Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

The Privacy Bill implements a commitment contained in the agreed programme for Government of 2002 that the Government would, "in the context of a statutory Press Council and improved privacy laws, move to implement reforms of libel laws designed to bring them into line with those of other states". The recent judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the Wainwright case is of interest in the context of a need for legislative provision on privacy. In that decision, which was handed down in September, the court found that in the circumstances in English law in which there was no general tort of invasion of privacy, the applicants did not have available to them a means of obtaining redress for the interference with their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. This is of interest in that the court made a direct finding that the absence of a tort of invasion of privacy did not amount to a proper vindication of people's privacy rights under the convention.

I also note that the Bill is now before the Seanad and is awaiting Second Stage debate there. Fine Gael has suggested that the Bill should be withdrawn, whereas the Labour Party has welcomed the introduction of legislation in this area, in principle.

The report of the working group on privacy, which led to the introduction of the Privacy Bill 2006, contained a number of key conclusions. It pointed out that the absence of any clearly defined and comprehensive cause of action in Ireland to provide for a definite remedy for violations of privacy interests was undesirable. It found that the arguments in favour of the introduction of such a clear statutory cause of action outweighed the arguments against it. The working group, which was chaired by Mr. Brian Murray SC, evaluated the arguments for and against a written privacy law.

I do not want to muzzle the media in any way. For example, if a television presenter has just given birth to a child and a newspaper sends a photographer disguised as a nurse into the room where she is nursing her child in the first few hours after the birth, I want to ensure that the woman in question has an effective remedy against the newspaper in question. That is not an imaginary case — many of us have knowledge of a case of that nature. We have to protect people's rights without unduly affecting the rights of the media to cover matters of public importance. It is difficult to achieve a balance between those two sets of rights. I look forward to achieving that balance in the best way possible in the course of the passage of the legislation in question through the Oireachtas.

It seems to me that doing nothing is no longer a sustainable option, under European convention law, in the aftermath of the Wainwright case. If that is not a sustainable option, we have to do something in this area. Rather than arguing about points of abstract principle, I would prefer to argue about the nitty-gritty of the exact content of our privacy law to ensure it protects people who need protection. We need to strip away the protection that the defamation law used to afford to people who abused it. Such people were able to engage in misbehaviour in the sure and certain knowledge that our defamation and privacy law was such that they were protected to the detriment of the common good.

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