siciliannotes.blogspot.com/2006/01/sicilian-notes-policies.html
http://talideon.com/weblog/2006/07/lets-not-feed-the-troll.cfm
http://donal.wordpress.com/2006/07/11/we-cannot-do-without-irish/
http://imeall.blogspot.com/2006/07/imeall-145-trollil.html
http://imeall.wordpress.com/2006/07/20/being-a-peasant-is-nothing-to-be-ashamed-of-being-ignorant-is-nothing-to-be-proud-of/

Update 13:28 31/07/06 more links...

http://twentymajor.blogspot.com/2006/07/apologising.html
http://donal.wordpress.com/2006/07/31/stick-that-in-your-pipe-and/