Lawyers for the Dáil's Committee on Procedure and Privileges have told the High Court businessman Denis O'Brien has not identified any constitutional right which was breached by the committee.

Senior Counsel Michael Collins said Mr O'Brien had no legal standing to take legal action against the committee alleging it had not adequately dealt with his complaints about statements made by two TDs in the Dáil in May and June last year.

Mr O'Brien says the comments by Social Democrats TD Catherine Murphy and Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty effectively decided the court case he was taking against RTÉ trying to stop a report about his banking affairs from being broadcast.

He said the TDs breached the separation of powers laid down in the Constitution.

And he said the Dáil committee did not investigate the complaints he made properly.

Mr Collins said the committee had evidence before it about what was said in the Dáil debates and the circumstances around it.

He said it was fully entitled to come to the conclusions it did and reject Mr O'Brien's complaints.

He said Mr O'Brien was asking the court to take over the role of the committee and sanction the deputies and he said that was clearly impermissible.

He said Mr O'Brien was also asking Ms Justice Úna Ní Raifeartaigh to put on her gown, walk down onto the floor of the Dáil and draw a line with a piece of chalk over which members must not cross when they are exercising their constitutionally-protected right of free speech under parliamentary privilege in the Dáil.

He said Mr O'Brien was asking the court to impose sanctions on the deputies and put down a judicial marker for the future.

Lawyers for the State said that Mr O'Brien was trying to disguise the nature and effect of what he was asking the court to do.

Senior Counsel Maurice Collins said what was being sought by Mr O'Brien went to the very heart of parliamentary privilege, and would negate the constitutional immunity given to members of the Oireachtas by the provisions of Article 15 of the Constitution.

Mr Collins said Mr O'Brien was trying to disguise the effect of the declarations he was seeking from the court through a series of "superficially skillful subterfuges and sidesteps".

He said Mr O'Brien wanted to obtain "judicial condemnation" of deputies Murphy and Doherty and wanted the court to mark its disapproval.

He said Mr O'Brien claimed that he was not trying to make the deputies accountable to the court, which is prohibited by the Constitution, because he had not sued them directly.

But Mr Collins said the provisions of the Constitution in relation to parliamentary privilege could not be so easily undermined.

He said Mr O'Brien was suing all members of the Dáil that could ever be elected and wanted to restrict Oireachtas speech in the future.

He said the court was being asked to set out what can and cannot be said in Oireachtas debates in the future and to set out a category of prohibited parliamentary speech.

Mr Collins said unless we had fallen down a wormhole where words meant what Mr O'Brien said they meant, it could not seriously be suggested that this was anything other than an attempt to neuter the provisions of the Constitution giving protection to Oireachtas members for what they say in the Dáil or Seanad.

He said the court had no power or function in relation to what deputies Murphy and Doherty said in the Dáil.

He said the strong language contained in Article 15 of the constitution in relation to the protection of utterances by members of the Oireachtas in the Dáil or Seanad, was found almost nowhere else in the Constitution.

Mr Collins said Articles 15.12 and 15.13 were expressed in much more definitive and much more absolute terms than most other parts of the Constitution and it was not open to Mr O'Brien to impugn this in these proceedings.

He said no other country which had parliamentary privilege had sought to qualify it in the way Mr O'Brien wanted to.

He said Mr O'Brien could have sued Deputies Murphy and Doherty personally and there was at least the possibility that this action was a stalking horse for further claims against the two deputies, which Mr O'Brien had not ruled out.

Mr Collins will finish his submissions tomorrow.

After that lawyers for Mr O'Brien will reply and then Ms Justice Ní Raifeartaigh is expected to reserve her decision.

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