Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-17 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland I just want to say a couple of things to the Minister. I welcome his openness to further amendments to the Bill. However, in relation to section 22, whereas I take a good deal of what he says on board, I think he should consider that, from the point of view of the Davids facing the Goliath, this is a fairly frightening thing for an individual who is defamed anonymously. I ask the Minister to consider this very carefully. This individual does not know who has defamed him, by definition. He does not know whether the person is a mark for damages. He does not know, if he succeeds in getting his identification order, whether the whole thing will end up useless because the individual is not a mark for damages, lives in Timbuktu or whatever it may be. Applying for an identification order is, in one sense, an exercise in bravery on the part of somebody who is defamed. They do not know what or who they are dealing with. They do not know if money they put into even applying for the order is just money thrown away when the identity is finally revealed. That is why I ask the Minister to think really carefully before Report Stage about whether we are in the business here of making the Davids capable of going to their solicitor and saying they want to know who did this when they face a statute that says that, even if they succeed, the court can tell them to pay the Internet service provider’s costs. I do not accept the proposition of a stay on the order or "pending the outcome of the case". That is no use. The Internet service provider will just say that even though it turned out the person was not a mark for damages, lived in Timbuktu or whatever it may be, it still wants its costs, it has an order for costs in its favour and the litigant can pay it for the effort they made to find out who was defaming them. I ask the Minister to think really hard about whether it is fair in these circumstances that the small person, the citizen who wants to defend himself or herself, faces these serious obstacles, which require resources and bravery to go to court to get justice. Regarding amendment No. 27 in my name, I ask the Minister to look at the situation as to what happens if somebody is identified. How then does the victim of defamation actually prove the contents of an identification order? It is very difficult. If he or she is simply told by the Internet service provider that the person who posted is Mr. Joe Bloggs who lives in Liverpool, how do they then prove that? Does he or she issue proceedings against Joe Bloggs? Does he or she have to go to England to do it? If the publication takes place in Ireland, the obstacles are fairly significant. The complainant is then confronted with Joe Bloggs saying it was in fact his or her son, who is a bit of a wild fellow, who put that up. The complainant is left with no remedy whatsoever. It is relevant from this point of view that it is not always just about damages. A person may want correction orders. They may want the publicity of saying that the allegation was false and a public acknowledgement through the court system that they have been defamed. If the complainant ends up with an identity order which is as opaque as they may well turn out to be, getting a correction order against nobody or against the wild son, or faced with a denial by the poster that he or she personally put that up, it is going to be very difficult. What I am trying to do is to bring justice to the ordinary person. I accept the proposition, especially when we see President Trump threatening the BBC – he has increased his claim for damages from $5 billion to $10 billion - that there are plaintiffs and there are plaintiffs. I am talking about people about whom really scurrilous things appear on social media and who really do need some kind of protection. The other thing, and this is the important part, is I am thinking of the person who is tempted to post defamatory matter about somebody else anonymously. If we are not going to have a system that frightens that person and makes them think they may be caught, identified and sued, if they do not really fear that and instead think the person they defamed is going to have to spend €2,000 or €3,000 to find out who they are and instruct a solicitor and a barrister in the Circuit Court and the High Court or wherever they want to do it, if there is no real fear in the anonymous defamer’s mind, then all of what we are doing here is slightly academic. I ask the Minister to bear those points in mind. Section 22, as it presently is, is attempting to improve things. I fully accept that, but I do not think it goes far enough. One last point occurred to me between the last day and today is that, if there were a lengthy Norwich Pharmacal or statutory identification proceeding which took months, which may well happen, the Minister might consider also adding into section 22 that a court, when granting an identification order, can extend the two-year absolute time limit for defamation, because the clock starts ticking the day the first post is made. Many people may not know that they have been defamed and they may find it out late in the day, and if they then have to face a contested identification order procedure, they may find that the time has run out for their proceedings. I ask the Minister to consider adding into section 22 that the time limits provided in the 2009 Act, albeit there is already a power to extend, can also be extended further if the court considers that that is required in the interest of justice. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-12-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-17