Defence (Amendment) Bill 2024: Committee Stage Seanad Éireann — 2024-07-03 ============================================================ Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland Subsection (g) of the new section 2A states that a representative association may not: (g) without prejudice to the purpose of an association of representing members— (i) make a public statement or comment concerning a political matter or matter of Government policy Someone who does not like the stance of his or her representative organisation is gagged because he or she will be caught by the new section 1A. The association is entitled to make public statements with which he or she disagrees under the proposed section 2A of the Defence Act. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2024-07-03/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2024-07-03