David Norris (Independent)

I move amendment No. 15:

In page 19, subsection (2)(f)(i), lines 9 and 10, to delete all words from and including "or" in line 9 down to and including "standards" in line 10.

This amendment concerns the press council. The press council is absurd. The Bill refers to the standards. What are the standards? Where are they? Are they adumbrated in the Bill? Will the Minister of State tell the House what precisely are the standards? What is the code? We are blithely saying in legislation that there will be an excuse for them to adhere to the code of standards of the press council. The incoming head of the press council is an old friend of mine and a former Provost of Trinity College but it is his innocent decency that has allowed him take up this position because it is a farce.

Everybody knows the idea of a press council is a complete farce, and I will explain the reason to the Minister. A classic example of it is that we do not have any code. The Minister is from a country region, and I am not more than a hop out of the bog myself, and I assure him that neither I nor any of my ancestors would buy a pig in a poke. This is a classic pig in a poke.

Who are the members of the press council? A fair preponderance of them are appointed by the people it is supposed to supervise. It is not, in any recognisable sense of the word, independent. We will be dealing later with the profession of architects in the Building Control Bill where we are insisting on an independent regulatory body to validate architectural qualifications and so on. I could reel off any quantity of cases in which there have been editorials written, including by Senator Maurice Hayes's newspapers, demanding independent regulation but apparently what is sauce for the professional goose in every other case is never to be ladled out as sauce for those in the press, who are above such concepts as independence. Just as we are required to dilute the meaning of truth, we must dilute the meaning of independence.

I will refer to another little wonder. As I will not be allowed to elaborate too much on it at the appropriate place, I would prefer to talk about it at the inappropriate place. Who is paying for this bird? Did that ever strike anybody? I will tell the House who is paying for it — the press. We have a code that is not spelt out, which is the creature of a group of people who are not independent and are paid for by the people they are supposed to be regulating. There is a phrase I encountered, which delighted me when I moved across the river: "Well I don't know about you, but I didn't come down the Liffey in a bubble." Well I did not, and I can smell this a mile off and I do not like it. I would very much appreciate if the Minister of State would agree to delete it.