Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21
============================================================

Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

This amendment proposes to delete lines 29 to 32 on page 7. The intention is to remove the rule that "the reputation of a body corporate that trades for profit shall not be considered to be serious harm ... unless it has caused, or is likely to cause, the body corporate serious financial loss.". I do not like that particular change for the reason that if we take the view that a body corporate - for example, a charity like Trócaire - has a reputation, we are introducing a different standard of treatment for a body which is ostensibly charitable from that which applies to a commercial enterprise. We discussed McDowell Butchers in this regard on Committee Stage. In the context of the entitlement of the Peter McVerry Trust versus that of a company, for example, a restaurant, whose reputation has been seriously affected by an untrue statement made about it, I do not believe the latter should be in a position whereby such a statement has "caused, or is likely to cause, the body corporate serious financial loss." I do not see why it is the case that one such body can sue because it is not trading for profit but the other has to engage in the highly speculative, evidential exercise of establishing that the statement which was made about it either caused or is likely to cause it serious financial loss.
To seriously defame with malice a company, perhaps a competitor, and to say, "Well, you have not proved it has actually damaged you at all, so you cannot sue," but Trócaire, the Peter McVerry Trust and whatever else can sue in such circumstances is unfair to bodies which are in good faith attempting to defend their reputation from malicious defamation. I do not see why it is necessary to introduce this extra ingredient into the question of serious harm if we are being fair as between bodies corporate.

---

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