Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is absolutely clear that the anonymity of individuals who are engaged in family law litigation, be it adoption, marital breakdown, civil partnership issues or issues relating to children, has to continue to be preserved. That remains part of our law. The provisions that will allow for members of the press to attend are designed and intended to ensure that individuals' anonymity is preserved, not just in the context of names not being published, but also in that any information that could result in individuals being identified cannot be published. That is clearly set out in the context of the provisions contained in the Bill and in the connectivity between this Bill and original provisions in the Civil Liability and Courts Act 2004.

The "bona fide representatives of the Press" term is a term that is used in different legislative Acts. In the context of reporting serious sexual offences, for example, rape offences, reporters can and have been able to attend court. They are required to comply with anonymity provisions. I do not believe that there is a need to define further what is meant by "bona fide representatives of the Press". It does not have to be that an individual is a member of the NUJ if he or she is a press reporter. In practice to date, this has not given rise to difficulty in any other area of the law. There is no reason it should bring some additional difficulty in this area of the law.

I expect that the way this will work ultimately in practice will largely reflect the way that court reporting currently works, where there is an identified group of reporters who generally attend at our courts, be they local Circuit or District courts throughout the country or the High Court or Supreme Court, to report cases. Of course, people come and go. New members of the press take up that sort of reportage and others may move on to other areas of work, but they can readily identify themselves to court registrars. This has worked informally extremely well for many years and has not given rise to any difficulty. The judges dealing with family law cases will be familiar with dealing with members of the press in other areas in which they have worked and I do not envisage any particular difficulty arising.

Clearly, if a family law case was to be heard and if the judge had any doubt about an individual who was sitting in court as to whether he or she was a bona fide member of the press or if the parties to the court case or their lawyers had concerns if, for example, someone turned up sitting at the back of the court who happened to be a next door neighbour and claimed to be a bona fide member of the press, I do not think that it requires much ingenuity or imagination as to how a court or a judge would approach that issue. I think that this is a practical, common sense measure using a description with which we are all already familiar.

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