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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“It is too specific in that the definition of specified ADR procedures in relation to print publications is restricted to the conduct of members to which the second Schedule to the 2009 Act applies. The Minister should consider widening it a tiny bit. I am not going to make a federal case of it but I think it is too narrow. The 2009 Act foresaw that some newspapers and periodicals, for whatever reason, would not subscribe to the Press Council's jurisdiction. It seems to me they should be capable of being the subject of ADR to the same extent as are journalists who are part of the Press Council.”
“I am glad the Minister is saying that. However, my point was simply relating to the provision in section 34N that in "awarding costs in respect of proceedings in respect of which the court issued an invitation under section 34M(1)(a)", which is for specified ADR procedures, the court may, "where it considers it just", have regard to the factors set out thereunder. The Minister might give this further consideration between now and Report Stage. I fully understand why the provision is drafted as it is but it seems to me it perhaps should be widened to cover periodical publications that are not part of the Press Council regime. It seems to me it does not do that.”
“I fully support the idea of alternative dispute resolution, ADR, procedures. Can the Minister indicate whether he is happy that media which are not part of the Press Council are adequately dealt with in the definition of specified ADR procedures, because there will be journals and foreign newspapers and the like which may not be part of the Press Council? I am just worried as to whether the proposed new section 34M will cover such cases, but I would like to hear that from the Minister.”
“I know that because one person with whom I have a close economic relationship has been served with an eviction notice twice in the last 18 months by landlords who say – and it is the only way out of it – that they intend to give the property to a family member or put it up for sale. If the Government does not tackle that, it is going to have a major crisis on its hands. There is no point in the Department of Finance fiddling around with rent allowances and the like if people are being evicted as a result of what is being laid down as the law in the Custom House.”
“By the way, the British are going to eventually deal with non-doms and the WTO world order is changing. The super-rich, whether they are in America, Portugal, Malta or wherever else, expect somehow that they have the right to own assets and employ people who pay huge taxation, at 20% and 40%, along with PRSI and USC, but they do not owe a cent to the country that has made them wealthy. I do not accept that at all. The last point I want to make, the fifth or the sixth point or whatever it is, is this. There is provision in the legislation in respect of rent and allowances and the like, as Senator Joe O’Reilly said. The big problem is that the private rental sector is collapsing and the measures that will take effect in March are driving people out of the sector. Landlords are selling up.”
“I suggest it would be fair, or the Government should at least consider, a 20% tax rate for non-doms who are Irish citizens, have been Irish taxpayers, have assets and income-earning assets in Ireland, and cannot prove they are giving that amount of money up to any other country anywhere in the world. I do not believe in a society or a world order in which the super-rich can escape all taxation and come back to Ireland and start lecturing us on how we should run this country. It is fascinating that people who opt out of our economy in terms of paying anything into it can just flit off abroad and then come back for their 180 days of the year and give us lectures about what the rest of us should be doing with the State. It is an extraordinary thing. It would be so simple.”
“I am glad I am being productive. My fourth point then is this, and it may surprise some people. The time has come to deal comprehensively with non-doms in Ireland. It is not right or fair that factory workers pay fairly hefty tax rates but other people can just skip off to Malta, Portugal or wherever else and pay no tax to the State on their income. Believe it or not, when the Progressive Democrats were in office, Mary Harney and I came to the Government with a proposal for a minimum tax rate to apply to all Irish citizens regardless of where they were.”
“I believe an awful lot of transactions are held up by the 33.3% rate, which was introduced for good reason at the time of the financial crisis in 2009, but there is no reason to do it now. A reduction in those two rates of tax would free up transactions dramatically and stop all sorts of measures to avoid paying those taxes. There are so many transactions where people say to themselves that if they realise the capital gain, the State takes 33.3% immediately, so they decide not to do that. The third point I want to make is this-----”
“I just wanted to get lunch during a court case I was doing there and I could not get a bowl of soup in a pub in Sligo at lunchtime. It suddenly struck me that things are not healthy in the catering trade in this country. That was not to do with whether I would be charged VAT on the soup and sandwich at lunch. It was all to do with getting people to work and making it profitable to open. I will move on to my next point. I believe that, yet again, the Government has left CAT and CGT rates at 33%. When Charlie McCreevy, way back in 2002, reduced the CAT rate from 40% to 20%, the yield went up 500% the following year. Do people understand that? Five times as much money came in when he halved the rate from 40% to 20%. That is an extraordinary figure.”
“You can hardly move without Deliveroo people going in this direction and that. You can hardly get into a restaurant to eat. You can hardly book a restaurant to eat. The big thing, though, is that many restaurants are closing for more days in the week, not because of the VAT rate - the more money they get, the better off they are - but because there are problems recruiting catering staff and people to work in their businesses. What I find strange is that, in a thriving industry, so many premises are closed for so much of the time. It is not just a Dublin 6 problem. I was in Sligo recently and I noticed that almost every pub in Sligo is closed until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. What is happening? Why can they not keep open?”
“The effect of the budget put forward by the former Minister, Paschal Donohoe, was to increase the number of workers who, because of wage inflation and the like, are being pushed from the lower rate of taxation to the higher rate. His failure to index the lower tax band at the 20% rate is, in my view, inexcusable. I cannot see why somebody earning below the average industrial wage should be paying more tax as a result of so-called prudence on the part of the Government. I do not think that follows in the present circumstances. The excuse given, that there were other things the Government had decided to do, such as reducing the VAT rate in specific areas, does not excuse the increased incidence of taxation on workers earning below the average. I look around my own part of Dublin.”
“I welcome the Minister of State. I echo what Senator O'Reilly has said about the Minister of State and his approach to debates of this kind. I have a number of points to make in relation to this Bill that the Minister of State might not like to hear. First, whereas Senator O'Reilly calls it a prudent Bill and suggests it is a conservative measure in times of economic turbulence, I think there are aspects of the Finance Bill and the budgetary strategy of the Government that need to be fundamentally challenged. The average industrial wage in Ireland is roughly €49,000, and workers hit the top rate of tax at around €44,000.”
“They are not out there in the studio. They have not seen whether it was recorded an hour before. It may be more exciting. I will tell the Minister where it really is exciting: when you are sitting there as a panellist, saying, “Oh my God, what are they thinking at home?” as this is done to you, or as a contributor breaks down in tears and accuses you of being callous or something like that. How am I to look when this is happening straight in front of me? That is exciting but it may not be very fair. In relation to the media, I was reminded by the whole question of editors that Andrew Neil, the former editor of The Sunday Times , apparently went to Moscow and was introduced there as the editor emeritus of the London Times . The Russian interviewer asked him what was meant by “ emeritus ”.”
“Once the statement is made and is out there, there is no obligation, even under subparagraph (e) of section 27A(2), to say, “Hold it; you should not have said that; that is an outrageous statement”, or anything like that. There is no obligation to do that. It is purely about the failure to prevent the thing from happening in the first place. I think that could be looked at again. If we are going to give a defence to programme makers to say that once it is out there, once it has been said, the duty of care evaporates, that cannot be right. The duty of care kicks in immediately that the apparent wrong appears to have been done. The Minister says that live programmes are more exciting. I do not know. The average punter watching “Questions and Answers” or whatever programme you want does not know whether it is live.”
“I think there is another minor problem with this section, now that I look at it and listen to the Minister's defence of it. Section 27A(1) has to be looked at very carefully. It states: It shall be a defence (to be known as the ‘live broadcast defence’) to a defamation action that relates to a statement published by a relevant person during the broadcast of a live programme for the broadcaster of the programme to prove [this is the point] that, in advance of and during that broadcast, the broadcaster took reasonable and prudent precautions to prevent the publication by a relevant person of a defamatory statement during the live programme. It is only about prevention. That is the point I am making to the Minister.”
“It is not as if the audiences for RTÉ programmes, whether "Questions and Answers", "The Frontline" or whatever else, like going out there at 10 p.m. They would be just as happy to be there at 7.30 p.m. Whose convenience are we serving? By the way, the contributors to the programme - myself included - would much prefer not to have to hang about until 10 o'clock in the evening to do something live.”
“The Minister has got rid of juries, in his own mind. He has not got the Bill passed yet but he presumes he will succeed in doing that. Any question that these criteria are too complicated to be followed by a High Court or Circuit Court judge should not be given much weight. If a judge looking at all of this has to answer whether the criteria set out in subsection(2) of the proposed new section 27A have been met, he or she is quite capable of saying whether the response at the time was reasonable, having regard to what had just transpired live. This section needs a few changes, one of which is consideration of whether, having regard to the need for free discussion on matters of controversy, there was any necessity for a programme to be live. I do not see there is a necessity in many cases for programmes to be live.”
“We had it with the amendment of section 26. It was all one way with no balance; all the balances put in in 2009 were swept away by the Minister's proposed amendment to the law. This is another one where there is no balance. It may be that the present Government thinks it will curry favour with the media by giving one concession after another, being simplistic in favour of the media and never saying "Hold it, there could be a problem with this". I am just saying - and I contribute to the media myself - that they are not grateful for anything you do for them. Any politician in this House, in the other House or in Government Buildings who considers he or she will get brownie points for all this is deluding him or herself very much. I have said enough about this but I do not think it is balanced. It is too simplistic.”
“That is a tinder, if I may use that phrase about it, which is extremely dangerous. Here is an audience that has been shown something and is told to react to it. That is where the duty to be careful is maximised. Where somebody has not been careful and has made a statement about the documentary they have seen which even the producers of the documentary would never dream of making, this kind of blanket defence should be qualified. That would balance it up a bit and put some pressure on broadcasters when something happens to respond to it in a way which defends the good name of people who appear to be defamed by remarks made live. I am interested to know whether the Minister will expand the number of conditions for the invocation of this defence. It should be more balanced than it is. There is a tendency here to be all one way.”
“Sometimes it is annoying to be interrupted halfway through a sentence, if one is contributing to a programme, by that kind of interruption which is unjustified. I ask the Minister to indicate whether he would be open, on Report Stage, to considering some provision among the criteria set out in section 2 about the response of the broadcaster, the reasonable response within a reasonable time to an apparently defamatory remark or a remark that might appear to be defamatory. There should be another clause or two, a subparagraph (f) or (g), attached to subsection (2) to balance it out, at the very least. There is another thing Senator Mullen referred to. RTÉ sometimes likes to have a "Prime Time" programme where it exposes some scandal and then brings in an audience to react to its own programme.”
“On the other hand, disassociation or pointing out that the person defamed is not here in a position to defend themselves, that these remarks should not be blurted out and that it is wrong to avail of this particular broadcast opportunity to throw out an allegation of that kind, those kinds of responses are perfectly open to the producer and presenter of those kinds of programmes. I have seen it done on many occasions. I know that sometimes when I am speaking carefully on radio and television a highly over-cautious interviewer says, "Well, you are only saying that blah, blah, blah", and I realise the interviewer is cutting across me even to contradict me as I am speaking. That is sometimes the case with highly cautious people when they are confronted with what they consider to be a controversial statement.”
“If, in the course of a programme, somebody says live on air, "X raped me when I was a child" - some member of the audience who is worried about sexual offences and there is a debate about sexual offences and they say they were raped by X when they were a child - it cannot be said that is defamatory or untrue. We would get into trouble with the victim, who would say, "Excuse me, are you accusing me of lying? In addition, I am a victim and now you are adding double victimhood to me by portraying me as a liar." That can be an issue.”
“To follow on from what Senator Mullen said, I would be impressed by this section if among the criteria set out in subsection (2) for a court to have regard to was the response of the broadcaster during the programme and after the programme to the defamation which has taken place. When one thinks about it, if something dreadful is said on an audience participation programme at 10 o'clock on a Monday evening, why should RTÉ or Virgin Media, if they want to avail of this defence, not have to convey to a court that as soon as was reasonable they sought to correct the defamatory statement or sought, first, to disassociate themselves from it and, second, if it was something which they could safely correct, that they should do so. There is a subtle difference between those two.”
“When it came to whether there should be a seriousness test to protect anyone, we have the Attorney General’s office raising its eyebrows and cautioning the Department of justice, apparently, that any seriousness test could raise constitutional issues, but a blanket defence against the broadcast of some yahoo shouting something in the course of a demonstration going down O’Connell Street is regarded as unremarkable. There has to be further balance.”
“It may be that the Press Council of Ireland or the broadcasting complaints commission, or whatever it is that operates now, would require at some later date, having had a solicitor's letter and the like, some kind of correction to be broadcast by the broadcaster, as if that ever works to undo the damage that is done on the night when interested people have tuned in to see a particular topic covered and the behaviour of particular people subjected to public scrutiny. This needs to be revisited between now and Report Stage. It is too stakeholder-focused and gives the impression the law is being changed because they would love to have that law.”
“When it suits, we hear attempts of the Office of the Attorney General to persuade the Department of justice that the introduction of a serious harm clause could have constitutional implications. We hear that when it suits. Where is the Office of the Attorney General's advice on this to the effect that there is no obligation on a live programme to correct an outrageous slur? Where is it?”
“If I were not, he knows that inviting me on the station is a mark for defamation if, within the totality of the content of the programme, he allows somebody to get away with defaming me. There is no obligation in the criteria the Minister has set out to intervene, where reasonable, say that an accusation is a gross slur on X or Y, invite the relevant person to retract it and disassociate the broadcasting company from what has been said. There does not seem to be an obligation to do that. I do not think this defence, which in principle I see the fairness of, is adequately balanced to defend the good name of the citizen. I would say this to the Minister.”
“I fully appreciate that the drafters of this amendment have, in subsection (2), sought to introduce some level of balance in terms of criteria that the court should have regard to in deciding whether or not to afford the defence. However, we must remember that somebody who is badly defamed in a live broadcast is effectively defenceless if it should transpire that there was or was not adequate controls. You cannot really vindicate your reputation unless, before you start, you establish in your own mind that RTÉ, Virgin Media or some independent radio broadcaster probably did have some protocol document that was supposed to govern the manner in which these kinds of interviews take place. If I were invited on "The Pat Kenny Show" to discuss something, I know that I would be a mark for a defamation so I would be well-behaved.”
“If we live in a world where this defence avails the broadcaster, bearing in mind what is happening on social media where there is a free-for-all based on anonymity, and if we extend the free-for-all to an anonymous person participating in a demonstration of the kind referred to by Senator Craughwell, are we not giving with one hand what we hope to be taking away with another, which is the very harmful and corrosive capacity for people to impugn other people's reputations without any serious redress? That is the case at the moment in respect of Internet service providers, who can say "None of my business" no matter what kind of defamation I put out for public consumption.”
“If they are saying they do not want to worry as much in the future about these kinds of issues before they broadcast live material, is it a good idea to throw them a defence to the effect that a broadcaster should be immune because it is important that a people be able to utter their opinions and express their points of view without anybody wondering whether they will do so lawfully or unlawfully? That is the first point I want to make.”
“Let us hear what the stakeholders have actually said that justifies this amendment. Perhaps they have had to pay out €50,000, €350,000 or €1 million over the years because of comments made in circumstances in which they could not control them, particularly where there were audience participation programmes. Alternatively, is it the case that the absence of this defence worries editors and producers, making them conscious of the fact that they cannot have a certain person on because of their belief that he or she is a complete lunatic and nobody knows what he or she will say? Is having to sort out who they actually invite, and work out whether he or she is likely to land them in the soup in a defamation case, a worry that constrains their behaviour already?”
“The broadcaster was found liable for the remarks that were made by the journalist about the motivation of a friend of the murder victim. I presume the remarks were made in a live broadcast but I do not know. However, I must ask whether we are dealing here with something RTÉ and the other broadcasters, such as Virgin Media, are afraid will happen. Alternatively, are we dealing with something that is actually happening, whereby broadcasters have been clobbered on a number of occasions, representing a problem for them in that they were the innocent victims of defamation claims they had to settle? There is a difference. The reason I ask the question is this: if what the Minister is doing is because there is a problem, let us hear about it. The great phrase used in this debate is “stakeholders”.”
“Let us be clear about this. We live in the real world, and the Minister and I have both been involved in defamation cases. To say that somebody can get a correction order against a man of straw, a teenager who has blurted out something on a live broadcast, is illusory. The cost of doing so would be massive and there would be nobody to pay for it, not even the broadcaster. It is not the case that the person who blurts out the remark is always a mark for damages or for any other form of redress, including correction orders and the like. Second, I wonder whether RTÉ has ever been sued for what somebody in the audience actually said. There was a recent case in respect of an Irish journalist on BBC Northern Ireland who made remarks about the murder of a woman in County Offaly.”
“However, I saw an interesting chart that had the seats with different colour codes, almost like the results of an electronic vote in the Seanad. The political interests of the different people were set out in front of him in yellow, green, blue, red and all the rest so that he knew that, if someone put up their hand to intervene, whether it was a supporter or opponent of the Government or the like. I always thought the notion that people at home had that this audience was just people interested in public affairs who were chosen out of a lottery was very naive indeed.”
“However, it seems to me that one of the criteria that should be adopted, if we are going to confer this on audience participation programmes, is the very simple question of whether it should have been a live programme to start with, rather than asking, in the context of a live programme, what the risk-avoidance policies actually were. If I was out in RTÉ, I would be delighted with this, I have to say. I ask myself who selected or vetted the audience. In case people are naive about the audience vetting process, many years ago, when John Bowman was the chair of "Questions and Answers", I was sitting beside him on the panel and he was going through his papers. I have great respect for John Bowman and I thought that programme was well run.”
“The yahoo in the audience who blurts out something grossly defamatory is not going to be a mark for damages or to be in a position to make any restitution in damages to the person he or she has defamed. The broadcaster, by the same token, will have broadcast a very interesting, highly controversial programme that the viewers were on the edge of their seats listening to and found to be most revealing in relation to a defamatory remark that was made, assuming it to be true. Is this too pro-broadcaster in the form it is in? I say that in the context of the amendment we tabled, which was to deal with the delayed broadcast of programmes.”
“If the defamatory statement is obvious to the people involved in the editorial control, that is one thing, but there can be grossly defamatory things said that are not immediately understood by the majority of people watching to be grossly defamatory. If you say a particular person did a particular thing, it may only be afterwards that it becomes apparent that it was untrue and that it is grossly defamatory of that person's reputation. I would like to see this defence balanced up not merely by the matter as referred to in paragraphs (a) to (e), inclusive, but also by a duty cast on a broadcaster where it is reasonably aware that there is a risk that a serious defamation has taken place to alert the audience to that fact, rather than simply to let the matter go by and let the person's reputation be damaged without redress.”
“If those kinds of topics are discussed, as they frequently are, and if members of the audience are free to say that they think all of this is the responsibility of a particular person, who should be ashamed of themselves, and if that then gets out there, the problem I have is whether, going on to paragraphs (b), (c) and (d), any duty is cast on the broadcaster by this to reject or contradict a grossly defamatory allegation about somebody? Is it good enough to say that is just an opinion, or must the compère of the programme say, “You have just said that, but it is grossly defamatory and RTÉ totally distances itself from what you have just said, and there is no proof of what you have just said." Is that kind of contradiction implicit in the Minister's so-called defence?”
“There is a reference to "including editorial policies and risk assessment". What is the risk assessment, if you put 50 people onto an audience participation programme on an issue of topicality and high emotion? These are not all just political issues. They can be issues where terrible things have happened to individuals or where the State or hospitals have failed to keep patients alive, or have allowed them to die due to alleged negligence or something like that.”
“[having] regard to such matters as the court considers relevant, including the following: (a) the level of effective control over the relevant person that could reasonably be expected of the broadcaster in those circumstances, including— (i) the nature of the location from which the live programme was broadcast, (ii) the nature of the live programme, and (iii) whether the relevant person was a contributor, or a person other than a contributor, to the live programme; (b) the overall measures employed by the broadcaster to ensure the taking of reasonable and prudent precautions and risk management in the conception, design and planning of live programmes ... The question I am asking is whether it has to be live at all. Is that fairly fundamental question considered here?”
“Is it right that the broadcaster is effectively given immunity when it would be so easy just to tell them to come out to Montrose at 9.30 p.m. for the programme to be recorded and it will go out at 10.30 p.m. or whatever? That is a question that is not really addressed in this section. We are left with a situation where a broadcaster is now to be offered a defence, which the broadcaster would simply not have if the programme was pre-recorded. That is the problem I have with this. The criteria that the Minister's proposed defence depends upon are that, in subsection (2): (2) The court shall, in determining for the purposes of subsection (1) whether a broadcaster of a live programme took reasonable and prudent precautions...”
“First, should you encourage the media to broadcast those programmes absolutely live, in circumstances where you cannot actually stop somebody saying something? If you are going to involve and Joe and Josephine Soaps from different issues and backgrounds and invite them to come to your studio, should it be a matter of effective indifference to you as a broadcaster whether you broadcast that live, delay it by an hour, pre-record it or whatever, with a view to ensuring this kind of thing does not happen? This is a broader philosophical question. Is it a good idea to have one of these audience participation programmes on matters of public controversy where there are very strongly held opinions and untested participants - if I may use that phrase about them - who are activists, to use the terrible phrase we use today?”
“There are what appear to be live programmes, such as with the kind of format of "The Frontline", with 50 people sitting in seats who are not just ordinary Joes and Josephines Soap but, rather, have been selected because they are strongly opinionated on the topic of the programme. If one of them makes an absolutely untrue allegation against anyone else, not just politicians, but anyone in public or private life, is the Minister saying that nothing can be done about it, in effect? The programme "The Frontline" that used to be broadcast on RTÉ television and, before that, "Questions and Answers" had such audiences where the people were selected by reference to their political opinions or their involvement in the topics that were likely to be discussed on the programme.”
“That is not agreed because it needs to be more carefully considered. I can well imagine a panel discussion or interview where someone says something defamatory and the words are out before the interviewer can stop the defamation. I remember in particular a defamation by the late Nell McCafferty about my then colleague, former Deputy Mary Harney. Nell McCafferty, on live radio, made a grossly defamatory accusation which had no substance to it at all. I can well imagine circumstances like that and there should be some protection for an interviewer who simply did not see it coming and had no reason above the ordinary, if I may use that phrase, to suspect that inviting Nell McCafferty onto the airwaves would cause such a calamity to take place. There is a wider issue that Members of the House should consider.”
“One of the leading cases concerns the imputation of that placard being shown in a photograph. There is a wider issue, but I will withdraw the amendment with the permission of the House, on the understanding that I may revisit it at a later stage.”
“It is not just studio broadcasts that would be covered by this. A live broadcast of a demonstration outside this House might pan across a demonstration and there might be a grossly defamatory placard on show. An image, in addition to utterances, might be included in the defence. In relation to the last remark I made, I remember a case that was brought where the Secretary General of the then Department of Justice, the late Peter Berry, objected to a photograph appearing in a newspaper of Peter Berry as felon setter. He contended in his libel action that "felon setter" was a defamatory term in Ireland, which was probably the truth at the time, even though it was in the function of the Department of Justice and the police to apprehend felons and bring them to justice.”
“I appreciate what the Minister is saying about the use of the term "live broadcast" but it is referred to in the first line of section 27A as the title of the defence. I do not think the offside rule, so to speak, applies to our drafting in that respect. The simple fact is that the broadcast of a live programme is not defined at all in the section. In defence of our drafting, line 2 on page 11 refers to a "live broadcast defence". We are saying that when used in this context it would include the short break provision and protection we propose. I have a more radical objection to our own amendment, if I may say that, which is that it refers to utterances only. The Minister's purpose in providing this defence would apply to placards, photographs, banners and the like in broadcasts.”
“I was anxious for that aspect of the Minister's amendment to be clarified to make sure that nobody claims it was not live because there was an opportunity for an alert producer to press a button and that it ceases to have the protection of that whole section in its entirety. I would be interested to hear what the Minister has to say about that.”
“I know that still applies because during the referendum debates, I was sometimes finished an interview with an interviewer on local radio and came into my PA's room in Leinster House and found myself still speaking on the radio. I understand that is done to give the producer of the programme the right to press a button and stop it if something terrible happens in the course of a live broadcast. The purpose of this amendment is to include short-delay mechanisms within the protection that the Minister proposes for live broadcasts. A live broadcast does not cease to be live by virtue of there being a 30-second delay on the transmission of what appears to the listener or the viewer to be live.”
“I move amendment No. 10: In page 12, between lines 7 and 8, to insert the following: “ ‘live broadcast’ includes a broadcast where a short time delay between the utterance of any spoken matter and its broadcast is created for editorial purposes or control;”. One of the things that occurred to me about the Minister's amendment, which I support in principle but which needs to be debated, is that the concept of a live broadcast is that effectively as people speak in a studio or whatever or at a demonstration or wherever else what is said or seen is instantly available to the viewer or the listener. From about 20 years ago, some of the independent broadcasters have had a delayed-broadcast facility.”