Mr. S?amus Dooley:

I would say that humility is not normally associated with editors. However, the reality is that editors and journalists now realise that they do make mistakes. Douglas Gageby used to always say inThe Irish Timesthat, we do our best, we go home and we start it again tomorrow, or sometimes every Sunday. The objective of the Press Council, quite simply, is to be an effective mechanism to allow the media to apologise if it gets it wrong. We are talking about it as a complaints mechanism. It is also a statement of values and ethics. That also needs to be emphasised. From the point of view of this committee and the justice committee we cannot emphasise enough that the serious harm test is the key that unlocks everything else. In the absence of a serious harm test, everything else within the Act is limited in its effectiveness. What you cannot do as a committee is ensure that journalism survives by the hiring of journalists. That is for another day.