Detailed plans for the establishment of a new press complaints council and a new code of conduct for newspapers are to be published later today.
The council, which will operate independently of the industry and Government, will be established on a non-statutory basis, but will be recognised under new defamation legislation, which is currently before the Seanad.
The council is to include 13 members, seven of whom will be independent public figures. A further five will be drawn from representatives of newspapers and magazine publishers, while one member will be drawn from the National Union of Journalists. The chairperson will be one of the independent members.
The seven independent members are to be appointed by a three-person committee of independent figures. The names of the appointment committee will be announced today.
The council will come into effect once the defamation legislation currently before the Houses of the Oireachtas passes into law.
It will act as the overall decision-making body relating to a new procedure to enable members of the public to lodge complaints about press behaviour.
A full-time press ombudsman, to be funded by the industry, will be created under the system. The ombudsman will receive and process all complaints from the general public.
The ombudsman will investigate all complaints, with the option of acting as a mediator in cases where a resolution can be found to the satisfaction of the complainant and the publication.
In more serious cases, or where a mediated settlement cannot be reached, the ombudsman will make a finding on the complaint. In most serious cases, the ombudsman will be able to refer complaints directly to the council for adjudication.
The council will also act as an appeals body for ombudsman decisions.
The council and ombudsman will not have the power to impose financial sanctions, however. Under the proposals, publications that sign up to the council will be required to abide by a code of conduct, which will also be published today.
The code outlines a broad set of principles, covering areas such as privacy, accuracy and differentiating between comment and fact. It also includes specific provisions relating to children.
The proposals were drawn up by newspaper industry representatives following detailed discussions with Minister for Justice Michael McDowell in recent years on press complaints and defamation law reforms.
The plans had stalled over Government plans, announced last July, for privacy legislation to accompany defamation law reform. However, the newspaper industry now plans to move ahead with the council, after it emerged that Mr McDowell would bring the Defamation Bill separately through the Houses of the Oireachtas, with no indication of when the Privacy Bill would be brought through the various stages before the Dáil and Seanad. Both Bills had been published last summer and introduced together before the Seanad with a view to enacting them simultaneously.
Mr McDowell had been against privacy laws but had bowed to pressure from a number of Fianna Fáil ministers that defamation reform had to be coupled with privacy legislation.
The privacy law proposals were strenuously opposed by the newspaper industry as a threat to press freedoms.