THE CURRENT coroner for east Mayo and former president of the Law Society of Ireland, Patrick O’Connor, has been appointed as a new independent member of the Press Council of Ireland.
He replaces the former chairman of the Labour Court, John M Horgan, who resigned his position earlier this month following the council’s decision not to publish dissenting opinions with its judgments.
Mr O’Connor (55) has 30 years’ experience as a solicitor and is chairman of the Mental Health Tribunal, the appeal board of the Irish Institute of Actuaries, and the appeals panel of the Irish Rugby Football Union.
The 13-member Press Council, which was established last year, takes decisions on cases of significance or complexity about the press referred to it by the Press Ombudsman, Prof John Horgan.
Its hearings are held in private, and it decides on each case by interpreting the code of conduct signed up to by newspapers. Once it reaches a decision, its judgment on each complaint is published.
In an opinion piece published in this newspaper earlier this month, Mr Horgan said he had wanted the council to publish any dissenting opinion along with every judgment. The council would do nothing to establish its credibility by “holding up a facade of unanimity where such may not exist”.
“The Press Council, above all, should be the last one to suppress minority or dissenting opinions for the sake of collegiality,” he wrote.
However, former TCD provost Prof Thomas Mitchell, chairman of the Press Council, said at the time that Mr Horgan and the council’s other members had had a very fundamental and honest difference of opinion about how the council could most effectively fulfil its mission.
“The rest of the council felt it was perfectly appropriate to record in the minutes an expression of dissent, but they did not feel it should be part of the final judgment,” Prof Mitchell said.