Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I move amendment No. 4:

In page 6, to delete lines 18 to 35, and in page 7, to delete lines 1 to 9.

I will also speak to amendment No. 6. Amendment No. 4 is a simple but substantive amendment. We have spoken about this previously. Our principal objection to this legislation is the abolition of juries in all cases. I believe the Minister would privately accept that this is a bad, dangerous and nonsensical position to be adopting. I have not met a single person in the legal world who agrees with this move. This is one of those times when the Government has wanted to be seen to be acting as opposed to actually doing anything that will have a meaningful impact in respect of the operation of the media, the costs awarded by courts and the timeframe that these cases take.

All this will do is remove from High Court defamation cases a fundamental pillar of our legal system that is older than democracy itself in many states. Any defamation case involving anybody should have at least the option of being heard by a jury. Matters of defamation are by their very nature about the value and esteem of one's name. It is Sinn Féin's contention that the ultimate arbiters of that should be a jury of one's peers. They should be entrusted with weighing the balance of rights and harms.

We appreciate the procedural concerns and the risk of disproportionate awards but we do not feel that, as presented by the Minister and his predecessors, they are sufficient justification for curtailing the right to due process. If anything, any of the logic that was in place or could have been put in place has since been discounted. We have had the Higgins judgment, which shows there is now a formula for dealing with substantive awards. All the conventional wisdom would suggest that we will not see the types of excessive award being granted into the future.

I find it deeply regrettable. A number of Members from across the Opposition spoke at length on Committee Stage. We set out very clearly that this was, in essence, the only provision of the legislation that prevented unanimity on its passing through the House. With a bit of humility on the part of the Government by accepting that it had got this wrong, we could have had the Bill passed through the House unanimously. Virtually every other amendment apart from this one is technical in nature on Report Stage. We would have been here for a short number of minutes and got the Bill passed, and the Minister could have said that he had addressed many of the concerns that existed within our defamation laws, particularly the potential use of SLAPPs, through one of the first Bills he brought through the House and that he had the full support of the House in so doing. Instead, the Minister has done something that goes against everybody who has entered into this debate, apart from a few mega-wealthy media owners who want to just simply curtail the rights of anybody to vindicate his or her good name at all costs. The Law Society of Ireland, the Bar Council and the Oireachtas' own pre-legislative scrutiny, with its cross-party report, urged the Government not to go down this line. A previous justice spokesperson by the name of Jim O'Callaghan made a very impassioned case in this House not to go down this line, yet here we are.

I will make a final appeal to the Minister, although it appears that it will fall on deaf ears, to do what he knows is right and not proceed with this provision. The current legislative process for juries in High Court cases is sufficient, but I have gone further and moved half way. In the expectation that the Minister will whip to reject amendment No. 4, we have tabled amendment No. 6. The Minister may rule out the deletion of those sections that delete the role of citizens entirely, but let us take the process of pre-legislative scrutiny and move to an all-Ireland model on this issue. I know it is an area where the Minister shares my views in many respects. Where we can have all-Ireland harmonisation, surely that is a good thing. Why not have the same system in the North where upon application, it would allow a judge to rule that a jury may or may not be suitable for a particular case? Our amendment goes a little bit further, in that it would allow for the provision for the judge to step in on the determination of costs, one of the stated reasons for the inclusion of this provision in the legislation in the first place.

The Minister has options. He can roll back on this daft idea of eliminating juries from High Court defamation cases in its entirety and support amendment No. 4, but if he is not willing to do that, he can meet us half way by supporting amendment No. 6, which allows for the use of a jury to be determined by a judge on application. I believe that would be a sensible middle ground. It is not as far as I would like the Minister to move, but it would be a positive and welcome step if he were to accept it.

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