Serious reservations about the need for a privacy Bill were expressed yesterday by the Fine Gael spokesman on justice, who claimed that the pressure for the legislation had come from the Fianna Fáil Cabinet Ministers rather than from Minister for Justice Michael McDowell.
Jim O'Keeffe said: "I have many reservations about the need for a privacy Bill and these reservations have in the past been publicly supported by the Minister for Justice himself on several occasions. I believe the drive for a privacy Bill is coming from Minister McDowell's Fianna Fáil Cabinet colleagues and is motivated more by efforts from this Government to spancel media comment on ministerial misdemeanours than it is by a desire to protect the public interest." He would carefully examine the Minister's proposals but he would reserve comment on the privacy and defamation Bills until he had seen the final form of both.
A media law expert said yesterday that the privacy Bill would not provide any rights that did not already exist.
Karyn Harty, a partner in the litigation department of law firm McCann FitzGerald, said she did not believe a statutory privacy law was necessary because the courts had long recognised that privacy rights existed and had not been slow to protect them.
"The right to privacy has been recognised in Ireland for many years, but it is essential that the courts can judge each case on its individual merits," she said.
She added that the increasing number of cases showed that people were more conscious than ever of their entitlement to privacy.
Ms Harty cited the judgment in a case involving RTÉ last year concerning surreptitious filming on the Leas Cross nursing home premises, where the judge made a key distinction between information that was inherently private and a situation where the methods of obtaining information breached a person's privacy, such as surreptitious filming.
"In that case, the public interest weighed against granting an injunction, and the courts are well able to strike the right balance between freedom of expression and privacy rights."
Ms Harty said it was now commonplace in Britain for newspapers and magazines to block out children's faces so that they could not be identified and similar changes were likely to happen here.
"The media . . . has tended to emphasise the ability of celebrities to protect their privacy if legislation is introduced. Of course everyone has privacy rights and the courts will consider the extent to which a person has already made information about him or herself available to the media, or has misled the public, in deciding whether their privacy is being infringed."
Ms Harty welcomed the publication of the defamation Bill, saying that it was long overdue as the libel laws were outdated.
She said the Bill contained some necessary and sensible reforms, such as the reduction in the limitation period to one year (from six years for libel, three from slander), and the ability to lodge money against a claim without admitting liability, which would be good for plaintiffs and defendants alike as it should encourage early settlement.
She also said that a press council would provide a formal mechanism for complaints about unfair media treatment and should reduce the need for litigation.
However, Ms Harty warned that the much-heralded new defence of "fair and reasonable publication" was likely to be largely ineffective.
The Public Relations Institute of Ireland welcomed the decision to proceed with legislation providing for a press ombudsman and a press council.
The institute's president Pat Montague said this would provide much-needed redress for members of the public in relation to inaccurate or erroneous newspaper or magazine reporting.
"The PRII believes that by providing an effective and speedy form of redress, the introduction of this law will be good for our citizens and will be good for our print media. At the moment, members of the public are left with no effective form of redress in relation to such reporting apart from taking a libel action to the courts.
"However, the courts are a prohibitively costly route for most people to take and are not an appropriate means for addressing simple errors or mistakes made by newspapers," he said.
