Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I will deal with that last point. Members of the Houses of the Oireachtas have absolute privilege as a matter of constitutional law and cannot be impugned in the courts for what they say in either House. There are strict controls over how that privilege is managed and Members cannot lay waste all around them because they are feeling malicious and want to get even with a few people. We must bear in mind that in order to widen the notion of absolute privilege one must ensure that it is constitutionally possible to do so and put in place controls and counter measures to ensure it is not abused.

Local authority members would have qualified privilege when making statements at local authority meetings as long as they speak in good faith, in other words, that they believe what they say is true, they are being relevant to the topic at issue and their utterance is part of their duty. However, if they speak maliciously and decide to smear somebody's character or make an absolutely reckless remark which they could not reasonably believe to be true, they lose that qualified privilege. We must be reasonably carefully about what we do. Whereas it is one thing for everybody to know that a named drug pusher is in an area, it would be a different matter if somebody chose to abuse his or her public office to smear a person at a meeting and, to use Lyndon Johnson's great phrase "Let's see him deny it". That is always possible in politics. A balance must be struck.

I fully appreciate the spirit of amendment No. 48 tabled in the names of Senators Cummins and Brian Hayes which is that an officer of adequate seniority should normally attend a joint policing committee meeting. However, if one states it must be a member of the force with the rank of superintendent, one may find that the meeting will collapse if the superintendent catches the flu and cannot attend. We must be reasonable.

In the case of area committee or sub-committee meetings, it may be perfectly reasonable that the local inspector will attend rather than the superintendent. I fully appreciate that Members were not trying to exclude ranks of the Garda Síochána, but the local sergeant may be present for a discussion on anti-social behaviour by a small minority of the community in a particular estate.

Senator Leyden is correct when he states this is a matter best dealt with by guidelines. I imagine the guidelines will contain a term to the effect that it will be the duty of the local chief superintendent to ensure that gardaí of adequate seniority to deal with the business in hand will be present on the occasion. That is probably the best way to deal with it.

In response to whether such meetings are public or private, it may be similar to a joint committee meeting of the Oireachtas in that the meeting may deal with some issues in public and revert to private session and exclude the public because of the way the debate on an issue is going. Flexibility is the key. I think that should be dealt with in guidelines, if necessary, rather than in prescriptive legislation.

I am grateful to the Senators for tabling the amendments and I think Members would probably agree, on reflection, that the right way to deal with the important issues raised in the amendments is to deal with them in the context of guidelines rather than rigid prescriptive law which might trip the operation of these committees.