The High Court has given Caroline Joyce seven days to issue proposed defamation proceedings against Mayo Travellers Support Group and Edith Geraghty, after finding the application was brought within the statutory two-year limit and that an extension was justified.
In a judgment delivered on 10 February 2023, Mr Justice Dignam ruled on Joyce’s application for leave to bring the claim after the ordinary one-year limitation period. The court did not decide the substance of the proposed defamation case.
Joyce worked for the support group as a Family Support Worker/Researcher from December 2018 until January 2020. She says four supervision reports, dated between March 2019 and February 2020, attributed defamatory comments about her to a colleague referred to in the judgment as “Ms Murphy”. Joyce alleges the reports were fabricated. The judgment records those as allegations, and makes no finding on them.
The reports were in Ms Murphy’s personnel file. The court accepted 24 February 2021, when the group provided her with a copy of the file following a data access request, as the date of first publication for the limitation application. The group had argued that the reports were published when they were created. The judge rejected that argument, finding that completing or filing a document does not itself establish publication to a third party. He said there was no evidence that anyone else had seen the reports earlier.
The judge accepted Joyce’s explanation that she waited for Ms Murphy’s permission to use information from her personnel file, given Ms Murphy’s concerns about possible consequences for her employment and private life. Joyce received permission in March 2022, and the judge considered that she then moved reasonably promptly. He did not consider her illness and cancer treatment, on the evidence provided, a sufficient explanation for the delay.
The group did not provide evidence of specific prejudice from allowing the claim to proceed. The judge considered the alleged statements’ potential impact on Joyce’s professional reputation and career, while stressing that he was making no findings on the underlying dispute. He concluded that the prejudice to Joyce if she could not pursue the claim would significantly outweigh the prejudice to the respondents.
The order grants Joyce leave to institute proceedings in the terms of her draft Plenary Summons, with seven days from the judgment date to issue them. It does not determine liability or the merits of the proposed claim.