Bird v Iconic Newspapers

• Jurisdiction: Ireland
• Judge: Mr. Justice Maurice Collins
• Judgment Date: 10 July 2025
• Neutral Citation: [2025] IESC 30
• Docket Number: S:AP:IE:2024:000050
• Court: Supreme Court

Between

William Bird

Plaintiff/Respondent

and

Iconic Newspapers Limited

Defendant/Appellant

[2025] IESC 30

Dunne J.

Charleton J.

Woulfe J.

Collins J.

Donnelly J.

S:AP:IE:2024:000050

AN CHÚIRT UACHTARACH

THE SUPREME COURT

Defamation – Qualified privilege – Costs – Appellant appealed against a ruling on the qualified privilege defence – Whether the category of publication at issue was protected by qualified privilege

Facts: The respondent, Mr Bird, on 28 June 2016, issued proceedings, seeking, inter alia, damages for defamation. In its defence, the appellant, Iconic Newspapers Ltd (Iconic), pleaded (amongst other defences) a defence of qualified privilege. The action came on for hearing before the High Court (Owens J) and a jury, commencing on 26 April 2023. Owens J held there was no basis on which the defence of qualified privilege could go to the jury. Owens J allowed the case to go to the jury, which found for Mr Bird. It awarded damages of €75,000. Relying on s. 17(2) of the Courts Act 1981, Iconic submitted that Mr Bird should be limited to Circuit Court costs. Mr Bird submitted that Owens J should grant a special certificate enabling him to recover costs on the High Court scale (as s. 17(2) permitted). Owens J declined to grant such a certificate. The Judge did grant a certificate for one Senior Counsel. Iconic appealed the Judge’s ruling on the qualified privilege defence to the Court of Appeal and Mr Bird cross-appealed on the costs issue. In its judgment of 20 March 2024, the Court of Appeal (O’Moore J) dismissed the appeal and allowed the cross-appeal: [2024] IECA 62. On 2 May 2024, Iconic applied for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. On 9 July 2024, the Panel granted leave to appeal: [2024] IESCDET 85. It considered that the nature and scope of the defence under s. 18(2) of the Defamation Act 2009, and its relationship to the defences under ss. 18(3) and 26 of the 2009 Act, gave rise to issues of general public importance. The Panel considered that leave ought to be granted on the costs issue as it was so closely connected to the substantive issues.

Held by Collins J that this was a case where every element of the interpretative exercise - the pre-existing legal position, the express terms of s. 18(2) itself, the provisions of the 2009 Act as a whole and the constitutional context - all pointed clearly and firmly to the same conclusion: that the category of publication at issue fell outside the scope of s. 18(2) and was not protected by qualified privilege. He dismissed the qualified privilege appeal.

Collins J held that an appellate court should give significant weight to the views of the trial court as regards disputed issues of costs, citing TAO v Minister for Justice [2021] IECA 293. In his view, however, the High Court Judge erred in his approach to s. 17(2) of the 1981 Act by failing to give sufficient weight to the existence and rationale of the discretion conferred by that section and in failing to give adequate weight to the fact that the award made by the jury was only marginally short of the High Court jurisdiction. Collins J held that the High Court Judge also erred in his characterisation of the qualified privilege issues. In the circumstances, Collins J held that the case for exercising the discretion conferred by the Oireachtas was unanswerable and it was wholly unjust to penalise Mr Bird by refusing him a certificate. Accordingly, Collins J held that the order made by the High Court Judge was outside the range of orders reasonably open to him and the Court of Appeal did not err in setting aside that order and substituting the order it did. Collins J dismissed the costs appeal.

Appeal dismissed.

JUDGMENT of Mr. Justice Maurice Collins delivered on 10 July 2025

PRELIMINARY

1 Is the publication by a newspaper of an article mistakenly identifying a person as a tax defaulter protected by qualified privilege so that, provided only that the publication is not actuated by malice, the publisher is shielded against liability in defamation at the suit of that person?

2 That is the essential question presented by this appeal. It raises important questions as to the scope of the defence of qualified privilege and in particular whether and in what circumstances that defence extends to defamatory statements published generally (or, as it is often put in the authorities, published to “ all the world” or the “ world at large”). Those questions in turn raise issues as to the interaction of the common law defence of qualified privilege (effectively preserved by section 18(1) of the Defamation Act 2009 (“ the 2009 Act”)), the statutory qualified privilege defence provided for by section 18(2) of the 2009 Act and the defence provided for in section 18(3), as well as the relationship between those defences and the defence of fair and reasonable publication on a matter of public interest created by section 26 of the 2009 Act.

3 The material facts may be briefly stated. At the relevant time, section 1086 of the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997 (the “ TCA”) required the Revenue Commissioners (“ Revenue”) to publish in Iris Oifigiúil on a quarterly basis a list of delinquent taxpayers (colloquially referred to as the “ Tax Defaulters List”, a usage followed here). 1 The Tax Defaulters List includes the names of persons on whom a fine or other penalty was imposed by a court under the Tax Acts or otherwise in respect of an act or omission relating to tax and, in Part II, the names of persons who have entered into settlements with Revenue in respect of underpaid taxes, as well as details of the settlement reached (certain settlements are excluded from publication but it is not necessary to consider those exclusions further). Section 1086(3) also permits Revenue to cause the list to be publicised in such manner as it considers appropriate and it appears that, in practice, Revenue routinely provides a copy of the list to national and local media outlets.

4 The 7 June 2016 edition of Iris Oifigiúil included a Tax Defaulters List, Part II of which identified ( inter alia) three companies — William Bird (Rollercoaster) Limited, William Bird (Sales) Limited, and William Bird Tramore Limited — as taxpayers that had entered into settlements with Revenue in respect of under-declaration of corporation tax, VAT and/or PAYE/PRSI. The address for each company was stated to be 97 Henry Street, Limerick.

5 The Limerick Leader is a well-known local newspaper published in Limerick. It is published online as well as in hard copy. It is one of a number of local newspapers published by Iconic Newspapers Limited (“ Iconic”), the Defendant in the proceedings and the Appellant in this appeal. In accordance with its usual practice, Revenue sent a copy of the Tax Defaulters List to the Limerick Leader and its edition dated 11 June 2016 (which appears to have been published on 8 June 2016 and to have reached newsstands on 9 June 2016) included an article under the headline “ Major settlements with Revenue in Limerick” (“ the Article”) detailing a number of “ major settlements against Limerick individuals” and including the following statements:

“Funfair/amusement activity operator William Bird, of Henry Street, reached three separate settlements for under-declaration of corporation tax and VAT, under-declaration of PAYE/PRSI and VAT, and under-declaration of corporation tax, in relation to three companies under his name.

In total, the monies paid to Revenue in his case amounted to €183,595.”

This article was also published online (though it was subsequently taken down in response to Mr Bird's complaints about it).

6 William Bird, the Plaintiff in these proceedings and the Respondent in the appeal, was not named or otherwise referred to in the Tax Defaulters List provided to the Limerick Leader and, as a matter of fact, he had no connection to William Bird (Rollercoaster) Limited, William Bird (Sales) Limited or William Bird Tramore Limited. He did not live in Henry

Street, Limerick. He was identified in the Article as a result of a mistake made by the journalist who wrote it. She gave evidence in the High Court but had some difficulty in explaining how she came to make that mistake: it appears that she either simply misread or misunderstood the information contained in the list and/or made an erroneous assumption (one which she made no attempt to verify) that, by reason of their names, the defaulting companies must necessarily be associated with an individual named William Bird. On any view, however, the mistaken identification of Mr Bird in the Article involved a significant lack of care

7 Prior to the publication of the Article, the journalist made no attempt to contact Mr Bird, who is not a public figure of any kind and who was not known to her. Nor did she carry out a search in the Companies Registration Office in order to identify the directors and/or members of the defaulting companies. That is, perhaps, unsurprising. The Article was not, after all, intended or presented as a piece of investigative journalism. Neither was it a piece of “ reportage” — the neutral reporting, without endorsement or adoption, of statements made by others on some subject of public controversy. 2 Rather, the Article reported as fact that Mr Bird had reached settlements with Revenue in relation to three companies “ under his name”, based — so the reader would have understood (and was intended to understand) — on the contents of the latest Tax Defaulters List. The task of accurately reporting the information in the List was not complex or burdensome. Even so — at least in its reference to Mr Bird — the Article here was materially inaccurate.

8 Mr Bird consulted solicitors and on 10 June 2016 they wrote to Iconic complaining that he had been seriously defamed and demanding an apology. Journalist and Iconic alike appeared to have difficulty in appreciating the mistake...