Gerard Craughwell (Independent)

Maybe I misread what the Minister said. In the context of social media, and I know that is coming later, you contact the likes of Twitter, make a complaint and find that the most outrageous things are not against its rules. The bottom line is that I have no interest in Twitter any more.

On the impact that wild statements have on families, yesterday I brought up the issue of migration in this country. Constantly we are hearing, "Oh, they are rapists", or they are this, that or the other. I made the point yesterday that there were 6,683 rapes in ten years in this country. It would be no harm if the Department published the nationality of those who were convicted of rape and maybe put an end of those types of wild stories.

The Minister mentioned the flood of emails. I do not read such emails, and I sincerely hope most of the people in this House no longer read them. If I get an email that begins "Dear Member", I just dump it. I do not read them any more. It is interesting that they can be defamatory.

I have serious issues with good faith and the public interest. How do I prove or disprove that somebody wrote something in good faith? How do I say that something is not in the public interest? I mentioned an article in the Irish Independent. That was deliberately written to impact the current presidential election campaign. Allegedly, that story originated from the Garda Síochána. Have we reached a situation where a member of An Garda Síochána can decide, "I don't like Michael McDowell. Therefore, I will publish something and make sure he is never elected to the House again."? Particularly when we are talking about young politicians coming in here in their first term - and I have seen some wonderful work by some of the young politicians who were recently elected - to have an impact on them, all you need is for somebody to print a story based on some innuendo that a garda said something. As Senator McDowell said, if this Bill passes, it will be possible to name people. In such instances, journalists will say that they are not disclosing their sources. That is the concern I have. I will leave it at that.