Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
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Aengus Ó Snodaigh (SF), Dublin South-Central

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this. It is quite an important matter and not the first time we have been addressing this in legislation. It is important we do so to ensure the well-resourced corporations can no longer use the threat of legal cases to prevent the disclosure or exposure of wrongdoing or criminal acts by those corporations or by their agents, and the like, and that there are protections here for other civil and consumer cases. We should be encouraging whistleblowers in particular and giving them all the protections. By given them protections we are standing with the logic behind this but we need to fully adhere to those protections so there is no undermining of the systems. We have seen some of that only recently with the discussion on the Garda Síochána whistleblower section resigning because they did not have faith in their own whistleblowing and how the disclosures were being treated by that organisation. We cannot just pass the legislation. We have to act accordingly and ensure the protections are there.
The free press and free debate have to be protected, as other Deputies have said, though a free press and free debate are not unfettered. We do and we must defend the free press, especially in the era we are living in and when there are moves to silence the press and to hamper it from publishing the truth. It is important for us in a democracy that we understand what the free press stands for, how it defends us in our democracy and how the truth needs to be what is published. We have seen big organisations using the threat of legal proceedings to threaten those who are intent on taking a court case. People are threatened with bankruptcy, their home being taken or whatever. We all know of people who have backed off and who have sometimes sought help in a different way to try to expose wrongdoing. The threat of bankrupting a person is something we need to stand up against and that is why this legislation is to be welcomed.
We also need to live up to it as a State because the State Claims Agency is one of the organisations that threatens people who are taking cases against the State and it has managed to force people. Even though that agency understands it is in the wrong its instructions are to fight cases that are unjust or where a wrong has been perpetrated against a citizen. The thalidomide survivors are an example. They still have not been granted the recognition and the financial compensation they deserve for the wrong done by the State. There are others. There is the Air Corps chemical poison group in which each individual had to take a case themselves rather than collectively. The threat, therefore, was that they would be bankrupted if they did not win the case. It was a question of being forced into silence or poverty. When we are passing legislation aimed at the private sector the State also has to take note of it.
I welcome the commentary about social media. At least journalists are known and their names are printed. In social media people hide and you cannot take cases against them.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29