John Gilroy (Labour)

I will be brief as I have only a minute. It is said that war is an extension of politics by another means and so it seems is the Sunday Independent. Every time we open the Sunday Independent, we see articles by Deputies Shane Ross and Willie O'Dea, by Senators John Crown and John Whelan, by former politicians Eoghan Harris and Michael McDowell and, I am sure, several others. I am vaguely uncomfortable about this. The Sunday Independent seems to be more of a Leinster House appreciation society than a newspaper, yet it is a newspaper that forms the political agenda for a week. It has 1 million readers and I find it uncomfortable to see the opinion formers in this House also forming opinion in an opinion forming newspaper. Could we have the Minister's comments on that?

My other question concerns the Milly Dowler case, which involved the hacking of a dead girl's phone. This case has exposed a particularly awful practice among some media in the United Kingdom and some newspapers from the same stable operate in Ireland. Is the Minister confident we have robust enough sanctions available to our authorities to deal with the fall-out from this?