Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I will only touch on the media because I want to take a wider view of defamation and deal with subjects not much discussed here this morning. The Minister made an important distinction in his speech between a press council that had some teeth, or that would not be toothless, and the separate question of how it would be composed. As Senator O'Meara rightly pointed out, we have for some years had the Broadcasting Complaints Commission which is an independent statutory body whose members are appointed by the Government. This does not appear to have inhibited in any way RTE's style. Senator Quinn made the point that restrictiveness of libel laws in the past prevented people going into areas that it would have been in the public interest to have opened up. That may be so. There was a more authoritarian culture in the past. The social culture has changed. Equally under current laws there was a story that went to court which falsely accused the Taoiseach of accepting a large sum of money in a car park. It is not always easy to strike the right balance. It is much too simple merely to say that the current position is much too restrictive. We are not a good profession to accuse the media of sensationalising, exaggerating and being less than objective. We are not over guilty of understating our own case. A newspaper accused the Minister of having Ceaucescu-type intentions. That was a comparison made by the Minister in the run up to the last general election which, admittedly, he brought into the public arena.

I was interested in Senator Jim Walsh's remarks about the power of the media because we might not be the only ones to ask ourselves questions in that regard. As the House is aware, I took up a part-time career as a columnist recently and on the steps outside the office of the newspaper for which I write, a journalist said to me, "Welcome to the real establishment".

I want to move from the issue of the media, which has been well aired in this debate, to two separate issues. A few weeks ago, I called to a retired person, at his request. His wife was with him and he was in a terrible state. He emigrated to Britain in the 1950s, spent 20 years there where he held positions of great trust and responsibility in the public sector, came home, started a business and found – I am merely telling his story, I am not judging the merits of it one way or the other – he was accused of abusing the daughters of a brother-in-law. I gather that on separate occasions his two brothers were accused likewise. His position is that these accusations are false and he has allowed the law to take due course, whereas I think his brothers may have made some kind of financial settlement. I cannot possibly say what the exact position is, having heard only one side of the story, but the point I want to make is that there are certain types of accusations and allegations – they have been mentioned in the context of clerical sex abuse by Senator Ó Murchú on previous occasions – where the accusation is so terrible that there is an automatic, almost Pavlovian reaction, that if such an accusation is made it must be true, yet there is potential money involved.