Dr. Michael Foley:

I knew straight away what would happen. If you put the names up then everybody says straight away: "I am not going to write about him. I am not going to have anything to do with that person." Then the chilling effect becomes even colder.

The other problem is that when we talk about SLAPPs, we are talking about oligarchs and whatever, but it is often quite a small issue. If we ring somebody and say: "I am running a story tomorrow about your company" or this, that and the other. They say: "We are getting a lawyer onto this straight away." You could dare say: "Stuff it, I am going to run it anyway" or you say: "Um, maybe not." That is small. That may not go anywhere further. That might be it, but it is still in a way like a junior SLAPP, and you cannot quantify them. I think it would be very difficult. It is great that Ms Ní Mhainín is able to show that there are a handful of cases which we can use as examples, where we can see the impact. It is probably very rough being Mark Tighe at the moment. He is a very good journalist, but he has got people going after him for a couple of stories. When RTÉ comments on the story, then they go after him again. The short answer is that, unfortunately, it is difficult to quantify.