Residential Tenancies and Valuation Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2020-07-31
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Barry Ward (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel

Senator Higgins raises a legitimate issue that needs to be addressed. However, I propose to speak about it in respect of later amendments. Amendment No. 5 is not grouped with these amendments. The point she raises is legitimate, which is the reason I was very pleased to hear the Minister of State indicate that there would be a public information campaign. I do not know if huge numbers of staff are required but it is important to distinguish between the point Senator Higgins has just made and the fact that we are asking citizens to look at legislation and understand what it means. Unfortunately, that is not the practice and it is an issue I raised in respect of other legislation in this House already. We cannot expect citizens to read this legislation, the regulations that go with it and the legislation that it amends. I am a practising barrister and there are times when I have to go back, as Senator Higgins has just done, through reams of different items of legislation that have been amended. I find that very difficult to do and it is easy to miss something. For that reason, we do not expect citizens to do it. That is why there are officials in Departments and agencies and lawyers and other people whose job it is to do that and to put the matter into plain language. Unfortunately, because of the specificity required for legislation, we cannot write it in the plain language we might like to write it in although that does not mean that there is not room in legislation - in fact in all the Bills we have seen already - to make the language clearer. I believe there is room but I do not believe that the test we apply to whether this legislation works, or is scary for that matter, is whether an ordinary citizen can read it because if that were the test, I do not believe we would ever pass it. Reference has been made rightly to ordinary citizens who might have literacy difficulties, linguistic difficulties if English is not their first language or whatever it might be. There are many reasons they would not be able to interpret this legislation in the way we would like but that cannot be the test. The Senator makes a valid and fair point. It is something we should always have in mind when we are passing legislation. However, just because it is complicated does not mean that it does not achieve what it is meant to achieve or that it is not valid in that regard.

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Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:31+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-31