Northern Ireland
Dail Éireann — 2023-09-28
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Matt Carthy (SF), Cavan-Monaghan

I thank the Tánaiste for the answer. As he rightly says, this is one of the few issues now on which there is absolute political agreement across all political parties, not only in the North but across the island. The Bill clearly and very blatantly reneges on the commitment to implement legacy mechanisms agreed in the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, of which of course the Irish Government is a co-guarantor. While I welcome the very strong position the Irish Government has taken and the language used with the British Government in setting out very clearly the opposition by virtually everybody on this island to this Bill, it is also crucially important that we send out a signal that we will do whatever it takes. When the Tánaiste says he expects the legal advice from the Attorney General fairly shortly, does he have a definitive timeframe for what that will mean in terms of the number of weeks? If the legal advice, as I suspect it will be, is that this is clearly in breach of EU human rights law, will the Government be proactive in then pursuing the case?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-09-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:13+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-09-28