Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Reilly for her amendments. The Deputy is the only party to engage with amendments on the Bill.

I oppose the amendments. I understand the intention behind them. However, the reference to "person" as a legal term is defined in the Interpretation Act 2005, which provides certain general rules of the interpretation of a particular word. In Part 4 of that Act, entitled "Meaning and Construction of Words and Expressions, it provides that:

"Person" shall be read as importing a body corporate (whether a corporation aggregate or a corporation sole) and an unincorporated body of persons, as well as an individual, and the subsequent use of any pronoun in place of a further use of "person" shall be read accordingly ...

Therefore, it is the case that an intermediary service provider, ISP, or hosting service provider may be a person and that person might also be an individual. If an intermediary service provider was an individual, this amendment would mean, inadvertently, that they would not be subject to the levy and the cost of the levy would have to be borne by other providers or, potentially, the Exchequer, which would not be a fair outcome and could be open to an unintended consequence whereby service providers could avoid the levy.

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