THE IRISH RED CROSS has suspended the head of its International Department after discovering he had a part in anonymously publicising a whistleblowing blog raising concerns about how the charity was being funded.

The charity sad that entries on the ‘Governance Reform at Irish Red Cross’ blog were false and defamatory, and took court action against Google, which publishes the blog on its Blogspot service, and UPC, to have the blog closed.

The anonymous blog is obviously written by an organisation insider, who in their opening post claimed that “Irish Red Cross is now at its weakest in its 70 year history.

Sunday Times writer Mark Tighe has now explained in his blog that the charity has suspended Noel Wardick, after its action against UPC showed that he had set up an anonymous email address from which to publicise the blog.

The suspension came a month after a judge ordered UPC to reveal the owner of the IP address behind a Hotmail account used to publicise the blog to the IRC’s own staff, but could not ask Google to reveal the blog’s author because the Red Cross had mistakenly taken action against Google Ireland, which in itself has no administrative role in the Blogspot service.

Worringly for many users, however, UPC did not give Wardick any warning or indication that it was handing over his personal details the Irish Red Cross. Nor, it would appear, was Wardick given any chance to argue to the court against his details behind handed over.

Tighe also reports that an international investigation into Wardick’s behaviour is due next week.