Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12
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Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel

The Minister adverted to the man of straw who has no means making defamatory statements and everyone having recourse to the courts. Let us be honest about it: people need a lot of money to be able to go to the courts to defend their good name. Not everyone not has access to the courts. The courts may be there and available, but access to the courts is a function of the income and assets people have. A person can be defamed, and we see it every day of the week on social media. We see quasi-defamation. We see it in the national media. We see issues raised under a sort of innuendo but not everyone can run down to the Four Courts. It is an extremely expensive thing to do.
Senator McDowell has made the point that before people would even consider going down to the Four Courts, they would have to sit and look at what has been said and have some knowledge of the protocols and procedures within the publishing organisation. They would have to be fairly certain in their own mind that the defamation impacts them before they even approach a member of the legal profession. Once they did that, they would have to be prepared to fund the legal challenge. At the end of the day, if the person against whom they are taking a legal challenge has nothing, and quite of lot of those who decide to spout out in public these days do not have means, while they may get an order retracting the statement, it is going to cost them an extreme amount of money. If the Minister is going down the route that everyone will have access to the courts where defamation is concerned, then free legal aid must be put in place for those who cannot afford it. We have a constitutional right to our good name. The Minister cannot say that I, anyone in this establishment or any citizen of the State has access to the courts because access to the courts is the function of the amount of money people have available.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-11-12/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:18+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-11-12