Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for joining us today for a conversation that has been illuminating and helpful to us, as legislators, in how we approach a topic that is becoming exceptionally challenging. Mr. Dooley used a beautiful phrase a few minutes ago, "contract of truth". Public representatives sign up to such a contract when we first put our names forward for election. I have concerns, which I have stated publicly recently, that, through their use of litigation, some public representatives are seeking - it is perhaps inadvertent, but it is what they are doing ultimately - to weaken or undermine that contract. Every one of us needs to reflect on and have a great degree of pride in what we have achieved as a democracy in the past 100 years. Any objective international analysis of Ireland's press freedom and freedom of speech consistently puts us in the top ten worldwide, but we can never take that for granted. It is always under threat and perhaps it will be even more so in the next ten, 20 or 30 years. I appeal to Members of these Houses, who are an essential part of our democratic process and should champion our democracy and all it stands for, to reflect before they take any formal litigation against any member of the press, whether individual journalists or media outlets, when we have a robust, fair and transparent process provided by the Press Council. By doing the alternative, such as was done recently in one instance in the targeting of an individual journalist, they are weakening the hand of the media in general to be forensic and forthright in their analysis and reporting of how we perform as public representatives and how the Government performs. It is important to reflect on that.

We covered this topic extensively earlier. Mr. Dooley discussed earlier whether it would be a wise move for the Press Council to be able to award some kind of financial compensation to people who feel they have been defamed or their name has been in some way sullied as a result of the actions of a journalist or media outlet. Let us look at the model of the Injuries Resolution Board, formerly the Personal Injuries Assessment Board, PIAB; there are significant differences between the two, but the PIAB sets out to reduce the cost of litigation in general and give people an easily navigated and effective mechanism for taking a case for personal injury. Is any of the witnesses aware of a global example of an organisation resembling a press council that has the capacity to make small financial awards, not on the scale of what might happen in a formal litigation process, but that might seek to dissuade people from going down the litigation route and encourage them instead to pursue a press council option? We might go with that for the moment. Can Mr. Dooley delve a little further into why that is not a good idea?