Louis Walsh receives €500,000 damages from Sun

Louis Walsh has received €500,000 damages from the Sun newspaper, following a story they ran last June which falsely claimed Walsh had sexually assaulted a man in Krystle nightclub, Dublin.

Senior counsel for the paper's publisher, News Group Newspapers, Eoin McCullough, read the following statement to the High Court in Dublin this morning:

"The Sun published an article in its editions of 23 June 2011, in which we reported that Louis Walsh was being investigated in relation to a sexual assault on Leonard Watters. In fact, it transpired that Leonard Watters had made a false statement to An Garda Siochána, and he has since been convicted in relation to this matter.

He continued, "The Sun fully accepts that the alleged assault did not occur in the first place and Louis Walsh is entirely innocent of any such assault. The Sun unreservedly apologises to Louis Walsh for any distress caused to him as a result of our article."

The man who made the allegations, Leonard Watters, was sentenced to six months in jail this summer for wrongly accusing Walsh of assault.

Speaking on the steps of the Four Courts, Louis said: "I am very satisfied with this total vindication for me, but I remain very angry at the treatment at the hands of the Sun. I was absolutely gutted and traumatised that these allegations against me should have been published, particularly as I had made it clear at the time there was not one iota of truth in them, and was totally bewildered who would have made up this type of story... No amount of money will compensate for what I have gone through. This has had a terrible effect on me, guys. It was all lies."