Mr. Mark Harty:

I will come in on that point with a contrary view, if I may. I primarily deal with non-media defendants where the issue arises. A difficulty that has arisen is where people have been defamed by way of credit reports, for example, that were put in three or four years previously. Those reports had not been uncovered because the people in question were not notified of them. It is only when they sought to renegotiate a mortgage, for example, that they discovered an utterly erroneous report was put in four or five years previously. That is a problem that arises, unfortunately, because there is no discoverability test set out in the Statute of Limitations as currently enacted. Although it is undoubtedly true that in media cases a person will know the world at large has been told something bad about him or her, it does not necessarily arise in other situations, potentially including online defamation. Although the statute may be correct, the introduction of some form of discoverability test might be appropriate in certain circumstances.