Members would be foolish, wrong and reckless if they were to rush through legislative limitations on the publication of opinion polls which might be struck down at the first obstacle, Mr Maurice Manning, Fine Gael leader in the House, warned. The matter should be debated in the calm way that legislation required.
Mr Manning said his main concern was that the Bill had been debated at length in the Seanad and the Dail without the seven-day opinion poll ban being discussed. The ban represented a major departure in public policy and there had been no consideration of how it was to be put into practice. In presenting what was, in effect, a new Bill, the Government was engaging in indefensible practice.
The Seanad existed to ensure that this kind of thing did not happen, Mr Manning contended. He pleaded with Fianna Fail members who shared the spirit of the founder of the Seanad, Mr de Valera, to realise that he would have been shocked at what the House was being asked to do. There was no urgency about the poll ban proposal, and nothing would be lost by recommitting the Bill, either in part or in whole, to committee stage, to enable detailed consideration to be given to its contents over the summer. There was no urgent clamour for such a ban, so why was the Government trying to rush it through?
Lawyers, and not just the Attorney General, believed that the Bill might be constitutionally flawed and that it might not stand up to scrutiny in the courts. It was likely the Bill would be referred to the Supreme Court for adjudication before being signed into law. If there were serious constitutional doubts, and the Attorney General shared some of these, he would like to see the Attorney's advice published. There had been no denial by Mr Gerard Hogan of TCD, an eminent constitutional lawyer, that his advice also contained a question mark over the Bill's constitutionality.
Members of the House would be reckless if they rushed through legislation in these circumstances. Mr Manning said that many fears had been raised and much of the debate on this subject had been hysterical. He took great exception to the charges being made by some media commentators about this being Hitlerian and Goebbels-like legislation, and that it was repressive.
"I would say that if people in the media want to have a reasoned debate, then they should be careful about their language; that their language is not out of touch with reality."
There were fears on the part of the media, he added. Most media people did not trust politicians. That was in the nature of things. They feared there was some attempt to clamp down because they were the messengers bringing bad news. They also feared this might be the beginning of more, as they would see it, repressive legislation.
He believed these fears were baseless. However, the penalties in the Bill were draconian and were out of proportion to any offence which might be committed. He would say to journalists who had been shouting so loudly on this question: "We all have our fears and suspicions." Politicians did not trust the media any more than the media trusted them. There must always be a tension between the two estates.
Mr Manning said there were fears about the over-concentration of media ownership. If a group happened to have a political agenda, it might be used to decide opinion in advance of an election. There was also a fear of an absence of standards.
Those engaged in poll-taking at present behaved honourably, but what was to stop cowboy operators coming in and distorting the public debate? The fears that had been raised could be met head-on only if the two sides agreed to discuss their concerns.
A notable absence in the debate, he said, was the lack of analysis of the impact opinion polls had on electoral behaviour.
Opposing the referral of the Bill to committee, the leader of the House, Mr Donie Cassidy, said opponents of the measure could make all their points on the Report and Final Stages of the Bill. There would be no guillotine.
"Anyone who thinks the media would give politicians a fair break is not just living in the real work." It had emerged that the Fine Gael deputy who first suggested the seven-day ban in the Dail had originally envisaged a 14day moratorium. If newspapers suffered a short-term drop in circulation or advertising because of the opinion poll restriction, this would not be of any great consequence to them, he believed.
Mr Joe O'Toole (Ind) said Mr Cassidy's reference to the media never giving politicians an even break showed the Government's "true agenda. What we have here is a simple attempt to muzzle the press, to silence the media".
Mr Cassidy disputed what Mr O'Toole said he said.
Mr O'Toole said he recollected that the leader had said the media did not give politicians a fair share and that they had had four years in which to do it.
"I am not sure what relevance that could have had to the debate in hand unless it is that what we are really doing here is having a go at the media."
It seemed to him that what they were trying to do was to turn the electorate into the Three Wise Monkeys: "We don't want them to say anything, we don't want them to hear anything, and we certainly don't want them to do anything. At the end of the day that is what we are trying to do and that is the basis on which we are building a failed piece of legislation."