The Government withdrew the controversial proposal to ban the publication of opinion polls within seven days of an election, but the Minister for Defence, Mr Smith, told the House there was an unresolved issue which would have to be dealt with in some way.
"We got it wrong," said the Minister, who was standing in for his Environment and Local Government colleague in the debate on the Electoral Amendment Bill. "Maybe the intentions and the concern were right, but whenever you don't bring to fruition what you set out to do you have to say at least there was some misjudgment along the road."
The Bill was passed as amended by the Seanad and it now returns to the Dail which is not due to meet until October.
Mr Smith said the ban proposal was being withdrawn because the earlier support by Fine Gael and Labour for a limitation on the publication of preelection polls had evaporated.
He supported what the Fine Gael spokesperson Ms Olivia Mitchell had said in the Dail. There would be screams of anguish, particularly from sections of the media which undertook opinion polling.
This needed to be viewed as protecting the independence and integrity of the electoral process rather than providing an opportunity for "good copy which, of course, opinion polls are", said the Minister.
Mr Smith stressed the Government proposal had not been a knee-jerk reaction to the recent Tipperary South by-election result. The publication limitation suggestion had come originally from Fine Gael. He believed it was important that they had the widest possible consensus for any moves to limit the publishing of polls. The Government would be comfortable with this kind of thing only if there was all-party consensus on it.
Earlier, Mr Joe Costello (Lab) had argued the entire Bill should be resubmitted. Besides the controversial Section 59, it contained elements which were questionable in terms of constitutionality, he believed. The Bill was, he believed, "a naked grab for power by the Government".
Mr Fintan Coogan (FG) said his party had wanted the issue to be debated fully. It was totally incorrect to say that Fine Gael had done a U-turn on the matter. The Minister was trying to get off the hook because a flawed Bill had been produced by the Government.
Mr Shane Ross (Ind), whose intervention on Tuesday night had caused a Government rethink on the Bill, said he found the reasons for the Government's change of heart strange. "We have obviously got a new principle of governing this country, which is government by consensus." He said it was one of the most diabolical pieces of patronising and insulting legislation he had seen for many years. When the Government and the Opposition realised public opinion was running so strongly against them they had looked for "an out".
Ms Kathleen O'Meara (Lab) said the Government had abandoned the opinion poll ban proposal to ensure other elements of the Bill on corporate donations and electoral spending were not threatened in any way.
Dr Maurice Hayes (Ind) said he hoped that as the Bill was being remitted for further consideration the Minister might think of consulting the newspaper industry about it. "You may well find it possible to get some degree of consensus."
Mr David Norris (Ind) congratulated Mr Ross on his "extraordinary triumph from the back benches of the Seanad". Nothing could better display the relevance, the importance and the significance of the chamber in Irish political life, he added.
Mr Labhras O Murchu (FF) said he hoped the Government's action would be met by a generous response from the media in the form of an agreed moratorium on opinion poll results publishing.
Mr Joe O'Toole (Ind) said they should reopen the question of a voluntary code. The National Newspapers of Ireland had had a lot to say about the proposed ban. Their bluff should be called to see how they would deal with the issues which were attempted to be dealt with in Section 59.
Mr Costello contended that the climbdown on the Bill was a humiliation for the Government. For the Minister to say that this had been done because of a lack of consensus was a travesty of the facts. Mr Jim Walsh (FF) said he disagreed that the Bill was flawed in its concept. It had been acknowledged by people on the other side of the House that opinion polls did have an effect on the outcome of the elections.
The Leader of the House, Mr Donie Cassidy, said the best approach would be to explore how there could be a meeting of minds to achieve general consensus without scoring any political points.