The draft Public Assemblies Bill is, at best, an unforgivably clumsy piece of legislative drafting, implicating all public assemblies, no matter how innocuous, spontaneous or legitimate, in a constrictive and disproportionate new regime ostensibly aimed only at curing recurrent problems involving “contentious parades”. At worst, it is an inexplicably insidious intrusion into the fundamental right of free assembly.
BY LORCAN MULLEN