One would assume that since he is a very wealthy man Denis O’Brien would have access to the very best public relations advice that money can buy.

Having seen and read how he has been portrayed and has portrayed himself this week, however, one can only come to the conclusion that he has got bad value for his buck of late. O’Brien has either been badly advised or is refusing to listen to good advice.

In years to come, they will teach this week’s handling of Denis O’Brien’s affairs as a classic example of a very bad PR strategy. Indeed “strategy” may be too grand a description for the combination of bluster and threat involved. It has been entertaining at times, chilling at others, but in no sense has it enhanced Denis O’Brien’s reputation.

It is not at all clear how the verbal assaults perpetrated upon Catherine Murphy TD on various radio programmes last weekend were in Denis O’Brien’s interest.

It is not clear, either, how gratuitous attacks upon parliament and politics in general can be seen as protecting or promoting Denis O’Brien’s reputation.

Let’s assume for a minute that someone with access to documents taken from IBRC is out to get Denis O’Brien. And let’s assume that this person has concocted the suggestion that the bank gave favourable treatment to O’Brien in the handling of his loans.

If this were the case, as O’Brien suggests, then surely the wiser course would have been to confine his counter- argument to making the point, as he has with some success in the courts, that his private banking affairs should not be in the public domain, and to particularising those aspects of Deputy Murphy’s utterances in the Dáil that he claims were untrue.

Instead, what O’Brien had his spokesman do was shout abuse at Catherine Murphy and other politicians over the airways.

Peddling falsehoods

So it is difficult to understand why O’Brien’s paid spokesman, James Morrissey, engaged in a full-blooded politicised assault upon Catherine Murphy. Morrissey suggested, among other things, that she is busily peddling falsehoods about O’Brien and IBRC for personal political gain.

The problem for Morrissey and, more importantly, his client is that such a suggestion lacks credibility. Catherine Murphy is correctly regarded by many as one of the most effective parliamentarians in the current Dáil, known for her thoughtful and careful contributions on a range of political issues.

She is no hothead. She is not prone to grandstanding. There is nothing in her form that suggests she would play fast and loose with parliamentary privilege for cheap, short- term publicity.

On the contrary, she has doggedly pursued the issues surrounding IBRC’s sale of Siteserv for months through detailed parliamentary questions and Freedom of Information requests.

Independent inquiry

Not content with systematically seeking to dis Deputy Murphy, O’Brien and his spokesman have also felt it necessary to attack other politicians who sought to defend Murphy’s use of parliamentary privilege.

Morrissey, for example, told Keelin Shanley on RTÉ radio last Friday that “to be brutally blunt about it, the Dáil is a bit of a talking club”. He took the same dismissive tone in an even more robust intervention that evening with Matt Cooper on Today FM and on Sunday’s This Week programme on RTÉ.

The approach has been one of casting aspersions on the motive of anyone who dares defend Catherine Murphy’s right to raise the issue in the Dáil, rather than dealing with the substance of what Murphy had to say.

Even in his own piece in The Irish Times on Tuesday, Denis O’Brien accused Catherine Murphy of a “deliberate breach under Dáil privilege of a court order”. Later that morning the judge who made that order confirmed that it did not and could not extend to restricting the right of a Deputy to address the matters in the Dáil or the right of the media to report those remarks.

Maybe James Morrissey and others have persuaded O’Brien, or he has come to the view himself, that there is a rich vein of public cynicism about politicians that he should tap into to bolster his own position.

O’Brien should be warned, however, that there is even greater cynicism among the public about wealthy businessmen with media interests who seek to restrain public comment about themselves.

The ultimate outcome of the legal actions and inquiries now in place is uncertain. One thing is clear, however: Denis O’Brien’s reputation has been damaged rather than defended by the way he or his public relations advisers have mishandled matters this week.