Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Unsurprisingly, I am not convinced that my concerns are captured within the Bill as it stands, and we will just take that as a given. I have a very serious concern about this and about the potential abuse of the trusted flagger status. Nonetheless, I welcome the wording, some of which goes some way towards assuaging that concern.

In terms of an entity that is partisan but respected, I am thinking of one in particular, but I honestly could not live with the grief if I named it, so I am not going to. Let us say we are talking about an entity with very fixed views in regard to women accessing healthcare. It uses its position as a respected entity or institute, or whatever we want to call it, to apply for trusted flagger status, to which there are no impediments given it is an educational establishment and does research and all of that.

It may then use its status as a trusted flagger in a vexatious way to frustrate the work of an organisation on the other end; for example, an organisation that thinks that women should have access to healthcare. I just do not think there are enough checks and balances in place within the legislation to ensure that cannot be done. I know of organisations and entities that are on the one hand very respected and on the other hand would be quite capable of engaging in practices to frustrate the activities of entities that may be described as their opponents, or people who hold differing views to them, politically, morally or otherwise.

My interest is in making sure the trusted flagger system works. For it to work, it cannot in any way, shape or form be seen to be partisan. I just do not think there is enough in this to ensure that. I keep using that word. There are better words, but I do not have them right now. We need to ensure that just cannot happen or, to the greatest extent possible, that it is stopped. We know there are entities that are quite capable of frustrating, being vexatious or taking vexatious complaints for the purpose of frustrating the activities of another organisation. That is what my amendments are seeking to do.