Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Amendment No. 35 seeks to add "except for the purposes of section 173", after the term "relevant thing". The reason is that our reading of the Bill suggests that the general interpretation of "relevant thing" does not cover those relevant in section 173 because in that section there is a specific and totally different definition, at the top of page 150 of the Bill. While structures or sites are meant by "relevant thing" everywhere else in the Bill, a "relevant thing" in section 173 means equipment, tools, machinery and vehicles used to damage or destroy structures or sites in an offence under the Bill. Again, our reading may be incorrect and if so, I ask the Minister of State to correct us but I wanted to bring this to his attention.

Amendment No. 38 wants to expand the criteria for "relevant thing" to include a place which was associated with or significant to the planning, development or consequences of an historical event or period or the life of an historical person. The best way to explain this is with the example of the high-profile case of the recently demolished O'Rahilly house. One could argue that no high-profile, historic event took place in there, unlike the General Post Office, GPO, or the Moore Street battlefield site, and yet it is of enormous historical significance because so many historical events were planned in that location. Therefore, it has a connection to wider historic events and expanding that definition would allow for the consideration of the inclusion of buildings such as the O'Rahilly house under the definition of "relevant thing".