Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

The advice from Parliamentary Counsel is that the proposed deletion of "in particular" would remove the requirement that a possible defamatory statement should be clearly understood to refer to a particular person within a class of persons. As I pointed out on Committee Stage, the proposed deletion could conceivably allow a multiplicity of actions by all members of a particular class of persons. It would result in a completely undesirable and unworkable extension of a potential defamation action primarily on the basis of membership of a group rather than on the basis of one's being a readily identified person within a particular group. I oppose the amendment.

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