Sir, - On April 21st you printed a letter from Mr Ronan Quinlan of the NUJ in which he said that I had opened my contribution to the recent Seanad debate on libel reform by "suggesting that the objective should be to ensure that newspapers are kept in their place" and that I hoped that any change in the libel laws would lead to newspapers "telling the truth".
I am indeed interested in the truth and in case some of your readers share this interest you might like to note that there was no Seanad debate at that time. The discussion took place as a brief item on the order of business. The official record, which I enclose for confirmation, reads as follows:
"Senator Manning raised the issue of reform of the libel laws. I absolutely agree, we must be very careful. We do not want to go down the road Britain has taken and we must, despite the intensive lobbying by newspaper interests, preserve a decent balance so the individual, in taking on these corporations with huge resources, is not placed at a further disadvantage. I remind newspapers that if they tell the truth, they have nothing to worry about. Why should they be permitted to print lies about decent people? If they do, they should be soaked as hard as possible."
I stand absolutely over what I said.
We did in fact have a debate on libel last Wednesday, May 10th. A few newspapers carried a brief account of this debate but they were careful to include only material favourable to their own cause and scrupulously avoided recording any of the more critical speeches, including my own. - Yours, etc.,
Senator David Norris, Seanad Eireann, Baile Atha Cliath 2.