It is certainly my objective to ensure that when this new section is introduced into the Defamation Act it will provide the live broadcast defence to broadcasts where there has been a slight delay. If the defamatory statement is obvious to the people involved in the editorial control, that is one thing, but there can be grossly defamatory things said that are not immediately understood by the majority of people watching to be grossly defamatory.
The responsibility I would expect from a broadcaster is this: if you are presenting a programme and if somebody on that programme, say in a live audience, says something defamatory about me, I would expect you to fight for my reputation as much as you would for your own reputation if they had made the defamatory statement directly to your face in the context of a live broadcast.
Key terms by TF-IDF across 6,814 words from 10 speakers. The summary quotes the highest-scoring sentences verbatim — nothing is paraphrased.
Tellers: Tá, Senators Nessa Cosgrove and Laura Harmon; Níl, Senators Garret Ahearn and Paul Daly.
| Question | Result | Tá–Níl |
|---|---|---|
| Question put: | Carried | 28–19 |
Party shown is the one each member held on 2025-11-12, frozen by a dated join — not their party today. The Oireachtas API publishes no date of birth and returns an empty gender field for every member in this period, so no age or gender breakdown is shown.