THE Irish government is to introduce a new defence of “fair approach” into the country’s libel laws, while setting up a statutory press council that allows media “self-regulation” of the industry.

In the first reform of Ireland’s libel laws for 50 years, expected to be approved by the cabinet before Christmas, the so-called Reynolds defence will be written into the statute books. The defence got its name from the former taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, in his famous “one penny” libel action against The Sunday Times.

It allows the media to make inaccurate statements about a public figure as long as they are fair in their methods.

“It will give people in certain cases the right, if they are scrupulous and careful, to plead that they were scrupulous and careful,” said Michael McDowell, the justice minister, in an interview with The Sunday Times.

“And although what they say may not turn out to be true, that it was genuinely believed by them to have been true.”

The libel reform will happen in parallel with the creation of a press council, and the legislation McDowell is proposing will allow courts to take a negative view of newspapers that refuse to participate in the press council.

The council will be able to order newspapers to retract, correct or apologise for mistakes they make. It will also have the right to direct a newspaper to refrain from a particular pattern of behaviour that is in breach of the law. It will not be given the power to levy fines. “It will produce a non-compensatory response,” said McDowell, who does not want the council to be clogged up with claims.

The justice minister only wants to extend the protection of the reformed libel laws to newspapers that agree to work with the press council.

“One of the issues a court could take into account in considering the bona fides of a newspaper that was claiming the Reynolds defence is whether it accords the people it writes about the protection of a press council,” he said. “So a newspaper that ignored it would put itself outside the extra protections it offered in the new definition of libel.”

McDowell has discussed the proposed changes with the National Newspapers of Ireland. He said there was an emerging consensus in the media that a press council with no statutory recognition “isn’t worth a damn”, but that a press council imposed from government would be a bad thing.

“A middle way is a press council that is instituted by the relevant media in Ireland but which complies with criteria set out in a statute and will be recognised as the press council for the purposes of the new law,” he said.

“What I have in mind is a press council that is representative of three primary interests — the public, the media institutions and the journalists.”

He said the body would also be served by “somebody who will act as an ombudsman for people who claim they are being unfairly treated.”

He pointed to bodies such as An Taisce, which has statutory recognition and certain rights in relation to the planning process but was not a government agency, and to the Law Society, the self-regulatory body for the solicitors’ profession.

McDowell said he would also be conducting a major review of the laws on privacy in the light of a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in favour of Princess Caroline of Monaco last June. The court in Von Hanover versus Germany found the German state in breach of the European convention on human rights because it did not afford Caroline sufficient privacy from paparazzi.

“We have virtually no law on what newspapers can and cannot do in terms of people’s private lives,” said McDowell. “Here. you can photograph a celebrity all day, or so we thought, but the court of human rights has told us that this is no longer acceptable, that we have to afford some protection.”

The minister said the review of the privacy law would be very complex and would not be concluded by the time the libel law and press council proposals went to cabinet.

“My view is that generally speaking a privacy law is very difficult to formulate,” he said. “Generally what is meant as a protection for the small and the good becomes a protection for the big and the bad in society — the people who can afford to invoke a privacy law. It is hard to strike a balance between the rights of newspapers on the one hand and the rights of individual on the other.”

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