Mr. Colm O'Reilly:

Deputy Pringle poses an interesting question around having more judges. While that is certainly extremely relevant, a proper analysis would be to look at the entire value chain here. As somebody who runs a newspaper, I find that the full gamut is open to individuals. First, they will immediately send a letter and then the matter ends up in a legal process. The Press Council is an important tool that allows people who believe they have been defamed and injured by any publication to seek for that to be corrected. That is an underutilised option because at the moment we are starting further down the process, rather than at the start. There are a number of ways that can happen and the Press Council is one.

The overriding reason people jump into the process of taking a defamation action and sending a solicitor's letter is the size of the awards and, as Mr. Kealey rightly stated, the predictable nature of things. It is not uncommon, particularly for my newspaper, the Business Post, to get a series of letters that has very little to do with defaming somebody. It is more a case of there being the ability to bully us into a process whereby we will just write a cheque in order that the person will go away. Unfortunately, that is a symptom of how the system is broken across a number of different areas. While more judges is a practical solution, there is a much wider problem with the whole value chain.