Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Ruairí Ó Murchú (SF), Louth

The Minister of State is saying we should just trust this Government on the basis the investor court system is now better than ISDS and all we know that is wrong there. The Energy Charter Treaty and the fact that everyone with any element of sense is moving away from it has been mentioned by many. The Antin versus Spain case relates to giving big business the ability to take a state to the cleaners. That is the reality. The Australian case is the always the first one brought to people's attention and while I accept Australia eventually won, it is about the idea of big tobacco in the form of Phillip Morris even taking that case. Even though Australia won, it did so at a huge cost and the case ran from 2011 to 2015. Let us not pretend that did not impact on other countries, and even on Australia, by chilling it from taking necessary action be it on environmental, health, workers' rights or human rights grounds. That is the problem.
What are we getting? What is the advantage of this investor courts system? Am I wrong in thinking CETA is already in operation with respect to the trade elements, which are the parts the Government keeps saying are wonderful? We are all in favour of free trade and of building up those necessary relationships and ensuring we facilitate business across the board but what is the advantage of the investor court system? Most people would ask why we should take a chance on this. I do not see any advantage in any way, shape or form. If any company is found to be in a circumstance where it has been wronged by rule changes and there has been an element of unfairness is the Minister of State telling me Irish or European law does not have the capacity to deal with that? Is he saying a company from here would not be able to deal with that through the Canadian courts? Is that what we are talking about? From what I see the Government is literally giving the power to big business and big corporations and not even from a point of view of screwing over the small guy but from screwing over us as a State. We are talking about the fact the Government could literally have its lights put out, or have the absolute fear of having its lights put out.
We know for sure that many governments, and we could even possibly say it about this Government, have obviously been impacted by the fear of taking action on particular legislation and how it would go down in Washington or anywhere else. I am certainly not talking about the occupied territories Bill.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:49+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-15