Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

-----a Minister cannot make such a decision in the House. It must be made by Government.

To come to the second part of the Deputy's question about how we would deal with the article in the Constitution - whether to remove it altogether and say nothing on the subject, or go along with the recommendations of the Joint Committee on the Constitution - all of these things will be taken into account and, based on the advice of the Attorney General, the Government will make a decision.

On the general principle, as I said before, the Government had three choices: we could forget about the Defamation Bill altogether, amend the Defamation Bill - as I said many times before in the House, the Attorney General gave strong advice that it was imperative that Members of the Oireachtas, as well as the Government, not stay silent with regard to the original section 13 of the Defamation Act 1961, which made blasphemous libel an offence punishable by law, as stated in the Constitution - or have a referendum. There were some suggestions. Deputy Flanagan actually agreed with me in the committee-----

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