Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12
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Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I do accept the Minister’s good faith attempt here to create a space for the media to do its important work. When he says it is not for us to decide whether the media operate using live broadcasts and so on, that may be so, but we all have to live with the consequences of our own liberties. It is not a question of telling the media what they can do. It is a question of saying that in the world in which we live, what you do may have serious consequences for innocent people.
You have to be responsible, particularly if you are a great and powerful organisation with resources at your disposal, in circumstances where you may platform somebody who does not have resources and is not going to be a mark in the first instance. I do not think it is a valid comparison that the Minister makes with a public meeting organised by a Minister. That has a very limited reach. What we are talking about here is a new and very challenging reality. Mass communication is relatively recent, historically. In light of all the developments in the digital sphere and the social media sphere, we are struggling to vindicate people's rights in this situation. It is precisely because broadcast media has such reach that there need to be consequences. I do not accept at all the comparison with a public meeting.

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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