Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2025-11-12
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Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel

I move amendment No. 10a:
In page 13, between lines 12 and 13, to insert the following new section:
“Amendment of section 31 of Principal Act
17. Section 31 of the Principal Act is amended by the insertion of the following new subsection after subsection (8):
“(9) The total amount of general damages awarded by a court in a defamation action shall not exceed seventy-five thousand euro.”.”.
I put this amendment forward in an attempt to see if there was something we could do to deter people putting in defamation claims. As I mentioned previously, there are more defamation cases in Ireland than in the UK, and that country has ten times the number of people. I was looking at statistics from 2023, when the UK had 250 cases and we had 360, which means there are 19 times more cases here by head of population. Many retailers now operate a no-challenge policy towards suspected shoplifters because it is far cheaper to let them steal than to defend a defamation case. This is just me again trying to protect businesses. The Minister has said he will take businesses into consideration when looking at this area. For that reason, I will be happy to withdraw my amendment in due course.

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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