Mr. Declan Doyle:

I respectfully agree with Mr. Harty on the burden of proof. It is impossible to prove a negative. I welcome, on behalf of the Bar Council, Senator McDowell's impassioned plea for the retention of juries. We support it and repeat our submissions in that regard. It is a trap that could easily be walked into under pressure. I urge legislators to listen to people who do not have skin in this game - we are honest brokers in that regard - and do not do anything rash about the abolition of juries.

The only other thing I would say is more in response to Senator Ruane's questions about innocent publication and social media. She was seeking opinion on retweeting and so on. That is a time bomb. Even when the new legislation is drafted and brought into law, we will all be back here in a few years when the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg and our own Supreme Court deal, as they will have to, with the vexed question of the circumstances in which Internet service providers and platforms can be considered liable or publishers. That is a time bomb waiting to go off, and nobody knows which way it will go. Of course, they have an immunity under section 27 and the various European directives but when they are put on notice that immunity is potentially lost. It is definitely a bomb that will go off some time in the next ten years and the Oireachtas will have to deal with that.