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

I get what the Minister of State says about the right to regulate and having certain protections. He has already stated that he believes the investor court system is an improvement on the old ISDS but I still have not heard anything that settles me in regard to the fact that there is any advantage to us signing up to this and that it does not leave this State open to the possibility of big corporations being able to put its lights out from a financial point of view and to have a detrimental impact on everything from regulation to legislating from a point of view of improving people's lives, whether we are talking about everything from housing to the environment to health. It is basically encompassing the entirety of the work done in a Chamber like this and beyond. That is my problem.
My particular issue is that I do not see any advantage to it. My understanding is that those trade elements that we are all benefitting from are in operation at this point and there is nothing negatively impacting on them. Look at where we are talking about. We are talking about Canada and this State within the European Union. Somebody is going to tell me that there is not a sufficient amount of legislation or a sufficient number of frameworks to deal with issues that may exist if a company feels it is wronged. I do not believe, however, we need to give them a battering ram from the point of view that it can put its lights out and make us think twice or three times about not going ahead with necessary legislation or regulation.

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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