Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Question 94: To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if his attention has been drawn to the danger posed by the development of cults within Ireland; if he has a working group or plan in relation to this issue; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12108/11]

Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy will appreciate that the word 'cult' is a chameleon-hued word that may gets its colours in any given context from the subjective views of the speaker, and that there are no clear, specific, manageable, and universally accepted criteria for identifying cults.

In our constitutional democracy, as the Deputy knows, we have a firm constitutional guarantee, in Article 44, of freedom of religion and freedom of conscience. A person's convictions about ultimate concerns such as the meaning of life and the purpose of existence and how to live a life of worth and value is a profound part of the privacies of life and existential thought. It is of course a reality that one person's cult may be another person's faith.

It is self-evident, however, that no one may engage in conduct that is directed at a specific person and causes substantial distress to that person, even for the purposes of forcing that person to join or belong to a religious group. In this connection, it may be helpful to point out that section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997 provides for the offence of harassment. Thus, any person who, without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, by any means including by use of the telephone, harasses another by persistently following, watching, pestering, besetting or communicating with him or her, commits the offence of harassment.

Moreover, a person harasses another when (a) he or she, by his or her acts intentionally or recklessly, seriously interferes with the other's peace and privacy or causes alarm, distress or harm to the other, and (b) his or her acts are such that a reasonable person would realise that the acts would seriously interfere with the other's peace and privacy or cause alarm, distress or harm to the other.

The Deputy might also note that, under section 10(3) of the 1997 Act, when a person is found guilty of this offence, the court may, in addition to or as an alternative to any other penalty, order that the person must not, for such period as the court may specify, communicate by any means with the other person or that the person shall not approach within such distance as the court shall specify of the place of residence or employment of the other person. To answer the Deputy's second question, I have at the moment no plan to set up a working group to study the subject of cults.