Students at Trinity College Dublin have voted to ban the Daily Mail from campus shops following an inaccurate story it ran about a missing UCC student.
At a meeting of the TCD Students’ Union last night students voted to ban the sale of the newspaper from shops as a “mark of solidarity and respect” for Caolan Mulrooney, whose body was found yesterday morning.
The Irish Mail on Sunday ran an article at the weekend which said that the body of the UCC student had been found in the River Lee.
Gardaí yesterday confirmed that they found the body of the 19-year-old at the rear of a premises on Douglas Street in Cork city on Tuesday morning.
Stephen Garry, who proposed the motion to ban the newspaper, said that the article had proved distressing for friends and family of Caolon Mulrooney.
“The ban was envisaged as a mark of solidarity and respect to Caolan (a fellow Irish university student), his family and his friends, some of whom are TCD students and were undoubtedly deeply distressed by the article,” Garry told TheJournal.ie.
The motion suspends sales of the paper in SU outlets “pending receipt of an apology and review at a future council”.
The President of the Students’ Union, Ryan Bartlett, is to write to the paper to ask for an apology.
The ban on the newspaper came into effect immediately following the motion, and the paper was not on sale in Students’ Union-run shops on campus today.
The wording of the motion implies that the ban will cover both the Irish Daily Mail and the Irish Mail on Sunday.
Caolan Mulrooney was last seen in the early hours of Friday morning in Cork city.
A major search effort was launched over the weekend with hundreds of people taking part. Mulrooney had been a first-year student at University College Cork.
His body was discovered yesterday morning.
Gardaí are not treating his death as suspicious and believe it may have been a tragic accident.
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