Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, I acknowledge those families affected by the decision in the case of the Director of Public Prosecution and EC v. The Irish Times, Independent News and Media, RTÉ and News Group Newspapers who have not been able to remember their children publicly, although I doubt that a second goes by in which these children are not remembered privately. I acknowledge those families with great compassion. Deputy Higgins spoke about one such family in particular. Their pain and desire to honour their children publicly is central to the efforts by Deputies Murnane O'Connor and Jim O'Callaghan, Senator McDowell and the Ministers at the Department of Justice to bring this Bill forward.

I also want to speak about other families and to offer another perspective on this legislation. I want to speak with compassion for the families in question in a way which I hope does not take away from the compassion I expressed for the first group of families. The other families I want to speak about have a slight concern arising from this case and the impact the legislation we are discussing may have. There are instances in which the unlawful killing of a child results from postnatal depression. In these cases, people may be responsible for the death of their children but are not guilty by reason of insanity. As we know, postnatal depression can be extremely serious. I am thinking, in particular, of two men in my constituency today. One of these men lost his wife as a consequence of postnatal depression and his raising his four-year-old son alone. The other man lost his three-year-old girl as the consequence of an unlawful killing arising from postnatal depression and is now raising his other, younger child alone because his wife is being treated for her illness in a psychiatric services setting. In the latter case, the young girl was, of course, the victim of a crime, an unlawful killing, but we all understand mental illness well enough to understand that the causes of, treatments for and possible recovery from these illnesses can be very different. All of those things are beyond my professional capacity but I believe that the House acknowledges that this issue is complex and sensitive and that the causes and impacts of cases can vary considerably.

There are families who have been impacted in the way to which I refer who want to rebuild their lives following this form of mental illness and, extraordinarily, the death of a child as a consequence of that illness. There are families who have suffered and who have other young children and it is their choice, rather than that of these Houses or me, as to how they choose to try to rebuild their families, if they can at all.

The referendum on children's rights and the insertion of Article 42A into the Constitution, which I had the privilege of helping to develop, recognises children as holders of constitutional rights in and of themselves. The article states: "The State recognises and affirms the natural and imprescriptible rights of all children and shall, as far as practicable, by its laws protect and vindicate those rights." One of those rights is the right to a family life and another is the right to privacy. My concern about this legislation, as needed as it is to deal with the first group of families I recognised, is that there is a possibility that, as a result of its enactment, a family with another child which is trying to rebuilding its life in its community could be identified at any time, perhaps when that younger child is two, three, eight, nine or ten years old. In small communities, that can have a very great effect. I thank Deputy Howlin for acknowledging, in part, this point, which I raised with him earlier and for what he said about there possibly being more to this and to the way we approach the issue. We do not want to enact this legislation only for a whole set of unintended consequences to arise. We do not want to see proceedings having to be taken on behalf of young children to protect their privacy and to vindicate their rights to privacy and family life as a result of something that happened to a sibling being reported.

The Minister raised the issue of other children who are affected, whether it is a child witness or a victim to whom the proceedings relate. If we take the scenario of the identity of a child who was a witness being revealed, Deputy Howlin is correct that it is just not clear whether that situation is covered by the legislation. It is not clear whether one has to be a witness to the actual crime or whether it also covers witnesses in the broader sense of one who is impacted by the crime. I know from speaking to other Deputies there is a concern that what I am saying might result in the identities of a broader range of accused people being protected, which is not what we are trying to do. I am trying to highlight the fact that the effect of this legislation may allow other children who have been impacted by the death of a sibling and who have no desire to be identified by media in any form to be so identified. In this scenario, there is a deceased child and a child witness and the perpetrator may be identified. I do not need to go back into the scenario.

I will ask a series of questions. What will be the effect of the passage of this legislation on the immediate reporting of cases such as that which I have described? I refer to the real practicalities. In a specific case of this kind, would the media have to make an application if another child is involved? How would it even be known if another child is involved or what the effect of that might be? In those situations, would the family be notified that such an application has been made? Would the family need to take a pre-emptive case to protect the privacy of the other child? How can we expect the family to be able to afford the High Court fees involved in such an application? Would it be for the Director of Public Prosecutions to signal at the outset of a new case that another child may be affected?

That is a broader point. My interest is the family at the centre of this case who live in my area, who have suffered desperately and who have asked me to make this representation and to get clarity on this matter. They do not know, if they go into the newsagents in their local village on a given day, whether they will see their case reported and a picture of the young child going to school with his dad. There is enough distress and trauma in their lives without that additional distress. I ask that the Minister of State clarify the effect of the Act in this case and the particular procedural steps that family and others may need to take. I appreciate the broader interests of this Bill, with which I agree. I should say that the family also does. This net point on the privacy of the other child is, however, really important and we need more clarity on it.

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