Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail)

On a point of clarification, while I said the analogy was not a particularly good one, the point I was trying to make was that I had no difficulty with someone being accused, for example, of being a rapist if he or she committed the offence. However, I am trying to distinguish between this and a situation in which, for example, a man who has previously been convicted of rape is, with no foundation, accused by the newspapers of rape 15 years later when there is a string of rapes in a town. I am concerned that if the person in question took the newspapers to court, even if he were not involved in the latest incidents in any shape or form, he would be defenceless owing to the previous conviction and could not prosecute his case properly. As Senator O'Toole pointed out, however, perhaps a good judge would deal with this sympathetically.