David Norris (Independent)

This refers to the troubled business of the corporate body. I do not propose to take up a huge amount of time on this but it is odd that a corporate body is assumed to have feelings. I have said this a number of times in the past. The Minister pointed out previously that, for example, my own august institution, the College of the Sacred and Undivided Trinity near Dublin, might be defamed without incurring any financial loss and that would be a great shame. I am confident it could defend itself well with the public relations skills it has and with the employees it has for that purpose.

We are principally talking about large corporations such as Shell which is a filthy, nasty environmentally unfriendly conglomeration. In situations where people make statements about it and where there is no financial damage to it which, to be fair, is all it is interested in, I do not see why it should be in a position to take action as a corporate body. I am not interested in the feelings of Shell or of McDonald's which used defamation legislation to attempt to crush a couple of ordinary citizens who made statements about its operations with which many people agreed.

Without wishing to take up too much of the time of the House, those are the reasons I tabled this amendment. I will be interested to hear if the Minister has had any reason to ponder. I am not sure if this is one of the matters on which he said he would come back to the House.