Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21
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Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland

I move amendment No. 12:
In page 10, to delete lines 17 to 23.
This amendment simply proposes the removal of subsection (3) of the proposed section 26, which proposes that where we are talking about an accurate and impartial account of a dispute to which the plaintiff in the defamation action is a party, the court shall, in determining whether it was reasonable to believe that publishing the statement was in the public interest, disregard any omission of the defendant to take steps to verify the truth of the imputation conveyed by it. We are talking about a decision that has been taken by a publisher that something is in the public interest. We are talking about a false statement having been made and a defamation action taken. We have just heard the Minister speak about the right of a court to draw an inference from the non-co-operation of a person against whom an accusation is being made when that person is contacted by the media. Here we have a situation where, because the publisher can say that this is some kind of dispute - undefined, I think, in the legislation - that somehow it does not matter in terms of the decision about whether it is in the public interest to publish or whether steps were taken to verify the truth of the imputation conveyed.
I queried this previously on Committee Stage. What kind of scenario can the Minister present that makes it a matter of no importance whether the defendant in a case, a publisher, has made any effort whatsoever to verify the truth of what they propose to publish? What chilling effect on good judgment would it have to require that a person will always take steps to verify the truth of something serious that they are about to publish, whether by way of inquiring with the person who is the subject of the potentially defamatory statement or third parties who may be in a position to confirm or contradict what it is proposed to allege?
I tried to understand the rationale for this in terms of some kind of a dispute between two public persons, but there is nothing here which indicates that have to be two public persons. It could be a student making an allegation against a teacher but doing so in a very public way or where a dispute is known about where there are some kind of disciplinary proceedings going on, in the context of a school, for example, where A has made an allegation against B and where there is some talk about it in the privileged context of a school perhaps having to go through its investigative and disciplinary procedures. What difference does the fact of it being a dispute between two parties as opposed to it being a claim by a whistleblower that somebody had their hand in the till make regarding the fact that it is no longer of any importance whether the defendant has taken steps to find out if what they are proposing to publish is true or false?

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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