David Norris (Independent)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

I welcome the Minister for Justice and Equality, Deputy Shatter, to the House. I express my sympathies to him on the recent burglary that took place in his home and ask him to pass on my sympathies also to his wife. Nothing could provide a more appropriate context for the introduction of a new tort of violation of privacy. Burglary is a significant violation of anyone's privacy and I express my sympathy to the Minister in that regard. I have a long history of raising these issues in the House, despite what some commentators have maintained, namely, that I only take them up in the interests of public figures such as myself. I have a series of files as long as my arm of cases I have raised relating to situations involving people's privacy and their private grief being invaded unjustifiably by the press.

I disagree completely with the idea that politicians are some special race. I use the phrase "ordinary people". I have been chastised for that by people within the press who use it regularly themselves. Everyone in this country uses it. I am an ordinary person. Politicians are just ordinary people who accept an extra burden of responsibility on behalf of the rest of the community. I do not think any lesser degree of truth should be required in dealing with them than for dealing with anybody else. I have never accepted that principle, although I know most other people appear to do so. I think they are foolish to do so. My principle is quite clear; it is "Tell the truth or pay the price." I have always said that.

We had a long battle in previous Seanad debates on the Defamation Bill. I am pleased my colleague, Senator Jim Walsh, is present. We do not agree on many things but this is one issue on which we agree. We were the two voices who spoke out on the Defamation Bill. I led the charge on the issue because I realised that it was being introduced at the instigation of newspaper editors in order to give them greater freedom to trample over the rights of ordinary people, and so it proved. In return for this we were promised that there would be a quid pro quo, namely, the introduction of a privacy Bill, the introduction of a tort of privacy, in order to protect the rights of citizens. I refer for example to the situation in 2006 when a statement was issued on behalf of the then Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform saying that it would introduce a privacy Bill.

The main purpose of the new Bill will be to introduce a modern statutory framework to protect all citizens from the invasion of their privacy. Who could disagree with that? The main elements of the privacy Bill largely reflect the recommendations contained in the report of the working group on privacy which had been established by the Minister. One could refer to a series of cases including that of Princess Caroline von Hannover on which the European Court ruled that all persons are entitled to a personal sphere of privacy and non-intrusion. Why should they not be? What is privacy? It is essential for mental well-being and for citizens to have a sense of security in their own home and in their relationships. If anyone violates that, they should pay for it as far as I am concerned. I will do everything I can, despite the gutlessness of so many people in political life, to ensure that this will and does happen. I am not afraid of the consequences. Nothing worse could be said about me than has been said fairly generally already. The Minister will be pleased to hear that I will not rerun that situation because there are other more appropriate fora in which I intend to run those issues.

We are told that the public right to know is very important. So it is, but it is not simply a question of prurience. The public right to know is not just what the people want to know. Of course they want to know every dirty little detail of the sex lives of football players, but because they want to know it, does that mean they have a right to know? I do not think so. Public interest is deliberately confused by editors with public prurience. That is a grave mistake.

I referred to one case, the case of Princess Caroline von Hannover but there is another one with which I know the Minister is familiar, namely, Kennedy and Arnold v. Ireland in IR 587 of 1987. In that case, Hamilton P. decided:

The right to privacy is not an issue; the issue is the extent of that right or the extent of the right "to be let alone". Though not specifically guaranteed by the Constitution, the right of privacy is one of the fundamental personal rights of the citizen which flow from the Christian and democratic nature of the State.

He goes on to say: "It is not an unqualified right." and it is not in the Bill that I have presented.

He also states:

The nature of the right to privacy must be such as to ensure the dignity and freedom of an individual in the type of society envisaged by the Constitution, namely, a sovereign, independent and democratic society. The dignity and freedom of an individual in a democratic society cannot be ensured if his communications of a private nature, by they written or telephonic, are deliberately, consciously and unjustifiably intruded upon and interfered with.

I received a media release from a decent man, the secretary of the National Union of Journalists. He expressed strong reservations. "Well", as Ms Mandy Rice-Davis stated, "he would, wouldn't he?" He states that there is no overwhelming demand for such legislation. He should read a few publications such as Hot Press. I would have thought Hot Press was a popular magazine and it certainly makes a fairly strong case for it. If I have time I will read The Irish Times editorial into the record. It makes a compelling case and the Leveson inquiry in Britain is irrefutable in its requirement that there should be changes. Unless anybody dreams that these matters do not happen in good Catholic Ireland, let me say that witness after witness went into the box in Leveson, and there were persons who were editors or proprietors of newspapers which had Irish editions, and they all stated the same practices go on here. I can say for a fact that they certainly do.

I agree that the establishment of the Press Council and the Office of the Press Ombudsman have given aggrieved citizens a fair and efficient means of lodging complaints and I recognise the honoured presence of Mr. John Horgan in the Gallery. They have done some good work in addressing these matters, but there is no real sanction. It is fairly toothless. As I stated at the time of the Defamation Bill 2006, the Press Council is a complete and utter farce. The same group, newspaper editors, demanded independent regulation in architecture, medicine and the law. Every profession must be independently regulated except the press, which has become a tyranny.

I also received an interesting brief which had been prepared for the 2006 Bill. It was a commissioned hatchet job, extremely useful because it points the discerning reader directly to the points of weakness in the argument. They, rather delightfully, quote a case in which I am involved, Henchy, J. in Norris v. the Attorney General in the Supreme Court, 1983. Mr. Justice Henchy stated:

Amongst those basic personal rights is a complex of rights which vary in nature, purpose and range (each necessarily being a facet of the citizen's core of individuality within the constitutional order) and which may be compendiously referred to as the right of privacy.

However, Henchy was overruled, in a bad judgment, if I may say so, by the then Attorney General. Apparently, the NUJ wants the courts to do the legislating. The courts continually reprimand the Oireachtas for not legislating.

With regard to Leveson, I would cite a couple of quotes. There it was stated:

The indictment could as easily read as follows: Illegally accessing people's private voicemails, bribing employees into divulging personal information, blagging sensitive details through deception and trickery, blackmailing vulnerable or opportunistic individuals into breaking confidences about well-known people, the blatant intrusion into the grief of victims of crime, the vilification of ordinary members of the public unwittingly caught up in such events, the hounding of various well-known people, their families and friends, purely because this sells newspapers, and finally, the bullying of those who, in seeking to question these practices, are therefore merely exercising the very same freedom of speech behind which much of this behaviour is sought to be shielded or excused by the press.

I am in favour of freedom of speech. I was and still am a member of the NUJ. For three and a half years, I was a columnist in a tabloid newspaper where I wrote honourably and decently, and I am proud of every word I wrote. However, I am not proud of persons such as Mr. MacKenzie who boasted to the Leveson inquiry that in his considerable experience he only checked his sources once and then, when discussing the invasion of privacy, Mr. Sherbourne, QC, states:

Right at the outset in true media lawyer style, I know I meant to say in the clearest of terms that freedom of speech is an essential part of any democratic society, and I do. No one could ... say otherwise. ... it is only one part of the equation. The other side, so frequently ignored or understated by the press, is the right to respect for private life, for home, for family life, for correspondence.

Privacy, contrary to what the newspapers believe, is not a dirty word, and it does not necessarily mean the same as secret.

Further, there is the following quotation where it states that privacy is a dirty little place "for paedos". That is an interesting quote from the editor of a newspaper. That is what privacy means to him. The shame reflects back on him.