Michael McDowell
National University of Ireland · Independent · Ireland
“Then I think of this particular Chamber where people are polite and kind to each other and listen to each other respectfully. There is no baying or shouting down or whatever. It is a great tribute to the Seanad staff that that spirit continues to exist in this House.”
“I note that the whole scheme of the planning Act is that exempt development proposals are considered by the Houses. It is questionable whether this House has really considered the exempt development regulations. Without debate, we sent them off to a committee.”
“I am one of the people who disagrees with the substance of that report. We have to have a real solid debate on it here in this House, not merely a cursory one. It is an issue of fundamental importance. It cannot be avoided, one way or the other. Whatever your views are on it, it needs to be thrashed out.”
“Although coming up to the end of this term we are rushing things through, and the guillotine is well-oiled and slicing this way and that, we have a lot of work to do in the autumn.”
“The people who did that were brought before the International Court of Justice and condemned and imprisoned. If Ireland does not clearly state that there are to be consequences for people who do things like what Mladić, Milošević and Karadžić were brought to account for, if we are incapable as a State of publicly saying that what Secretar…”
“If we cannot, as a State, say publicly to Rubio, "Hands off the International Criminal Court", when they were quite happy when the people who did the 7,000 murders in Srebrenica got their just desserts, but when there is any suggestion that what has happened in Gaza, with 70,000 innocent people killed by aerial bombardment and land bombar…”
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“Is it to bring in some low-grade executive in Dublin to say the company investigated it and when asked, "Did you investigate it, Mr. Bloggs?", to say "No, I did not but I was told by somebody in America that they investigated it and it turned out to be Elon Musk’s personal account"? How is that justice? You have your an identification order and a High Court judge is saying "Sorry, it is inadmissible, does not prove anything and is hearsay". The Minister says here that, as a matter of principle, it should be inadmissible, even with the right of the alleged poster to contradict it in court. People are being asked to somehow prove it otherwise themselves. How could an ordinary person prove that? How could an ordinary person in Ireland prove who posted something outside the Irish jurisdiction? Practically speaking, they cannot.”
“For example, if X tells me that the man who defamed me and called me a paedophile is Elon Musk, I would not have to prove again that it was Elon Musk unless he came to court and said it was not in fact him. Something being admissible does not mean it is conclusive evidence. If people who get an identity order cannot use that order but have to prove all of the sequence of events that have been investigated by the company in America as to who the owner of that particular Internet account or whatever is, this is an absolutely worthless remedy. As regards telling me in court that it was Elon Musk who made that remark about me under the guise of anonymity and then telling me that, by the way, I will have to prove it myself, who is in a position to prove this? It is the company. How do you prove it?”
“It requires a court order to make it admissible, as an exception to the hearsay rule, because normally a statement by a company not party to the proceedings of fact is not admissible to prove that fact under the hearsay rule. The amendment continues: "... if it is supplied to an applicant upon request or on foot of an identification order”. The Minister rejected this on the deeply mistaken and utterly flimsy ground that it might be that the account holder did not actually type the defamatory words. So what? If the defamation proceedings proceed, the account holder can make that defence. All this amendment proposes is that the information given on foot of a court order, whether contested or not, or on foot of an application for a letter preceding an application, should be admissible, not proof of its contents beyond contradiction.”
“Saying it is some kind of privilege based on court discretion and that the people who actually disseminated defamation have no responsibility because they did not know it was defamation and do not check, for good reason, and that no one else can be made amenable for it unless the person takes the risk of paying the ISP’s costs in contesting his or her right to know is absolutely indefensible. The Minister says that he cannot accept amendment No. 27. I am astonished. Why can he not accept it? I will give an example. Amendment No. 27 states: "In any defamation proceeding, relevant information supplied by a relevant service provider shall be admissible without further proof where the court so orders ...".”
“There is no principle that requires this because we are dealing with a novel situation. As I said, the Internet is not analogous with the post or phone service. Rather, this is publication to the entire world. It is just as much publication as The Irish Times publishing something on its front page. The EU may say that immunity from suit must be afforded for the simple fact of communicating the information as a mere conduit but, where defamation has taken place, the rights of the person defamed are of a different order. If they are entitled, which they are, to seek an order against the ISP telling it to take down the material on a website, they must also be entitled to know who was responsible for it in the first place. The damage is the damage.”
“Therefore, what I am saying is that people who have been defamed should have, as part of the statutory procedure, a recognition of their right to write to the ISP and say this person has called me a paedophile and ask it to identify who it is, because it was done under the cloak of anonymity. That is, there should be a presumption that the ISP would do that and if it wants to contest it, let it got to court and take the cost consequences of doing so, but the Bill reverses that completely and says "No". It says a solicitor has to warn clients on day one that even if they succeed with the application, they may end up not only paying the solicitor and their counsel to make this application in the Circuit Court, but also the costs reasonably incurred by the ISP in losing its effort to refuse the information requested. That is grotesque.”
“The principle I see is that individuals who have been defamed are entitled to know who has defamed them and the multinational company that has broadcast the defamation across the world - in that respect, it is different from the postal or phone services - for everyone to see will not tell them who committed this tort and attempted to destroy their good name. To say that is grossly inadequate in the circumstances. I am not just playing to some imaginary gallery, because the media do not give a damn what happens in this House. It is in this House that we have the duty - and in Dáil Éireann, which unfortunately abandoned its duty - to tease this out so that it will be addressed.”
“Is that what we are saying is a serious demonstration and execution of that constitutional duty of the Irish State? It is not. At the very least, the procedure should involve a person asking to be told who posted something. If the Internet service provider says it will not, so be it on your head. In those circumstances, to say to applicants who have been defamed that, even if they succeed in court, they can pay the ISP's costs is grotesque. The Minister defended this on grounds of principle. I see no principle here. I see the exact opposite of principle.”
“That is all the person would ask for in a letter and if the ISP refuses to do so, for whatever reason - perhaps it has a contract guaranteeing anonymity so that its profits are bigger or whatever - and if it becomes necessary to make an application for an identity order, it can bear the costs of this. Why should there not be a pre-trial process or a system for making a demand of an ISP? For example, I have clearly been defamed. He has called me a paedophile, whoever this person is. The ISP cannot just sit there and say that I may be a paedophile, it does not know, so it will not identify the defamer and then tell me to go to court if I want to force it to identify the person. Is that to be the Irish State's attempt to vindicate and protect the good name of a citizen?”
“The amendment we are dealing with also includes the proposition that "the court may order that the relevant internet service provider" - and the discretion still exists in this - "pay any or all of the applicant’s costs where it appears that the service provider failed or refused unreasonably to provide the applicant with relevant information when requested so to do or where the applicant succeeds in obtaining an identification order." What that formulation is supposed to bring about, and the Minister has never zeroed in on it at all, is that there should be a provision that the person who has been clearly defamed can write to the Internet service provider and ask it to identify who operates the account.”
“26 is different from the Minister's proposed subsection (5), in that it takes away completely the nod and wink that the Circuit Court judge - the Minister has more or less re-echoed the same kind of thinking - should be willing to order that applicants for an identification order, having won the case with all the interests of justice arguments having been concluded and perhaps even the whole thing having been appealed to the High Court, nonetheless should pay the ISP's costs for finding out who defamed them. What possible argument could there be for that?”
“What possible grounds could there be, if it is in the interest of justice to make an identification order, if the interests favouring disclosure of relevant information outweigh those against, and all the conditions are met - that it is defamatory, it is likely to succeed if brought to trial - for a person who has been defamed to be restricted from revealing who the defamer was? I cannot understand that proposition at all. Amendment No.”
“It is not a proper vindication of my rights if I am defamed by him, that I would never be a allowed to reveal who defamed me because of a condition laid down by the Circuit Court that the information can only be used for the purpose of defamation litigation. If any of these provisions had been even remotely considered by or raised in Dáil Éireann - they were not because it was never considered in Dáil Éireann really - all these questions would have been teased out before this Bill came in this form to this House. Now we are faced with schoolboy Michael McDowell and the blocking tactics whereby the Minister claims he cannot accept any of the amendments to improve his Bill with a series of deeply conservative arguments, which are unnecessary.”
“If it was made a condition that it would only be used for defamation proceedings and someone discovered that it was Elon Musk who had been tweeting about them - I do not think it is unfair to name him since he was the man who tweeted an allegation that the man who was putting together the engineering to get the Malayan football team boys out of a cave was a paedophile for no particular reason - and there was no prospect of suing him, will the person then be subject to some Trappist obligation of secrecy? Elon Musk said something about me and it is gross but he did it anonymously and I am bound by the terms of a Circuit Court order that says I can only use it if I sue him. That is not reasonable at all.”
“The Minister is saying that, in an analogy with discovery, you cannot make public the fact that the person who wrote this stuff about you is a particular person, unless you are going to sue them. We then have to ask this question: if there is an argument about the anonymous poster's rights in court, is the whole procedure going to have to be held in camera or can a member of the media listen to the whole proceeding, find out that it is Elon Musk who was actually the anonymous poster and everybody is bound to secrecy in that respect? That is what the analogy with the discovery process brings us to, namely, a most unwarranted veil of secrecy thrown over an identification order.”
“Are you to go to America to sue that person and employ American attorneys in the hopeless task, bearing in mind the constitutional guarantees to free speech in the US, to somehow sue the person who has defamed you? It is not much of a remedy. However, if you do get an identification order from an Irish court, it might be of huge significance to say, "It was Elon Musk who posted that anonymously but I am damned if I am going to sue him because it is pointless - I cannot sue him", or it could be somebody in the jungles of South America. However, at least I know and can say in public that the damaging lie written about me was published by Joe Soap or Elon Musk, or whoever it is.”
“In discovery, the Minister is quite right that if you start an action, A versus B, and if you get discovery from B or C third party discovery, one of the rules is that you do it on condition that you only use the discovery process for the purpose of your litigation. That is fine, but just think about an anonymous defamer. What if it turns out the anonymous defamer lives in South Africa or the United States of America where there is no defamation law worth talking about in these circumstances as long as the person can claim to be honest in their misguided belief? If you find out that is where the person who posted it is, what are you then to do?”
“Telling somebody who has been defamed anonymously that it is simply a discretion, a difficult discretion and a rare discretion, in terms of the occasions on which it is exercised and vested in the courts, is to erect a series of barricades in the interests of the ISPs. I am not going to make an unfounded allegation but I have a deep suspicion - I will not put it further than this - that the attitude, which is so conservative, in this legislation is designed to pay obeisance to the interests of the large multinationals who control the Internet. I am not hostile to them but I think they have social responsibility as well.”
“The Minister sort of said he thought these kind of orders should be difficult to obtain, or not easily obtained. I do not accept that. If somebody defames me, it should be very simple that I contact X and say, "Who wrote that? It is obviously defamatory", in a solicitor's letter and X is then obliged, unless it wants to fight it out in court, to say who, to the best of its knowledge, put up a post with defamatory material. This is another point about the Minister's whole approach to this, which I consider to be not merely utterly conservative but slavishly designed to protect the interests of the ISPs rather than the citizen.”
“If it is a citizen versus an Internet service provider which affords anonymity, I do not accept the proposition that this is not a David and Goliath situation. It is a David and Goliath situation. When we are providing a practicable remedy in the Circuit Court we should recognise that someone who is defamed and who has to go to lawyers has to take money out of his or her bank account to pay for the application to be made. Very few lawyers are going to do it on a no-foal, no-fee basis except in the most grotesque manner. The person is going to have to pay for this. Then we are being told by the Minister that because the Internet service provider is legally innocent, you can pay to find out who lurks behind its contractual guarantee of anonymity. I do not accept that proposition at all. I think it is most unjust.”
“The ordinary Irish citizen who is defamed by an anonymous poster is entitled to look to this State for protection, vindication and the restoration of their good name, but is faced with the profitable contractual arrangements that ISPs make with their customers, which afford the people who do the defamation a privacy, subject to the intervention of the courts, and allow them to do so for profit. That is the fundamental difference. This is not a case of a bank being told, in aid of civil litigation, to discover when a transaction was made. It is not analogous with that at all. The defamation is absolutely impossible without the profit-driven and policy-directed activity of the Internet service provider.”
“They could easily have a system whereby every time "Dissatisfied, Ranelagh" posts something, people are entitled to look and see who is "Dissatisfied of Ranelagh", and be told in fact that it is Michael McDowell using an anonymous tag. The ISPs guarantee this anonymity; nobody else does. When they choose to guarantee anonymity it is a bit like the analogy the Minister used of the person on whose gable wall defamatory graffiti is painted. That is one thing but if you are charging for the paint, leaving the brush out there and then saying "Have a go", it is very different from somebody who is simply passive in the circumstances. They are not passive, however, and that is the huge danger.”
“They could say it is a term and condition of posting on X, and I can tell you I have been very tempted on occasion to set up an anonymous account myself to have a right go at some of the people who have had a right go at me. I have refrained from doing that. That does not take away from the fact that anonymity is a contractual gift from the ISPs, in most cases, to their customers. They know that if somebody posts under a particular nickname and the posts are defamatory, the author will be unknown to the person defamed. They know that and they decide that it is better for the use of their network, or whatever their service is, and more profitable for them to grant anonymity. It is a choice they have.”
“I do not accept the proposition that the laws relating to discovery are in any way analogous to the law which must be there to identify somebody who is posting anonymously. Let us remember that it is the Internet service providers that facilitate anonymous publication. I am glad to see someone is carrying on Senator Craughwell's Internet existence even though he has withdrawn from it. Even if I use a pen name, I am not entitled, because X chooses that to be so, to know who is behind the pen name. I am not permitted to know that. They choose to afford to their posters impenetrable anonymity save without a court order. That is their choice.”
“Internet service providers are not just like An Post or a telephone exchange. They are something different. To go back to what Senator Craughwell said, they are putting up stuff, say on X. Why does it appear at the top of the list on X? Why does anything appear at the top of the list on X when you consult it? It is done by elaborate algorithms which, based on your previous use of X, and other factors, bring to your attention material which they consider you are most likely to be interested in. You do not have to follow somebody on X to see what they say about you. If they actually include you as somebody to whom the material posted relates, or if an algorithm somewhere in cyberspace comes to the conclusion that you are a person who would be interested in this, it is put up there.”
“One of the differences between the Internet and the phone company and the postal service is that there is no obligation, and I think the European Court of Justice has reiterated this, to engage in surveillance to stop defamatory material appearing any more than there would be in An Post to intervene and start opening envelopes or to telephone operators to sit listening to conversations and disconnect a subscriber halfway through a defamatory conversation. I accept all that, but, and this is the fundamental thing, it is well settled law in Europe and in Ireland that somebody who is an Internet service provider is nonetheless liable to injunctive relief to take down defamatory material and to prevent its dissemination once it is put up to them and they can identify the injustice or wrong that is alleged to have been committed.”
“I fully accept that the Minister has said that the current state of the EU directive and the Irish digital services legislation is that Internet service providers, ISPs, are not liable for the messages and the traffic on their service because they are regarded, to use the European phrase, as mere conduits. There is an analogy for that. An Post, for instance, is not a likely co-defendant if a defamatory letter is sent by post. Any of the telephone companies cannot be found liable for what one subscriber to a phone service to another of a defamatory kind. I see that analogy. It is sensible within certain limits.”
“They are questions before the trial of this action that B is required to give a sworn reply to. The courts have the right to tell someone, by way of interrogatory, to answer the question whether they did or did not do X or Y. The defendant, in conventional proceedings and the Commercial Court, can be directed, without even a court order, by the rules of the High Court commercial division, to comply with interrogatories properly served. The point is that the whole jurisdiction to order discovery is not applicable to an Internet service provider. It is not and it should not be.”
“The Minister has come into this House and said that he still wants to keep it within the discretion of the court, notwithstanding the proof of everything in subsection (3) and subsection (4)(a) that the court should have a jurisdiction. Again, I find the Minister's approach extremely conservative and misguided. What I am dealing with here is the right of a citizen to vindicate their good name. What I am talking about is the obligation of the State to defend the citizen's good name and to vindicate as far as possible the right of the citizen to re-establish their good name. There in paragraph (4)(b) is the following. The Minister explains it as analogous with discovery. At the moment, there are various legal procedures. If A is litigating with B, A is entitled to serve what are called interrogatory notices on B.”
“In any event, all my amendment is designed to do is to say that where a court considers that it is in the interests of justice to make an identification order and that the interests of justice in favour of disclosure of relevant information outweigh those against, considering the rights and obligations of the applicant, whatever they are, and those of the anonymous publisher and any third parties who are reasonably likely to be affected by the order, the court may still say no order to be granted in this case. I do not know what that is supposed to achieve. If those conditions in (4)(a) were satisfied, I cannot see how a court could possibly refuse to make an order.”
“If it is not done in open court but is done on an ex parte basis, there is a situation where the court is making an inquiry as to the justice of the situation and is vested with a discretion not to make an order, where the person who is seeking the order and who has already complied with (a) to (e) on the Minister's list, that he or she appears to have been defamed and is likely to succeed at trial, that the relevant information is necessary to identify the person and that the relevant information is likely to be in possession of the relevant ISP. I will stop there. If (c) is satisfied that it is necessary to enable the applicant to bring the defamation proceedings, why is (e) put in there at all? I do not see why you should duplicate those two things.”
“Will the Internet service provider inform the judge secretly, without identifying the applicant, who the anonymous poster is? Let us remember this, the Minister at a later stage in his comments said it is not necessarily to be assumed that the person who actually put the post up is the defamer. If the court is to decide whether the interests of the anonymous publisher are taken into account, how can it do so without being informed as to who the anonymous publisher is? If it is done in open court, the applicant gets the information during the course of the argument.”
“If the interests of justice require it and the interests favouring disclosure of relevant information outweigh those against, why do we say that, on top of that there is a further discretion just to simply say "No" vested in the courts. The next paragraph states: ... having regard to the rights and obligations of the applicant and those of the anonymous publisher and any third parties who are reasonably likely to be affected by the order ... If it is in the interests of justice, and those interests favour disclosure and outweigh the interests of other people, then we have to have regard to the possible rights of any third parties who are reasonably likely to be affected by the order. I wonder about this. What is that designed to do? Is the Circuit Court to say, tell me who it is secretly before you reveal it to the applicant?”
“It is not much of a discretion because the word "only", as Senator Mullen said, has to be looked at very carefully. In subsection (4) of the new section 45, the further discretion is to say that: A court may - (a) make an identification only where it considers that - (i) it is in the interests of justice to do so, and (ii) the interest favouring disclosure of relevant information outweigh those against. The Minister is proposing they are absolutely necessary preconditions to the making of an order. That is fine but if the court comes to that view, how could it not be a mandatory obligation on the part of the court to make the order then?”
“I do not know why that was inserted but it seems to be to be an unnecessarily conservative provision to put into the particular procedure. Why would somebody go to court? Why would anybody go to court to find out the identity of an anonymous poster if they had a non-court-based means of achieving the same result? I do not understand this point. Why would anybody say, I have two methods open to me, one is to employ lawyers to go to court to find out who has defamed me anonymously, but there is some other practicable method - I do not know what it could be and nobody has suggested what it could be - which I could employ to the same purpose? I simply do not understand why that has to stay as one of the statutory conditions. Amendment No. 24 vests a further jurisdiction in the court asked to make an identification order.”
“I do not think the courts will be in the slightest bit confused by that matter. I do not accept that proposition. What I am trying to do is make the system easier to operate, not more difficult. I will not waste time on the "seriously" provision because I have already explained why that was done, which related to amendment No. 21. Amendments Nos. 22 and 23 are designed to have a particular effect and that is to remove the obligation on an applicant to demonstrate that the applicant has no other practicable means of obtaining the relevant information. If something is published anonymously, what possible other practicable means are there? We are not being told by the Minister that here are other ways we could identify the person who posted an anonymous defamation.”
“We cannot say the Circuit Court has the right, for instance, to revoke a publican's licence because it has to be in the circuit. This application is at large, that it is the Circuit Court, wherever that is, any circuit judge or any convenient circuit judge. Does one go to Galway because one lives in Galway or does one come to Dublin because the ISP has an office in Dublin and is located there? That is not provided for in this section and it should be. That is the first legal error, in my respectful submission through the Acting Chair, that the Minister has made here. On the Minister's broader point, I do not see that there will be any confusion in saying this identification order is available and that the wider jurisdiction of the Norwich Pharmacal-type order in non-defamation cases still continues to exist.”
“If on Report Stage the Minister wants to make an amendment stating that nothing in this section affects the jurisdiction of the High Court to make a Norwich Pharmacal order, so be it; let him do so. However, there is no good reason to say that only the Circuit Court - we do not know which Circuit Court - can make this application. The section does not identify which court in the Circuit Court is to be vested with this jurisdiction. That is a mistake, in my view - a fairly elementary one. The Circuit Court is justified in constitutional terms by its being a court of local and limited jurisdiction, other than the High Court. It is incumbent on somebody who confers on the Circuit Court a right to give an order against an ISP, that the decision as to where the ISP is the receiving party in such an application is provided for in statute.”
“I am thinking of the damage that is done to someone in those circumstances. I start from the proposition that the High Court should have jurisdiction. I gave the example on the last occasion that the High Court could be in a position whereby it is already seized with a case where something happens on the Internet to worsen the situation from the point of view of the plaintiff in the High Court. The Minister will say that is fine because the High Court still retains its Norwich Pharmacal equitable jurisdiction to act in the matter. All I am saying is that if there is a cheap, efficient and simple method for ordinary citizens to seek identification orders, it should be available both in the High Court and in the Circuit Court and that no harm is done thereby. There is no confusion whatsoever.”
“I am looking at the Constitution, Bunreacht na hÉireann, which provides that the State is obliged to vindicate the citizen's right to a good name and to defend and, as far as possible, vindicate that right. I am talking about citizens. If the Minister wants to say that companies or people with SLAPP injunctions or whatever are a different kettle of fish, so be it. However, I am talking about ordinary people whose lives can be destroyed by what is on the Internet, what is put up on the Internet and what is cached on the Internet. As I said on the last occasion, a woman might be seeking a job and this great big artificial intelligence, CGI behemoth spits out that when she was in college she engaged in sexual misbehaviour, and the prospective employer can see that simply by pressing a few buttons.”
“They are first of all the conditions set out in the proposed section 45(3). These are the statutory requirements that an applicant must comply with. Those matters are ones that have to be ventilated and argued if necessary in the Circuit Court. At the end, the Circuit Court judge will say he or she will make an order. The next thing is the ISP claims it should have won that and takes the case to the High Court. The Minister claims that is cheaper and more convenient; it simply is not. The Minister has said that we are using a sort of presumptive example that it is the small man against the big ISP that is at issue here. I am not relying on some kind of unrealistic or improbable scenario.”
“If the Minister wants to encourage people to go to the Circuit Court to seek these reliefs on the grounds that he claims it will be quicker and cheaper, why not simply say that the Circuit Court will have the same jurisdiction as the High Court to make these orders? There is no logical answer to that question. The second point is this. It is very strange that the Bill does not say that the right to appeal a Circuit Court order to the High Court is in any way affected by conferring this jurisdiction on the Circuit Court. As matters stand under this legislation, a defendant ISP, having lost an application for an identification order, will be entitled to appeal that matter to the High Court for a second run of the issues. This is not a specious lawyer's point because the section outlines the things the court must be satisfied about.”
“Why set out for a Circuit Court judge all sorts of jumps that the applicant has to go through in statute form as a matter of legal requirement when the High Court, exercising its equitable jurisdiction, does not necessarily have to follow all those procedures? Just because it is the current practice in the High Court that X or Y is normally required, it does not mean that the court is bound to do so by statute. So, we are introducing a two-tier, twin-track approach where the High Court will continue to have its existing jurisdiction to do all these things and the Circuit Court will only have a statutory jurisdiction of the kind being proposed by the Minister. I will stop there and say there is simply no logic in that.”
“The Minister has explained in a very convoluted and wholly unconvincing way that the existing equitable jurisdiction of Norwich Pharmacal orders will continue to exist in the High Court. Therefore, the High Court will have jurisdiction to make similar orders to these ones but instead of saying the Circuit Court can make Norwich Pharmacal orders on its equitable jurisdiction, the Circuit Court procedure will be as laid down in this statute. That is the Minister's explanation. He wants a statutory jurisdiction to make these disclosure orders or identification orders in one court and a non-statutory equitable jurisdiction in another. That sounded great as the Minister outlined it to the House but it is utterly illogical. Why not allow a Circuit Court judge to make the same judgment and decision as a High Court judge?”
“He will find himself with his team of counsels sitting down there waiting for the family law list or whatever to be finished and by the end of a day he will be told come back tomorrow and have to stay overnight in a hotel. This is the reality of a Circuit Court being given jurisdiction. We are not even clear which Circuit Court has this jurisdiction. I do not know where the territorial jurisdiction of the Circuit Court is provided for in this section. Does somebody who wants to apply go to Dublin because they live in Dublin or go to Tralee because they live in Kerry? I am not clear that the Bill actually distributes jurisdiction of a local and limited kind to any particular court.”
“Listening to the Minister's analysis today, I have never seen a greater demonstration of blocking tactics being used in a House. Virtually everything the Minister has said in response to my amendments is illogical, inadequate or simply wrong. I will start with the first one, which was that there should be concurrent jurisdiction in the Circuit Court and the High Court. I was not suggesting that the Circuit Court should be debarred from doing this. By the way, the Minister should be aware that the Circuit Court is often not the cheapest and the quickest. If he were to try to get something on in the Circuit Court in Galway or Cork, he would be far quicker to bring a motion in the High Court in Dublin; I can tell him that for starters.”
“I listened very carefully to the Minister's response to amendments Nos. 20 to 27. It reminded me of many years ago when I was at the same school as the Minister. I was not particularly athletic and I was scoring in a cricket match against St. Mary’s College. The captain of the Gonzaga team came over to me and said, “We are a man short, will you go in and bat?”. I told him I had never batted in my life. I had glasses at the time and the whole thing was a highly dangerous proposition. He said "You have got to do it, Michael". He was, in fact, the late Mr. Justice Kevin Feeney. So I did it. He told me what to do: that I was to just hold the bat in front of my legs and do nothing; do not attempt to hit the ball – just block and he would try and score the runs from the other end.”
“If Europe does not face up to the fundamental error it made in respect of asylum, and the fundamental uselessness of its migration pact, the solidarity of Europe and its continued existence as a democratic partnership of member states is very severely threatened. I ask for a debate in this House on the future of Irish and European policy in respect of persons claiming asylum in this State.”
“Since adopting the charter of fundamental rights, the EU has guaranteed asylum to people who are not EU citizens in respect of seeking asylum in Europe. That was a fundamental mistake but it handed competence to the Court of Justice of the European Union to supervise the imposition of asylum law right across the Union. We are spending €1.3 billion every year housing asylum seekers, the vast majority of whom are not entitled to asylum. This racket has to end. If it is not ended, it will damage and corrode the very foundations of the European Union. This is why I say to the Leader that we need a debate in this House. I am not parroting Donald Trump's views. I have been saying this for a long time.”
“Yesterday, the British and Danish Governments went to Strasbourg in the hope of persuading the European council on human rights and ECHR authorities in Strasbourg to reopen the whole question of asylum seeking and the application of the Geneva Conventions, which are at the moment being used to mask a massive international racket. It is an economic racket, a criminal racket and a legal racket. Every single person who comes to Ireland claiming asylum, almost without exception, travels through a safe country. Well over 90% of those who get here - probably close on 100% of them - travel through safe countries. Ireland is a destination of choice for asylum seekers for other reasons and it is purely economic migration that lies at the bottom of it. Family reunification further complicates it.”