Derek McDowell (Labour)

I am sympathetic to what lies behind amendment No. 1. I would not like it to be the case that anybody could argue that evidence of a technical examination would be rendered inadmissible by virtue of a failure to reduce the matter to writing. I will examine that issue between now and Report Stage. It is not the case that failure to do so would render invalid retrospectively a direction because that would not be possible but it could affect the admissibility of evidence. We will examine this aspect of the matter so that evidence shall not be rendered inadmissible by reason of a failure to designate an order in writing. Clearly, it would be a horrific situation if evidence in a murder case were somehow argued to be invalid by virtue of the fact that a Garda officer, having given an oral direction, had forgotten to execute a document.

The other amendments relate to style. Senator Cummins should bear in mind that while I will examine them between now and Report Stage, the Parliamentary Counsel is frequently wedded to his or her style and I do not lightly ask for that to be surrendered to somebody's else's style without there being a compelling reason to do it.