Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Can I speak please? The limited professional experience was given as best he could to judges who knew they were getting only limited professional opinion but it was a crisis and they had to move and think fast. The judges would have liked to have heard more and would have loved to hear what we now have the benefit of but they did not have it. The Minister of State, Deputy Creighton, said they made a judgment, which was a contained judgment for that case, as best they could. It does not travel as a precedent.

Deputy McNamara provided a definition of obiter dicta, which contained one word that does not make quite what it seems. I want to give an example of how framing of information can lead to a different understanding and a different result.

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