Ireland may be forced by the European Court of Human Rights to limit excessive defamation awards, the Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, admitted to the UN Human Rights Committee.
Responding to concerns from some members about the threat to freedom of expression represented by the current law, Mr McDowell reiterated the Government's commitment to introducing legislation to reform defamation in this parliament and said such legislation could include provisions to allow journalists to protect their sources.
The defamation issue was raised by the Polish representative, Mr Roman Wieruszewski, who asked what the Government was proposing to do about the fact that the high level of awards was "an unbearable burden on some publications".
He also expressed concern at the effect of contempt-of-court rulings requiring journalists to reveal sources and the fact that the new broadcasting legislation retains the possibility of reimposing Section 31 curbs on groups like Sinn Fein.
Responding, Mr McDowell said the Irish defamation system was broadly similar to that in other common law countries like Britain. The Supreme Court had rejected the idea, however, of following the British example of judges giving guidance to juries on the size of awards.
Now, in the aftermath of the British "Tolstoy case" in the European Court of Human Rights, where the court had overruled a £1 million award as excessive and a threat to freedom of expression, Irish awards may face similar challenges in the court, he said. The court's ruling on the issue of journalistic privilege had also not yet been applied to an Irish case, he said, hinting that the issue might be addressed in the Government's legislation.
Mr McDowell reported "very significant progress" in women's participation in the workforce, particularly the professions.
He cited graduation numbers for 1998 which showed that 43 per cent of architectural graduates, 57 per cent of law graduates, 54 per cent of commerce and business graduates, and 62 per cent of medical and dental graduates were women.
While still only 14 per cent of engineering graduates were women "we will have to do something to protect men if this carries on", he joked. Mr McDowell was testifying to hearings of the committee on Ireland's record in implementing the full range of provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
His testimony was described by a spokesman for the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Mr Donncha O'Connell, as "impressive but incomplete", partly due to the restrictions of the format of the hearing.
Mr O'Connell said Mr McDowell's answers on freedom of expression were particularly weak and that the committee was clearly unimpressed by his defence of the Special Criminal Court.
Mr McDowell defended the continued use of the non-jury court, condemning as "extremely naive" those who imagined that those who had been willing to threaten judges, to bomb the head of the State's forensic science team or the court itself, and to threaten witnesses, would not turn their attention to jurors.
He cited the placing of a bomb in a beehive belonging to Judge Pringle and the reality that in terrorism cases, frightened witnesses were known to refuse in court to repeat testimony already given.
The problem was compounded, he said, by the fact that unanimity or near unanimity was required in a jury trial and so it was only necessary to intimidate one or two witnesses. He said the exceptional unequal treatment of defendants represented by trial in the Special Court was specifically provided for as a temporary measure in the Constitution. There was no significant difference in the rate of conviction with the normal courts, he said.
He pledged that the current review of the court would take into account the concerns of the committee.
The chairwoman of the hearing, Chile's Ms Cecilia Medina Quiroga, responded that many of the committee were convinced by Mr McDowell's "spirited defence" of the court as an exceptional measure but were worried by the unsupervised discretionary powers of the DPP in referring cases to it.
Mr Nisuke Ando (Japan) suggested Ireland's restrictions on abortion were in breach of the covenant, and specifically that the prohibition for rape victims imposed an "unbearable burden" on a victim who was already suffering.
Mr McDowell said the Constitution was clear on the issue, and "we have to uphold the Constitution as decided by the people. That is the law." But he emphasised that victims of rape were not prevented from travelling abroad.
And, responding to a question about the right to travel of a pregnant child in the care of a health board, Mr McDowell said he did "not concede that the obiter remarks of the judge in the C case were an authoritative statement of Irish law".
Summing up from the chair, Ms Medina Quiroga said she did not understand why, if the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights was possible, it was not possible to make the ICCPR fully applicable, too.
Mr McDowell said the incorporation of the ECHR was being undertaken, he said, specifically because of the need to provide a common human rights regime North and South following the Good Friday agreement.
The additional incorporation of the ICCPR would complicate the situation by creating conflicting rights, and the Government was committed in any case to ensuring that the substance of the covenant was in force. "The Irish courts do pay close attention to the covenant on the nature of human rights," he said.
Mr McDowell defended the prohibition on political activity for civil servants as "very, very important" to the Irish system of public service.
And he acknowledged that although there might be more modern ways of putting the Constitution's reference to support of women in the home, the provision would be politically very difficult to change.
The committee's recommendations are expected to be published on Friday.
