Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Paul Nicholas Gogarty (IND), Dublin Mid-West

The nub of the issue is that the Bill is before the House because of a Supreme Court decision and the Costello judgment. We are going to have differences of opinion on it. There was a 4:3 split in the judgment but a 6:1 majority said that while it is unconstitutional, it does not require a referendum because the State can change Irish law to put in place strict safeguards to make sure Irish sovereignty and EU sovereignty are protected in the context of the Bill. This is why we have the arbitration amendment in section 25.
The fundamental point, as I said earlier, is that it is a trade-off. On balance, following Mark Carney's speech a few months ago, and I reiterated it when the Canadian ambassador was here when we gave our commiserations for the tragedy that had recently happened there, we have to collectively get together in this new type of world where alliances are what will help small- and medium-sized countries. Ireland is only strong as part of its EU membership. Canada and the EU collectively are only strong by working together in a world where we cannot rely on historic partners. In this context, maybe five years ago the risk might have been judged to have been greater but now there is a trade-off. There is a certain level of risk. The Minister of State is doing his best to go through why these risks are overstated by members of the Opposition and civic groups, and maybe they are.
I agree with the Minister of State on a lot of aspects but I want a response tonight as to why, given that the Supreme Court put it in the Minister of State's hands to go through this legislation with a fine-tooth comb so the concerns of the courts were reflected through the legislation, the legislation is not being allowed to have as long as is possible. We have had much longer debates on other legislation. As an Independent I will not say I have specific expertise because I cover a wide range of areas, but there are spokespersons here who are particularly focused on tabling amendments and want to have those amendments discussed. I wanted to see them discussed because I was listening to debate all night before I came down here. It is totally unfair to the people of Ireland not to be seen to have this scrutiny. It might be laborious for the Minister of State's advisers and for him but we should go through everything step by step and amendment by amendment over a period of hours and then come to the vote. At least we could say the House went through it the way it should have. I do not believe that it has gone through it the way it should have.

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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