Mr. Michael Kealey:

The short answer is that I do not know. I have that paper here but it does not indicate when the increase in judges was introduced.

The Department has done a terrific job in terms of the proposed drafting in regard to SLAPPs in the newspaper world. There is always a slight difficulty with SLAPPs, in that one person's SLAPP is another person's legitimate claim that he or she wants to bring. It is quite difficult sometimes to find that line.

What I would say about the defamation regime, if I can call it that, and the regime that we are under, is that I work in a newspaper, which has online as well, and we have lawyers in 364 days a year. We are now in a position where we have to employ a lawyer 364 days a year to make sure that stuff that goes into newspapers does not lead to litigation, because the cost of losing litigation is so incredibly high.

In terms of real-life examples in a newsroom, let us take a Sunday newspaper. As a general rule, a Sunday newspaper works a little bit longer on a story. They work it over a period of time. Before they publish, they will of course go to the person they are about to write about and they say they have a number of questions. Sometimes they get answers but most of the time they do not. Most of the time when they ask the questions, they get a solicitor's letter. We get a solicitor's letter every second Friday before a story goes out. We still manage to get a number of those stories into the public domain, but sometimes we do not.

I suspect that the experience in my news organisation is echoed throughout every other news organisation in the country. It is particularly difficult for local newspapers. My news organisation, which is a large one by Irish standards, is terrified of one big claim. One big claim would almost certainly close down a local newspapers or a local radio station. That is all it would take. The regime that we currently have facilitates that. I think that is why the point on reform is very well made. That is why we are moving up, but let us not lose the chance that we have now.