Submission to Justice Committee
The All-Party Justice Committee is meeting today to discuss the Defamation Bill, and we have arranged to send them a submission which will be circulated to them before they meet. Here is a draft of this submission. Any feedback welcome, before we send it over to the Committee. Update: the submission ...
Justice Minister to Amend New Blasphemy Law
The Minister for Justice is proposing to amend his new blasphemy law by providing, as a defence, that a person accused of blasphemy can “prove that a reasonable person would find genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic value” in the blasphemous matter. He is not proposing to reduce the ...
Ireland Opposes ‘Defamation of Religion’ Being a Crime
In December 2008 in Durban, the United Nations discussed an Egyptian motion on “combating defamation of religion”. Islamic states supported the motion, while European Union states opposed it. The motion was passed, but a later conference in April 2009 in Geneva removed references to “defamation of religion” from the final ...
Irish Constitution – All Authority Comes From God
What Eamon de Valera told the Dail during the debate on the 1937 Irish Constitution: “I want everybody to realise what this Constitution states about authority. In the Preamble, and in the Article that refers to that, there is a clear, unequivocal statement that authority comes from God. That is ...