Retailers should fight false defamation claims and “not take the easy route” of paying out because that just encourages further claims, Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has warned.
He was highlighting a new defence for retailers subjected to defamation claims for challenging people on whether they had paid for goods before leaving a shop.
The provision is part of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill, which includes the abolition of juries in such cases and protections for media organisations against strategic lawsuits against public participation (Slapps), actions taken by usually rich or powerful individuals designed to intimidate media organisations in their coverage of such people.
The Dáil on Wednesday night passed the legislation by 83 votes to 61 and it now goes to the Seanad.
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Mr O’Callaghan said there had been “ill-informed inaccurate commentary” that he had amended provisions of the Bill on protections for retailers. This was “completely incorrect”.
The Minister said the provision was a “very powerful defence” and this power was to “ensure that they aren’t subjected to unnecessary defamation actions”.
Sinn Féin justice spokesman Matt Carthy suggested the Minister talk to retailers because a representative group member had expressed “real concerns” to him that the provision would not do what it was supposed to.
Claims are encouraged when retailers have a “tendency not to contest”, Mr O’Callaghan said. If retailers contest claims which are not valid, “the message will go out to litigants there is no point in taking those claims”, he added.
The Minister also said politicians “should have a thick skin” about commentary in traditional media and “perhaps we should also have a thick skin when it comes to comments made about us online, although that’s a matter for each individual politician”.
Introducing a measure to provide protections to individuals against online defamation, he said “there has to be a statutory response” where “really egregious defamatory statements are made about an individual falsely accusing them of the most heinous and serious offences”.
The Bill also contains a provision to protect media organisations on occasions “where a responsible journalist may have made a mistake in one or two details”.
It was not Mr O’Callaghan’s experience that “the media has gone out of their way to tell lies”.
But Mr Carthy said the Minister was saying this “from the luxury” of representing Fianna Fáil.
It was his experience as a Sinn Féin representative that “there have been instances where our media outlets have published downright lies about my party and they done so knowing that [they] were lies”.
