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Amendment of Part 3 of Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004
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6. The Act of 2004 is amended in Chapter 2 of Part 3 by inserting the following section after section 40:
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“Prohibition on publication or broadcast of certain matters
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40A. (1) No person shall publish or broadcast or cause to be published or broadcast any information about a matter which would be likely to lead members of the public to identify the parties to proceedings to which a relevant enactment relates or any child to whom those proceedings relate.
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(2) If any matter is published or broadcast in contravention of subsection (1), each of the following persons, namely—
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(a) in the case of publication in a newspaper or periodical, any proprietor, any editor and any publisher of the newspaper or periodical,
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(b) in the case of any other publication, the person who publishes it, and
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(c) in the case of a broadcast, any person who transmits or provides the programme in which the broadcast is made and any person having functions in relation to the programme corresponding to those of an editor of a newspaper,
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shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable—
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(i) on summary conviction, to a class A fine or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or both, or
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(ii) on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €50,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 3 years or both.
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(3) (a) Where an offence under this section is committed by a body corporate and it is proved that the offence was committed with the consent or connivance, or was attributable to any wilful neglect, of a person who was a director, manager, secretary or other officer of the body corporate, or a person purporting to act in that capacity, that person, as well as the body corporate, shall be guilty of an offence and may be proceeded against and punished as if he or she were guilty of the first-mentioned offence.
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(b) Where the affairs of a body corporate are managed by its members, paragraph (a) applies in relation to the acts and defaults of a member in connection with his or her functions of management as if he or she were a director or manager of the body corporate.
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(4) Nothing in this section shall affect the law as to contempt of court.”.
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