Trade Agreements
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

Farmers, workers and consumers have been left totally confused by the CETA deal. Although the Minister of State describes the extensive debate at EU level, that debate has not been reflected here in the Oireachtas, where the Bill is being rushed through and pre-legislative scrutiny has been essentially suspended on it. The EU is not rushing us to ratify and given that France has shown extreme reluctance, I do not understand why we are pushing this through. We have all of the benefits of the trade we want with Canada without the investor court system. Essentially, we are selling out to this system by forcing through this Bill. It is such a threat to our sovereignty as a country. It is a threat to future legislative powers of this Dáil that we are choosing to go with investors courts and not just settle for and work with what we have, which is a positive trade agreement.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-21