Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-15
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

To be clear, as one Deputy said, there is an element of repetition. That is what happened on Committee Stage when there was no time limit whatsoever and yet, quite frankly, the debate ran out of steam. This is a Bill that is not even two pages long in total. It is a very short piece of legislation. It is a very net point. We have not seen much debate on the individual amendments tonight to get through them. We have heard the overall points that have been made time and time again.
I want to be clear about one thing. We have heard about 6:1 and 4:3 majorities but we do not have an American-style Supreme Court. We have decisions of the Supreme Court and the Government has to go with the decisions of the Supreme Court. I want to be clear, to counteract some more misinformation, that the Supreme Court found the joint committee system in CETA does not breach the Constitution. This is what the Supreme Court found. In fact, the joint committee system is a procedure that is designed to preclude the possibility of the development of jurisprudence beyond the scope anticipated by the parties. This is another protection. The joint committee system is another protection. These investor courts are not for big business only. Small and medium enterprises have very much been a focus of trade agreements in recent times in particular, and there is specific provision for them here.
Here we are developing trade relationships with Canada. It is not to do with the Third World and it is not to do with development of poor countries. It involves two large powers trying to engage with each other in a fair way that benefits people. To be clear, the Bill seeks to follow the Supreme Court decision to allow us on another day to ratify the CETA agreement.

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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