The European Court may be the only way to force politicians to bring Irish libel laws into line with most EU countries and the United States, the chairman of the ESB National Media Awards judging panel, Mr Michael Mills, warned yesterday.
Mr Mills, former ombudsman and political correspondent of the Irish Press, was speaking at the awards ceremony in Croke Park, where Mary Wilson, RTE's Legal Affairs Correspondent, was presented with the overall Journalist of the Year award and a £2,000 cheque for her coverage of the Catherine Nevin murder trial and for a documentary on Ms Nora Wall, the former nun.
Brendan Glacken of The Irish Times won the features category award for his Times Square column, while the paper's retired GAA correspondent, Paddy Downey, was presented with a Hall of Fame lifetime achievement award for his contribution to Irish sports journalism during his 30 years with The Irish Times.
Susan McKay of the Sunday Tribune won the Print Journalist of the Year award, while Ursula Halligan of TV3 received the Television Journalist of the Year prize and Paul Cunningham of RTE was named Radio Journalist of the Year. Carl O'Brien of the Irish Examiner was presented with the Young Journalist of the Year award.
Gene Kerrigan of the Sunday Independent won the award in the Analysis and Comment section while the prize for News and Current Affairs went to John Walshe, education editor of the Irish Independent. Con Houlihan received an award for coverage of the arts in Magill magazine while the provincial press award went to Angela Doyle of the Roscommon Herald.
In a sharply-worded speech on Ireland's libel laws, Mr Mills said there was an urgent need for reform, but it was clear that changes in the law were not a high priority on the political agenda. "Different governments have been promising to amend the libel laws, but nothing has been done despite a series of proposals for change put forward almost 10 years ago by the Law Reform Commission."
In a challenge to the Tanaiste, Ms Harney, he said that she had promised amending legislation this year. "But we are now within two months of the end of the year and there is no sign of anything coming down the line."
Mr Mills praised the quality of journalism in Ireland and said standards in investigative journalism in particular remained consistently high. "Many of the scandals disclosed in the past year in the various tribunals had already been exposed in the national media," he said.
"The Irish public is now well informed on the level of corruption in business and political life. The pity is that it took so long for this corruption to be brought into the light. Much of the difficulty arises from the libel laws, which have remained unchanged over the years in the face of massive changes in our society."
The Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, who presented the awards in the company of Mr Billy McCann, the ESB chairman, said that coverage of the courts and Northern Ireland in the past year had impressed her particularly.
The citation to Paddy Downey was for the "depth of his knowledge of Gaelic games, which added immensely to the quality of his elegant writing in The Irish Times during 30 years up to his retirement in 1994".
Brendan Glacken was praised for the "consistently high standard of his regular columns in The Irish Times - a difficult discipline for any writer but one which he fulfilled with great humour and consistency".