Derek McDowell (Labour)

He might be much happier to have the Supreme Court state this was never worth more than €20,000 and that one should forget about the €500,000. I imagine if an individual were concerned rather than an institutional defendant, it could be very punitive to send the case back to the High Court for a second trial. It could be very onerous. For example, if a politician were being sued for a remark he made and he was told the award was too high but he could have another trial in the High Court, many people would go into the library and take out the pistol at that stage and shoot themselves in the head.

There are two sides to this story. I will examine the matter again to see whether a precondition must be either the parties consenting to it or the party appealing the award. Sometimes both sides appeal. One says it is too much and the other says it is too little. Putting aside the issue of liability, if only one party appeals the quantum, if that party says he or she is happy for the verdict to be substituted, that should be a position with which I presume nobody could argue.

Second, the Supreme Court may independently come to the view that it would be unjust to send a case back to the High Court, either because this was the second time it had been before the Supreme Court or because it was a grotesque award for a trivial matter and the view is that more money should not be wasted bringing it back to the High Court again. If the award was totally out of line with a piffling libel, in those circumstances I can see an argument for making it another precondition that the Supreme Court could decide it would be unjust to remit such a case. I will take a look at those two propositions but I cannot accept the general proposition that at some stage the Supreme Court is totally capable of saying an award is excessive but utterly incapable of saying what would be an appropriate award and doing something about it.