Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Jim O'Callaghan (FF), Dublin Bay South I thank Senators McDowell and Craughwell for this amendment. It very much reflects one of the amendments that was put down by the Senators on Committee Stage in this House. The objective of it is to try, as Senator McDowell said, to soften the removal of juries from defamation claims by granting a jurisdiction to the High Court to permit a jury action in certain instances. Notwithstanding having listened very closely to Senator McDowell, I am concerned about the amendment and I cannot support it. I will explain why. Senators McDowell and Craughwell are proposing that a party to a defamation action would be able to make an application to the President of the High Court that the President of the High Court, in accordance with subsection (2)(a), would be able to state and rule that it is preferable that the case should be tried with a jury because of the exceptional nature of the case or the identity of one or more of the parties in the case. I would be extremely concerned that the President of the High Court, when asked to interpret that, will be asked from whose point of view it is preferable. I could understand why a plaintive in a case may want a jury in a particular High Court action and, no doubt, from the point of view of that plaintive, it would be preferable. However, similarly, the defendant may contend that it is not preferable from his or her point of view for there to be a jury hearing the case. I would be concerned that the language used in paragraph (a), when it uses the term "preferable", would be very difficult for a court to determine and apply. The court will ask itself what the Oireachtas means by stating it is preferable that a case should be tried with a jury. In many instances, that preference has to be based on the preference of one of the parties. It cannot just be whether it is preferable from the point of view of justice. However, in paragraph (b), in fairness to Senators McDowell and Craughwell, it is said that the claim could be determined to be one to be heard by a jury because "the interests of justice would be served by the trial of the claim in defamation with a jury." Again, the court will be asked to determine whether it is in the interests of justice for a case to be heard with a jury. Every day of the week, judges down in the civil courts hear civil actions on their own, without a jury. These include negligence actions, breach of contract actions and, indeed, defamation actions in the Circuit Court. It is the case that the people and parties to those proceedings are having a fair trial. The administration of justice is working effectively for them. Senator McDowell predicted that, in the future, there may be a lack of public acceptance about a defamation result. That may be correct. It may be that if somebody loses a defamation action in the future, they will say they are confident that if they had had a jury, they would have won. However, I still think there is very good respect and appreciation for the orders made by the High Court, whether it sits with or without a jury. We have seen some very significant decisions in recent times emanating from the High Court which have involved assessing the truthfulness of witnesses before the court. Judges hearing those cases can be very scathing and definitive in judgments in stating that they do not believe a particular witness or that they do not believe a litigant. That has very significant consequences for the individuals concerned, but that is the administration of justice. Whether it is a jury or a judge reaching that determination, there is a respect for decisions of the High Court when they are made by a High Court judge or by a jury. One of the other points made by Senator McDowell - and he was correct - was that we could now have the situation where an assault action will continue to be heard by a jury but a defamation action will now be heard without a jury. That situation happens at present quite significantly and quite frequently. The type of causes of action that are generally heard together with defamation are defamation and breach of privacy. A breach of privacy action, as Senator McDowell will know, does not give rise to an entitlement for the case to be heard by a jury. In general, what happens is that the plaintive can opt to have the defamation case and the privacy case heard in front of a judge. That has happened on many occasions in the past. There have been judgments of the High Court finding in favour of a plaintive in defamation actions where there has been no jury and these have been fully respected. Nobody has sought to undermine them because there has not been a jury. What alternatively happens is that the defamation part is heard by the judge and the jury, and then the jury is discharged and the privacy action continues with the judge alone. It might seem unusual but it can operate relatively efficiently. Senator McDowell will be aware of the policy decision that was made in the programme for Government that we would remove juries from defamation actions. We can have discussions for a long time as to the merits or demerits of that. I have no doubt that people will be able to identify a list of merits and a list of demerits. However, I am absolutely satisfied - and I would not stand over this provision if this was not the case - that any litigant before the court, if this legislation is enacted, will still get access to the administration of justice on a fair, impartial and effective basis whether there is a jury or no jury. --- 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/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21