Defamation reform long overdue and very welcome

• Published date: 03 March 2022
• Author: Colm O’ Reilly
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

What matters now is that McEntee, unlike her immediate predecessors in Justice, continues her advocacy for genuine reform and prevails on her political colleagues to ensure the recommendations translate quickly into law

There is, after all, ample evidence that the political will to embrace such reform has been less than enthusiastic for many years, despite international criticism of our libel laws for their impact on freedom of expression, and astronomical awards to claimants by juries - sometimes far in excess of awards for catastrophic personal injuries.

McEntee's report to Cabinet recommending significant changes to our defamation laws followed a review of the 2009 Defamation Act, which should have been carried out in 2014.

Under our defamation laws, we have witnessed: - How it has been frequently, and successfully, exploited by wealthy and powerful individuals and organi

sations to prevent the media from publishing public-interest material they did not want in the public domain. - Juries (who do not sit in defamation trials in most other countries) award damages of €10 million for defamatory comments in a press release. - Another award of €1.87million - subsequently reduced by the Supreme Court to €1.25 million - and later appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and found to be in breach of the...