Free speech is ‘at risk’
Angela Kerins case hears TDs shouldn’t have to ‘mentally edit’ their questions
FORCING TDs to perform ‘mental editing’ to ensure that they don’t surprise the likes of Angela Kerins with unexpected questions would amount to a ‘fundamental undermining of freedom of speech’, the Supreme Court has been told.
The former Rehab Group boss is in the Supreme Court this week challenging the right of the Public Accounts Committee to have questioned her in detail in February 2014 about her €240,000 salary, potential bonuses, company car and alleged trips by helicopter.
She says that the ‘intrusive’ seven-hour questioning session pushed her to the brink of suicide. The oral questioning went beyond what Ms Kerins had expected to face, based on a letter she had received from the Pac in advance of the hearing, the court has heard. Paul Gallagher SC, for the Pac, yesterday told seven senior judges that if Ms Kerins wins her case, it ‘would lead to a result not consistent with the Constitution and would undermine freedom of speech in the Oireachtas’.
Issues of money spent by the State and ‘whether the State is getting value for that money’ are frequently discussed in the Dáil, and those matters were front and centre when Ms Kerins agreed to attend the Pac for questioning in February 2014.
At the time, the committee was focused on the use of taxpayers’ money in the charity sector, and Ms Kerins attended voluntarily to answer questions.
However, her barrister, John Rogers SC, yesterday pointed out that by agreeing to attend, she didn’t give the TDs – including Shane Ross, Mary Lou McDonald and Simon Harris – any ‘waiver’ to disregard any of her rights.
Ms Kerins had ‘suffered an injury’ as a result of how she was treated at the hearing, Mr Rogers added. Previously, she has claimed that she suffered ‘a number of physical collapses’ that she believed to be stress-related following the February 27, 2014 hearing, and she attended her GP and was twice hospitalised.
In March 2014, she wrote notes to her family before consuming ‘a large quantity of pills and some alcohol’ in a failed suicide bid, she has revealed. She resigned from her post at the Rehab Group on April 2, 2014.
Yesterday, Mr Gallagher, a former Attorney General, told the court that the Pac accepts no responsibility for Ms Kerins’s health problems.
But he told the Supreme Court: ‘My clients wish to express their sincere sympathies regarding illness and difficulties experienced by Ms Kerins.’
Mr Gallagher then stressed: ‘Freedom of speech for elected representatives in parliament is regarded essential to the proper functioning of a democracy.’
He also argued that Ms Kerins could have simply ‘walked out’ of the Pac hearing had she wished. Her case continues today before Chief Justice Frank Clarke and six other senior judges.