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

I do not want to delay things too much but this section was effectively an effort to recreate in Irish law section 13 of the UK Defamation Act 2013. As far as I am concerned, to make it obligatory to disregard any omission is, as Senator Mullen has said, a very far-reaching proposition. Although we have not reached it yet, amendment No. 13, which is in my name and that of Senator Craughwell, proposes to insert the word "reasonable" before "omission". If The Irish Times has to report on a row between Musk and Trump, a court is not going to say it better send a reporter to find out whether Mr. Musk's accusations are true or false, whereas the thing would be quite different in other circumstances.
This new section 26 does not just apply to newspapers and broadcasters. It applies to anybody who runs a podcast or who uses social media who then makes a defamatory statement. The assumption in this debate has always been that we are talking about responsible media doing A, B and C. We are not. We are talking about opening defences to people who are not, by definition, responsible. We are talking about people who are using social media, day in, day out, to propagate particular causes or to damage particular enemies. It is in that context that a later amendment in our name talks about publication to the public at large. That is one proposition. I wonder about disputes of a fairly private kind about matters which have a public dimension to them, for instance, a dispute as to whether a public figure has behaved honourably as a landlord. We have had some of those. If somebody starts putting stuff up on social media giving a fair and accurate or impartial account of an accusation made against a public figure by a tenant, or whoever it is, this section will apply. I am just making those points.
The assumption has been that we are talking about RTÉ, other independent TV channels, newspapers and formalised publications such as magazines, but we are not. We are talking about anything. That is the point I find slightly worrying about this. We are handing this defence to people putting up on social media that there is a dispute between politician A and Ms B about what happened in a particular case at night-time. The same test applies to that as to a responsible newspaper. Publication on social media is hugely wide. I know the Act proposes to get rid of the Reynolds defence but the Reynolds defence was supposed to deal with responsible journalism. We are not talking about journalism in the conventional sense at all. If I put something up on social media that I, bona fide, consider to be in the public interest and make an accusation in good faith, should I, as a poster on X or whatever platform, be entitled to the immunity conferred by this amendment? I am not happy that it does not extend to cases such as that.

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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