Don Lydon (Fianna Fail)

I congratulate the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform on responding so quickly by stating that he would introduce the heads of a Bill regarding a press council following the shocking coverage of the last hours of the late Liam Lawlor on Saturday night. I bought the newspaper in question at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis, got through the first few lines and then returned it and asked for a refund. I will never again buy this newspaper. As most people said, it was a shocking piece of journalism. One can only imagine the horror of Mr. Lawlor's young son receiving the news of his father's death and then hearing a story that he was cruising the red light district in Moscow with a teenage prostitute — a story without a scintilla of truth. It was horrific. It was not even bad journalism — it was really evil.

I am glad of one thing — they tried often to get him in real life, but he was too tough and he retaliated in his final days. He won the final battle with the media as well. I suggest to those who wrote the articles in question that they should go home and look at their own families this evening, and ask themselves whether they would write about them in the way they wrote about the Lawlor family. May God forgive them for the shocking and terrible cruelty they have visited upon a widow and her children.