Members of the family of a man filmed as he lay dead during an ambulance call out to his apartment are seeking a High Court injunction requiring Virgin Media and a film company to take the footage off air and off social media.
Bernard Slean suffered from addiction issues and when the ambulance service responded to an emergency call to the apartment owned by him and his two sisters in Ayrfield, Dublin, on October 8th, 2025, he was already dead.
Accompanying the ambulance personnel was a camera crew with Alley Cat Films Ltd, with a registered address in Culdaff, Co Donegal, which was filming for a documentary series called First Timers on the Frontline, which was later shown on Virgin Media television.
Slean’s sisters, Jennifer McCaffrey and Alison Lynch, owned the apartment jointly with their brother, as part of family wishes that Bernard would live there as long as he had addiction issues, Conor Bowman SC, for the sisters, told the court on Thursday.
The sisters say the footage recorded by Alley Cat pixelated their brother’s body as it lay on the apartment floor but that other scenes identified the property from the outside. Bowman said there was a very distinctive palm tree outside the apartment.
