Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

——but companies are not citizens. I will reconsider the matter between now and Report Stage. It may be better to recast the section to state that a body corporate can only bring a defamation action in respect of a statement made where it has incurred, or is likely to incur, financial loss or where the statement was made with malice. A person could say something about a company or group which was pure malice. The fact that a company trebles its profits in a following year should not be a licence to say anything one likes. People should not, for example, be allowed to say that a very successful and expanding company was poisoning its customers but escape punishment by showing a jury the company's next three years' accounts and saying that, although they may have tried to damage the company, they were not successful in doing so.