Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland I appreciate the fact that the Minister met the first test by coming up with some kind of example. One could argue, however, that even President Trump and Elon Musk are entitled to some measure of due diligence on the part of any media organisation proposing to publish something that is false and damaging. If the Minister does not accept that line of argument, I point out to him that he makes an extreme case to defend a clause which does not say that the court may disregard an omission to take steps. Rather, it states that the court shall do so. If the aim of this subclause is to state that there may be cases where it really is not reasonable to expect a putative publisher to try to find out whether what they are about to publish is true or not - and that it is not necessary for them to do so in order for them to believe that it is in the public interest to take steps to verify whether it is true or not - one would have to say that such circumstances, if they exist, would be exceptional. I say this because it stands to reason that if you are in the business of publishing statements which, if false, will be very damaging to an individual, however unsympathetic the individual may be in the public mind, however famous and well resourced the individual may be and however unreachable by your barbs that individual may be, the fact remains that there is a considerable onus on publishers to take steps as a matter of common sense and on the basis of people's general expectation. If you are leading with an allegation or claim, it must nearly always be the case that you should take steps to verify the truth of what you are saying, if it is capable of being defamatory. The Minister wishes to create an exception to address cases, such as that he has described, without requiring a newspaper or broadcaster to contact the Musk organisation or the Trump organisation, or whatever. I would imagine that is not a particularly onerous responsibility but let us assume there are cases where that would not be expected of a proposed publisher. Surely the language here should imply exceptionality. It should state that the court may disregard such omissions. It should be remembered that the Minister has just said that we have to depend on the courts. That is quite right and quite reasonable. We have to leave it to the courts to assess the public interest issue from case to case, according to standards with which we would all sympathise and agree. However, precisely because that concept of public interest is being left to the courts to adjudicate and we are not attempting to define it in legislation, surely we should not be so prescriptive as to say that the courts shall disregard any omission of the defendant to take steps to verify the truth. This is about a dispute between parties. There are all sorts of disputes between parties where it would be essential. I tried to give an example, although it may not have been a very clear one. I can imagine all sorts of situations where there would be a dispute between parties. The mere fact of there being a dispute between parties cannot mean that the court must henceforth disregard any omission to take steps to find out whether something is true or false in its determination of whether a person reasonably believed something was in the public interest. I get what the Minister is saying about prior requirements and the need for publication to be in the public interest. I am not talking about potential disputes in respect of things that are not in the public interest. It could be a dispute about a very serious allegation made by one person against another, not for the purposes of public grandstanding but for the purpose of doing real damage. It may be the person's mistaken belief that what they claim is true but the fact remains that it is a seriously damaging claim arising in the context of a dispute. Why is the Minister not saying that the court may disregard an omission to take steps to verify the truth? Why is he making it an all-embracing provision and mandating the courts to disregard any omission to take steps to verify an allegation? --- 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