A woman has lost her €75,000 defamation case against a Dublin Bus driver who called her a 'skankhole'.

Roxana Pach of Lucan, Co. Dublin, was boarding a Dublin Bus vehicle when the driver called her a 'f*cking skank' - then, as she was disembarking, he reportedly called her a 'f*cking skankhole'.

The driver's name-calling was in response to Pach's refusal to pick up the litter she had dropped outside the bus in Adamstown, Dublin in November 2015.

The driver apparently asked her to dispose of the rubbish properly, and when she declined to do so, he made the remark.

As the Irish Times reports, Miss Pach believed that the comments alluded to her being of low moral standards, 'promiscuous', 'easy', or akin to a prostitute.


The court decided that although it was perhaps wrong of the driver to make the remarks, it was a fair response to Pach's refusal to pick up her own litter. The driver denied that he ever made the remarks, but the court believed that he did.

Defamation only applies under certain circumstances; in this case, the general public who heard the remarks would have to genuinely believe that Miss Pach was a 'person of low moral character' and 'promiscuous' based on the evidence of the driver's comments alone.

Judge Groarke who led the case was quoted in the Irish Times as rejecting this idea.

The judge instead claimed that 'no half-intelligent person in the city of Dublin, hearing the discourse about not having picked up the litter, would conclude from it that she was an easy woman of low morals and low character'.

In fact, the driver was commended for asking her to clean up her own mess, and no claims for damages were upheld against him.