Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have carefully examined this structure. Last year I held discussions in London with colleagues there with long experience of this type of legislation. In fact, I was asked to make a presentation on our legislation, which is now regarded as cutting edge. I made several changes to the original draft on foot of these discussions and the experience in the United Kingdom. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald may be surprised to learn that one such change was to remove the good faith requirement which was included in the original UK legislation. A person could have a malevolent motivation, but if the accusation is true, the motivation does not enter into it. I have personal experience of this in the case of the Morris tribunal. One of the most egregious discoveries was revealed because a spouse was not best pleased with the actions of her husband and she exposed certain things. The UK legislation would not have catered for this because it was not a disclosure in good faith. The fact that something is true, or that the person believes it to be true, is enough.

I also removed the public interest requirement. Something need not even be in the public interest. Based on experience in the UK system, the argument goes that this requirement was too high a hurdle and cases that were demonstrably true were defeated in the courts because they did not pass the public interest test. As a result, I removed this requirement also.

There are low thresholds to avail of the protections included in the Bill. If we reflect on it, the threshold caters for believing what a person is saying publicly is not true, although he or she believes it to be substantially true. There are two caveats. One is that the person believes it to be substantially true. We need not believe all of it is true. If the person believes the bulk of it is true, he or she is sheltered by the protections included in the Bill. By any international comparison, that is a low threshold.