Maurice Hayes (Independent)

I had thought the purpose of this provision was to enable people to avoid litigation if they did not want to enter into it and that people who might be satisfied with an apology could receive one. However, if people wanted to go on to litigate thereafter, consequently both sides would start from scratch as though, in a sense, the apology had not been given. There has always been a difficulty in that newspapers were either reluctant to, could not or were advised not to make an apology and have dragged people in.

I experienced a case of this nature myself. A couple of years ago, a morning newspaper, which was neither the Irish Independent nor The Irish Examiner, carried an article suggesting that, in pieces I had written about Northern Ireland, I was acting as a spokesman for the Irish Government, thereby destroying my independence. I knew and respected the young man who wrote the article and all I wanted was to get straight to the point and get him to state this was wrong and no more. Although we eventually reached this point, to do so we were almost obliged to ignore lawyers on both sides.

It is in both the public interest and in the interests of those who simply want their names cleared quickly or who want what was in error cleared quickly and disposed of with an apology.