Eoghan Harris (Independent)

I still find it difficult to believe that a group of legislators who are responsible for changing the libel laws would speak as Senators Norris and Mullen have and appeal to the Minister to circle the wagons around elected politicians. If the average member of the public could see what goes on in The Irish Times or the Irish Examiner every day and the way the libel laws are used to protect the powerful in this society, reform of libel laws and defamation long ago would have been an election issue.

It is outrageous to suggest that the legislators here should ring themselves around with a fat protective screen against the scrutiny by the public. All previous generations of Irish politicians would have rejected it as a nonsense. We can appreciate that Daniel O'Connell, Parnell and all those Irish politicians in the first Dáil lived in a robust world. When did we become such a precious little group of people that we cannot take public scrutiny?