Interesting to read the details of the SIPO inquiry into Monaghan Independent Councillor, Séamus Treanor over an election leaflet. Treanor's leaflet was, according to SIPO:

"deliberate and considered and were designed to pit one group of the community against another,"

And:

...contained the assertion that 92 per cent of refugees were "deemed to be bogus", and that "criminals [are] coming into this country without background checks", the commission found that the figure was not supported and that the language used by Cllr Treanor was deliberately emotive, open-ended and accusatory.

A false claim in the leaflet in relation to access to welfare benefits was calculated to "denigrate and anger", the commission found.

An inaccurate claim in the leaflet in relation to the allocation of housing to economic migrants in Co Monaghan was found to be "particularly egregious" given the ease with which the councillor could have ascertained the true facts

Tellingly:

A solicitor for Cllr Treanor told a hearing held by Sipo in November that his client's opinions were "a matter to be corrected by his political opponents, and not by Sipo".

However, in a report published on Wednesday, the commission said that while it acknowledged and respected the right of councillors under the Constitution to freely express their convictions and opinions, that provision was "subject to public order and morality".

The right to freedom of expression cannot be presumed to extend to the freedom to publicise inaccurate statements targeting particular groups of people, it ruled.

This seems to me to be a key distinction and one that is as important as the difference between freedom of speech and the demand that people have to listen to what is said.  Far too long discussions on this have been mired in the idea of freedom of speech being an absolute when, of course, we know from everyday experience, it is contingent upon a range of factors. This isn't to diminish the necessity for robust argument and disagreement, but freedom of speech to offer mistruths and evasions isn't freedom of speech at all.