Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

It was. We had stern rules — the Law Reform Commission report of 1990 called them harsh but I call them stern — that any adult interfering with a young person at an age or in a category prohibited by law took the entire risk. Now the risk is not borne exclusively by the accused, who can wriggle out of it. It will have some strange effects in individual cases including the fact that people who know each other and are friends will be in a worse position than strangers, and that is unacceptable to me.

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