Dr. Michael McNamara:

To clarify, this goes back to my earlier point about section 8 of the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act serving as well. It is very important to understand that. It was not the public order Act in its totality. It was just regarding section 8, which outlines our authority to request people to desist from certain behaviour and request them to leave a situation. My point in that regard was to have some consistency . It would make it easier from a practical point of view if we are not dealing with two pieces of legislation for essentially doing the same thing. The Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act could possibly be amended to deal with some of the prohibited behaviour. We could then have one provision to deal with requesting people to leave a particular vicinity. That is the point I was trying to make.

That goes back then to the whole definition of the zones and the curtilage because everything is triggered on the clarity of the zones. Curtilage is a very loose term. There is no clarity in law as to what curtilage actually means and how far it is from the property. Then, if we put 100 m on top of that, where is the outside line? That is what will trigger us in terms of exercising that power to request or give a warning. All of that is linked. Along with that, there is a definition of a public place within the new Bill. It may be helpful for consistency purposes if consideration is given to aligning that with a definition of a public place under the Criminal Justice (Public Order) Act. Therefore, we are again dealing with consistency. It makes it that bit easier from an implementation and practical point of view.