Mr. Daniel McConnell:

I thank the Deputy. The advent of SLAPP cases, as they are known, is a serious and concerning development. I will not talk about any individual case but will instead speak in a broad context. Any mechanism that is used to try to prevent the publication of the story is something we have to combat robustly and fight against because our job is to put stuff in the public domain. Not to talk about any individual politician, but we often put stuff in the public domain that will make the lives of politicians a little bit uncomfortable. That is the natural tension of democracy and what we should be doing.

When legal letters come in and actions are taken clearly to prevent publication they have to be fought against. It is a worrying development from an editors perspective. We are hamstrung by the limitations not only of the commercial pressures we feel but the pretty restrictive defamation culture we have long had to suffer here in Ireland. We have long called for reform of this law to try to give us a more balanced playing field to play against. The law that is going to through the Oireachtas is not perfect.

If someone decides to take an action against me as the editor of theBusiness Postor against the Business Postitself, the onus is on me to prove we did not defame them and not on the individual to prove we defamed them. That imbalance in how the game is played is significant. Then we add the fear of costs escalating and the threat of closure if it goes the whole hog. The worst case scenario is a ten-day High Court action where costs are escalating and we are on the wrong end of that. We are into millions of euro at that point because barristers are not cheap and battling a case is significant. That is the last place we want to go but, ultimately, if you as an editor or you as an organisation feel you are in the right, you have to defend that case and go to that, but you are taking a big risk in doing so.