Editorial: Ireland's belated but welcome plan to reform libel law there will make it less risky to challenge republican bullies

​There are parallels between flaws in the legal systems on both sides of the border.

One such shared flaw, for example, is inflated damages awards in Northern Ireland and the Republic, higher than apply in Great Britain.

One reason for that discrepancy is an instinctive tendency to side with the plaintiff in a case, and to think that it is generous to give big awards if they win. But this is a sentimental approach to justice. It assumes that there is no cost to inflated damages when in fact it means – for example that car insurance premiums are higher in NI than rest of UK.

Both NI and the Republic have been jurisdictions in which the courts have been too friendly to people who take libel actions, both in terms of finding in their favour, and in awarding excess damages. Such sympathy with libel claimants might be popular with sections of the public who think it represents a defence against an unscrupulous press until they consider the sorts of groups that are inclined to take such libel cases. Sometimes they are ruthless and wealthy organisations who seek to crush legitimate criticism of their business. Academics and scientists are among those who can be bankrupted by libel cases.

Concerns about the stifling of fair criticism is why libel laws were reformed more than a decade ago in Great Britain. The DUP and Sinn Fein blocked reform here until Mike Nesbitt got a private members’ bill passed in 2022.

This meant that, presumably inadvertently, the DUP made it easier for some of the worst libel bullies, Irish republicans, to take cases. This have made critics of violence fearful of condemning terrorists and their apologists.

Sinn Fein’s tendency to resort to the courts in the Republic, like its tendency to do so in NI, has hastened Ireland’s own very welcome, albeit belated, plans to reform their libel laws. Costs and damages can be particularly high and ruinous there, making reform all the more urgent.