Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I thank Senators for their remarks and I pay tribute to them for helping to bring about this improvement to the Bill, as originally drafted. Senator Jim Walsh made a technical point about using the term "local authority" as opposed to that of "local authorities".

My plan is that every town and county council will have the right to have a committee. If a town council surrenders that right, its members will be entitled to attend meetings of another committee. If Milltown Malbay town council decides that it does not want a committee because of the size of the town, it will be able to opt out and nominate members to a larger committee.

I do not want the committees to be exclusive. If a community is large enough to have a local authority institution, it is probably big enough to have its own criminal, housing and traffic problems. I do not want it thought, however, that because a place has a town council, it can be coerced into not having one of these committees. If the people of a county decide three committees are enough, otherwise the gardaí would spend half their time attending meetings, the flexibility should exist in the legislation to allow for that.

There is absolute and qualified privilege. Anything that is not absolute is qualified to some extent. Privilege in this case refers to a discussion at a meeting of a joint policing committee — a person cannot just stand up and make a speech on the fringes of a meeting. Only a member of the committee or a person attending at the request of the committee is covered, someone shouting from the audience is not covered by privilege.

It must also be without malice. Malice has two meanings. If a person says something that he or she knows is not true, it is malicious, or if a person says something reckless about whether it is true or not, that is also malicious. If someone is accused of being a rapist in a case, it is no defence to say afterwards that he could have been because no one knew at the time. A reckless allegation without honest belief in its truth is a malicious statement for the purpose of defamation law. That is how malice will be construed.

I have not had the opportunity to study this in great detail but any subsequent publication of the statement is to be covered by privilege regardless of its being genuinely believed. If someone makes a statement that is proved to be untrue, I want the subsequent publication to be subject to the rubric that it cannot be repeated by someone who knows it is untrue but is trying to piggy-back on the original mistake. If a newspaper reporter hears someone say something he or she believes to be true, the newspaper should be able to publish that as his or her honest belief. If, however, it subsequently transpires that the person is clearly wrong, it should not be possible for a political opponent to publish the minutes repeatedly and say that because he or she believed it at the time, it carries perpetual privilege. I will look at that because we must get it right. It could render an injustice if someone says something that is honestly believed and subject to privilege but it is clear afterwards that someone else is repeating it dishonestly by publishing the minutes of the meeting. That would be unfair to the person on the wrong end of the mistaken statement.