Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The purpose of this subsection is to make it clear that the failure or refusal of a plaintiff to respond to attempts by or on behalf of the defendant to elicit the plaintiff's version of events shall not imply consent to the publication or entitle the court to draw an inference. That is the fundamental purpose of this subsection and I have no difficulty with that. In fact, the additional words were introduced for the purpose of trying to strengthen the hand of a plaintiff in this situation by making it clear that the simple publication of a denial would not be sufficient cover for a publisher in those circumstances. I agree the language is somewhat tortuous and complicated and I am quite happy to table an amendment on Report Stage to delete the formula altogether. If Senators have other ideas on the subject they may table amendments on it if they can see some way of capturing that idea in the subsection.