Lawyers for the Public Accounts Committee have told the High Court that the committee members were very conscious of, and sympathetic to, the serious difficulties experienced by the former Chief Executive of the Rehab Group, Angela Kerins.
The court heard that two weeks after her appearance before the committee in February 2014, Ms Kerins tried to end her own life.
Ms Kerins says the committee persecuted, bullied and harassed her and engaged in a witch-hunt against her.
A three-judge division of the High Court is hearing arguments about the powers of the PAC to engage in the kind of inquiry it carried out in relation to Rehab.
Senior Counsel Paul Gallagher, on behalf of the PAC, has begun responding to the arguments raised by Ms Kerins' lawyers on day six of this legal action.
Mr Gallagher said his clients contended that the action by Ms Kerins was misconceived and incorrect.
But he said nothing he said was intended to make things more difficult for her.
He said his clients did not accept responsibility for her difficulties but they wanted to say they were conscious of them and sympathetic to them.
Mr Gallagher said the nub of the case being put forward by Ms Kerins was that the court had some kind of oversight function of debates and discussions in the Dáil, and if someone's good name had been impugned, then it had the power to intervene, edit the record, and support a claim for damages.
He said his clients' contention was that that could not be right.
Mr Gallagher said the case being put forward by Ms Kerins sought to extend the control of the courts over parliamentary proceedings and functions in a very significant and wholly unprecedented way.
He said the reliefs being sought by Ms Kerins were "quite extraordinary."
Mr Gallagher said this was not a simple case.
He said the PAC was a core part of the parliamentary function, making the Government answerable in relation to expenditure. It had existed, he said, in this jurisdiction since the year 1695.
Mr Gallagher said the PAC was quite different from the type of committee in the Abbeylara case.
That committee, he said, was a sub-committee that sought to enlarge its role and went way beyond its terms of reference and engaged in something which the courts had ruled, a parliamentary committee could never engage in.
Mr Gallagher told the court that the then-chairman of the committee, John McGuinness, had said in a sworn statement, that the committee's investigations focused on the overarching and systemic issues rather than individuals.
He said the committee did not produce reports with adverse findings against individuals but focused on making proposals and recommendations to address problems.
The court was told that the PAC was different from other Dáil committees because it was involved in a function so central to the Dáil - the oversight and justification of the spending of public monies.
It was involved in discussions of matters of significant public interest and concern.
The voicing of concerns could be of immense importance and was fundamental to the operation of a democratic society, Mr Gallagher said.
Mr Gallagher said absolute privilege attached to what was said by members of the Oireachtas in both houses and in committees.
He agreed that monstrous things may sometimes be said, that was damaging to people's reputations. But he said it was not permissible to go behind that privilege.
Mr Gallagher said this was a claim for damages against individual members of the Committee, alleging they were responsible for Ms Kerins' illness and other unfortunate consequences suffered by her, including losing her job.
He said one of the reliefs sought by Ms Kerins was to have references to her and to her employment removed from records of the committee's sittings.
He asked if it was one of the court's functions to edit or censor the report of a parliamentary committee's proceedings.
He also asked if the court should go through Dáil debates and excise references to people who claimed their good names had been damaged by comments made by elected representatives.
He said Ms Kerins was trying to make members of the Oireachtas answerable to the courts for utterances made in the Oireachtas, in breach of Article 15 of the Constitution.
He said no action had been taken in relation to comments made outside the Houses of the Oireachtas.
He said you could not single out the right to a good name and say it trumped all other rights in the Constitution.
He said suggesting that comments made by Oireachtas members in the Houses of the Oireachtas were subject to court challenge, could alter the basis of the separation of powers.
The court was told that Ms Kerins' lawyers had spent days in court going through transcripts of the PAC's hearings in relation to Rehab, inviting the court to look at the utterances of the committee members.
Mr Gallagher said this was constitutionally impermissible.
