Another day, another conference. Today, the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin hosted a conference on the government’s reform plans relating to the defamation, privacy and broadcasting. I think that it was an important contribution to a crucial debate. Personal highlights included my colleage Eoin Carolan’s superb conceptual discussion of press freedom in this context (on his birthday, I think; and if I’m right: happy birthday, Eoin!), Dearbhail McDonald’s insights into practical journalism, and Paul Drury’s combative speech that the regulation of the press is a bad idea and won’t work anyway.

I talked about the proposed Press Council from the 2003 Report of the Legal Advisory Group on Defamation to the 2006 Bill. Read the rest of this entry »

This year, summer ended and term began with the Legal Education Symposium hosted today by the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin in association with Dillon Eustace, Solicitors. I have spent all of September working on this. I blame Daithí, who – to be fair – has also spent all of September working on it too.

This was something we both felt had to happen. Read the rest of this entry »

I believe it to be the case that RTE used to broadcast Irish dancing on the radio, not just the sound of music for Irish dancing, but the sound of feet dancing. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but in retrospect it seems a bit surreal. I was reminded of that today, listening to a programme in BBC Radio 4’s ‘Meet the Bloggers‘ short series.

Blogging on the radio seems as surreal as dancing on the radio. Read the rest of this entry »