Brian Lenihan Jnr (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)

The advice available from the Attorney General's office and the parliamentary counsel is that the provision, as drafted, is clear in providing that a person has a single cause of action in relation to multiple publications subject to subsection (2) where the court may grant leave to a person to bring more than one defamation action in respect of a multiple publication where it considers that the interests of justice so require and the definition in subsection (3).

The general rule is that only one cause of action will lie in respect of a multiple publication by a person of the same defamatory statement whether made contemporaneously or not. This is designed to prevent a person taking a defamation action as a result of an article published in a paper, which is read by a certain number of persons on that day, from returning to take a further action in a few years' time because another person who finds the old copy of the paper reads the article and tells the person in question that he or she is angry or upset by the content of the article. It would be clear from the circumstances involved that it is still the same publication and not a republication.

It does not affect the multiple publication by a number of different persons of the same or similar defamatory statement. In that instance, more than one cause of action would result. The proposal from Senator Regan does not add any additional clarity and I do not see any reason for its inclusion in regard to the ownership of publications and the nature of publication of defamatory statements.