Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Rónán Mullen (IND), National University of Ireland We discussed this on Committee Stage. We are into the section dealing with the proposed live broadcast defence. We can all imagine the scenario where somebody pops up in the audience or maybe somebody on a panel delivers the shocker of the year of a kind that would have any defamation lawyer twitching either in anticipation or any client twitching in terror. We all understand the value of live broadcast. We can understand that there will be television moments that will involve a live audience where the risk is perhaps even greater potentially that something defamatory could be said. The Minister set out the context in which the courts may uphold a defence where something false and otherwise defamatory or a defamatory statement is made during a live programme. I recall saying to the Minister on Committee Stage a point about putting myself in the position where I am sitting at home watching TV and something is said about me by either an audience member or panellist. I would expect a presenter to have the same concern for my reputation and rights as he or she would have if the statement was made about themselves. That the test we have to apply here. What would the presenter do if something defamatory was said about him or her by somebody on the programme? We know what would happen. They would immediately falsify it. For all intents and purposes, they effectively would take the mic away from that person. There would be consequences. The same sense of justice to a person who is, first of all not present, or may be present but is not controlling the debate and discussion, is not achieved simply in the subclause 2(e) that is currently there at line 40 onwards of page 11, where it talks about "the overall management in practice of the live programme concerned, and of its participants, by the broadcaster and in particular by the presenter". What does "overall management" mean? Does it mean that at some point in the course of the programme that they say something conciliatory or cautionary? That would have to be determined by the courts as to whether whatever is meant by "overall management" was satisfactory in all the circumstances. There are all sorts of other measures that will inform the court's determination about whether reasonable and prudent precautions were taken, including the effective control over the relevant person or the level of it was reasonable to expect, the nature of the live programme, whether the person was a contributor or the overall measures employed by the broadcaster to ensure the taking of reasonable and prudent precautions and the extent to which the broadcaster carries out an appropriate risk assessment. That all strikes me as RTÉ guidelines kind of stuff. If I am the subject of a defamatory comment or statement, what I want to happen in that moment is immediate and prompt action. The promptness of action must surely be a factor that would need to be considered. I remember being in a difficult TV debate once. I said something and somebody jumped in and said something very critical of what I had just said. The audience clapped which is not a nice experience. I remember in that moment acting instinctively by grabbing the elbow of the person beside me and saying to them sotto voce, "Please, let me in here." Maybe because of the pain they were feeling on their elbow they stopped, and I was in again with my comment, which did not entirely ameliorate the situation. However, the point was that I was still on my feet and seen to be on my feet as it were. If the discussion had moved on and I only got in three or four minutes later, it would have been a very different kind of impression that was left with the public. In live broadcasting, time matters and sequence matters. If something potentially defamatory is said about somebody, it is vital for fairness that there is an immediate intervention. The presenter of the programme may not be in a position to say, "That is false. You can't say that. Everybody listen up. That is not true." I get that. They are not in a position to prove or disprove what has just been said. However, they are in a position to operate on the presumption that it is not true or on the understanding that there is a reasonable possibility that it is not true. If that is the mindset from which they are operating, then they would act immediately. That would be the reasonable approach to expect. Therefore, that is why I am proposing that what would have to be considered before such a defence could succeed would, among the reasonable and prudent precautions, be that where a statement was made which a reasonable or prudent person would conclude was capable of being defamatory, that prompt steps were taken to challenge the statement, to alert viewers or listeners to the problem of possible defamation, the right of the subject to defend his or her good name and to initiate an action ,where appropriate, against the publisher of defamatory material, and, where the person the subject of the statement, or his or her representative, was actually present, to give the person or the representative an immediate opportunity to challenge the published statement. Only that gives the person against whom an accusation is made the kind of equality of arms they deserve. In the context of a live broadcast, a presenter has an enormous responsibility to seek to ensure fair play. They are not acting in loco parentis , but they are the person with responsibility in that moment in the context of the right of a person not to be defamed. That is why I proposed this amendment, which requires that a court must consider whether prompt action was taken to make the necessary challenge and to give the opportunity, if the person is present, to falsify the statement immediately. The purpose of what I am seeking to achieve in the public interest is to put the issue of defamation into the public mind in order that it is not seen to be some kind of closed issue that must be true because it has just been stated on television but, rather, that it be seen as something which is contentious. --- 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