Mr. Peter Feeney:

There is no doubt whatsoever but that the level of awards in Ireland and the legal costs associated with defamation have a significant detrimental impact on Irish journalism. I know from talking to editors that when they are faced with a risk of being sued for defamation and pulling that part of the story, often nowadays, they decide for commercial reasons that the wiser thing to do is pull that part of the story. That is, therefore, the dead hand impact on investigative journalism.

I know that in the past, editors and proprietors would say that if they gave this fella €3,000 or €5,000, he might go away. That adds up, however, if there are 30 people and someone says that to get them to go away. The newspapers will know that legal costs will greatly exceed that anyway. In the past, there has been a view that if a person has not got much of a case but if €3,000 will get rid of him or her, maybe if we give that person €3,000, he or she will go away. That eats into the resources available for employing journalists. It also impacts on stories.

Again, talking from my own experience, a long time ago in RTÉ, we were doing a report on water bailiffs in County Waterford. Our lawyers told us we had to take this and that out and by the time they had dealt with all the issues they said had to be taken out, the report was incoherent. We actually should not have broadcast that report at all. We should have recognised that so much of it had to be pulled for legal reasons that we could not do it. Remember, the level of proof required in a defamation action is very high. Journalists will say that they have something from a very reliable source but if they cannot bring that source into court to testify and give evidence on their behalf, that is useless really. It is very difficult but it is the sheer level of awards. Citizens are entitled to their reputations, of course, and defamation is important. Giving people €1 million or €400,000 or whatever it happens to be, however, is multiples of what happens in other countries.

I was in Austria a couple of years ago at a conference for press ombudsmen. The local newspapers were all writing about €25,000 that was awarded in a defamation case against a newspaper in Austria and how this was the highest figure ever awarded. A figure of €25,000 in Ireland is nothing. People start off thinking of six figure sums. It is kind of a joke. What re-establishes reputation? If the newspaper is found to be inaccurate and guilty of having printed something inaccurate about a person, that should be his or her reputation re-established. A person should not have to get €100,000. I absolutely understand why citizens are entitled to have their reputations protected and that defamation is important. I do not know why we need €1 million or €500,000 because remember, the lawyers may also be on a percentage of that figure - without being disrespectful to lawyers - to re-establish a person's reputation. I think it is distorted at the moment.

My hope is that the review of the Defamation Act will put in place some measures to bring levels of awards in Ireland down to comparable levels in other countries, which will still maintain the importance of the protection of defamation laws and the importance of people's reputations but yet not damage the media in the process of settlements. That is really for the review of the Defamation Act, however. As I said, a five-year review was built into the 2009 Act. That was in 2014; we are now in 2022 and we have not seen it yet.