Rabbitte said there was "no doubt" that O'Brien was very seriously libelled but, "to a lay-person, it seems extraordinary that the jury could not be made aware that an award made previously by a jury in the same court on the same issue had been overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds that it was excessive".

The result of this, he said, was the jury last Thursday making an award almost three times as great as that overturned by the Supreme Court as excessive.

"The extraordinary thing is that, more than six months ago, justice minister Michael McDowell published a Defamation Bill that would have allowed a judge in a libel case to give guidance to the jury as to the quantum of damages that might be awarded, " he said. "The Defamation Bill is largely uncontroversial, but it has made no progress because the government insists on linking it to a Privacy Bill that is seriously flawed and that has raised very genuine concerns among the media."

The Labour leader said that if it remained the government's position that the two pieces of legislation must proceed in tandem, then McDowell must "urgently address the shortcomings in his Privacy Bill to allow the early enactment of these two bills at the earliest possible date".