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

I will not take very long. There is an element of repetition at this stage. I would ask, as Deputy Ó Laoghaire has, that there would be an answer on how we ended up with a guillotine at the close of business. A lot of us enjoy playing soccer and wanted to talk about volunteerism and the need to invest in football but we could have done that at any other time. This is legislation with incredibly worrying aspects. The Minister of State is going to talk about protections that were put in place on the basis that the ISDS and investor court systems leave us open and susceptible to corporations that will be able to take action against the State and may have a chilling effect on governments from the point of view of acting in pursuit of what is the social good, or any sort of good, in a wide range of particular issues. We all accept that we are not in an age of absolute national sovereignty but we would like to think that we would maintain as much power as we could from the point of view of being able to regulate, legislate and do the best for our people. In saying this, I do not think governments have always done this but they should have the capacity and the ability to do it. I do not see the advantage and I do not see what gain we get. When we are talking about trade, as far as I can see all of the positives of CETA are in operation as we speak. The framework exists for corporations to get their absolute rights vindicated in the court systems that exist here, in Canada and throughout the EU.

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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