Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-20
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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

It could be the United States tomorrow. It could be any country you name that Ireland wants to do a deal with. It could be President Trump's rich friends launching an action against Ireland to enforce their rights in relation to some investment they have made. Once we put our neck in this particular noose and stand on this particular platform, we are going down a road. I accept that any such extension of this would require a decision by the Houses of the Oireachtas, but I have seen what the party Whip does in these Houses. If enough pressure is put on us by the United States to sign up to an agreement like this, we will do it. The Minister of State should not cod himself. We will do it. It is not simply a matter of that being a distant possibility. It is a very close possibility.
When Mr. David O'Sullivan came to speak about CETA to the European affairs committee in the previous Dáil, Senator Higgins pointed out to him very politely, but embarrassingly for him, that an English law firm of which he was an adviser had said you would not actually have to enforce your obligations under this agreement. The mere threat of enforcement would quite likely produce a different result in most member states. You would find them much more reasonable if you said you may bring them to the investment court. That is what his law firm in London went on the record as saying as a ground for ratifying CETA.
I just make the point now that we are being extremely naïve in ratifying this agreement. We are gaining nothing from it. The Supreme Court's formula is absolutely worthless. It will not stand up to the European Union's court scrutiny. It will not be effective in any other state where litigation against Ireland is launched, to which we are the only party, in respect of assets or whatever else. It is pointless. It serves no useful purpose. The time has come for Ireland in particular - this should be said through the Minister of State and his Department - to say this is not a question of being good Europeans. This is a question of throwing our comparative advantages away for nothing.
The Supreme Court's formula does not assist us in the slightest in relation to the long-term consequences of ratifying CETA. If I heard from the Minister of State here today that Ireland would write it into CETA when ratifying it that, under this new system, Ireland alone of the other states had the right to say that enforcement in Ireland, but only in Ireland and the Irish courts system, was not possible where it offended Ireland's constitutional order, we might have a slightly different game. We might be playing soccer rather than Gaelic football, but we are not. This, I am afraid, is a tragic error.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-20