Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)

To respond to the Senator's point about following my gut instinct and that it is not necessarily the Garda Commissioner I should be listening to, the Attorney Generally fully accepted, in the discussions we had both before the drafting of this Bill and in the period between the taking of Second and Subsequent Stages in the Lower House, the issue of whether we should put in some rank but the strong advice from the gardaí was not to tie their hands in regard to the rank because gardaí of a particular rank who would have the knowledge might not be included under the legislation. The Attorney General fully accepts that position from a legal point of view.

A point I omitted concerned the issue Senator Bacik mentioned about privileged information. There is a saver in section 13 on the exclusion of evidence in certain circumstances. The new section 74(B) states: "Nothing in this Part prevents a court, in proceedings thereunder, from excluding evidence that would otherwise be admissible if, in its opinion, the prejudicial effect of the evidence outweighs its probative value." That is put in as a saver to protect the position in regard to the particular type of evidence that is being given.