Seanad ReportThe Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr McDowell, said he would be tabling an amendment to the Civil Liability and Courts Bill to define how proceedings in family law cases could be reported.
Section 31 of the Bill which dealt with this matter had been cast more widely than he had intended when he sent the Bill for drafting.
The Minister said that what he had in mind was a system whereby responsible people could be admitted to such proceedings for the purpose of research and analysis and also to facilitate the availability of a corpus of law in this area.
Mr McDowell said he had been struck by the number of people who had claimed that the in camera rule had permitted inconsistency in approach and worse, without, in the view of those who felt themselves aggrieved, any avenue of having their complaints heard.
"Without putting a spy in the camp, I think it's a good idea that family law matters should be conducted with persons present there who would have some legitimate function acting as observers in the particular public interest. It is along these lines I am thinking. In other words, to tighten up what is involved in publication and what the term 'report' actually means," he said.
Mr McDowell said he was not unmindful of the legitimate interests of people going into this situation.
They must have their privacy protected, but by the same token that did not mean that they went into the legal equivalent of a black hole from which no information emerged and nobody knew exactly whether they had been treated fairly or unfairly within that process.
Ms Kathleen O'Meara (Lab) said her understanding was that there would be a prohibition on identification of any party in family law proceedings. Even if a journalist was present he or she would be restricted in what they could report.
However, she also understood where the Minister was coming from, that people in local areas would be able to work out who was involved in litigation.
Under the current arrangements, a certain group of fathers felt that they were being hard done by. That was not a satisfactory situation. If the Minister had not already done so, it would be useful for him to have discussions with the National Union of Journalists on this matter.
"There certainly appears to be an opinion abroad that no journalist can be trusted with a family law case. One lawyer said to me 'Oh, it would be fine if it was The Irish Times. We will let The Irish Times in, but we could not let in the Daily Star'."
The Minister knew that such a distinction could not be made. However, she did not think that they should be ruling out completely journalistic or media coverage of this whole area.