Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

What the Senator is saying mixes up two things. Insofar as she is arguing that an investor could bring a claim to the ISDS system instead of the CETA tribunal, this would only be possible subject to the relevant consent requirements, that is, that the parties to the dispute consent to submit to an ISDS mechanism. We would have to consent to that. Let me be 100% clear on that.
Regarding Article 8.23 of CETA, what the Senator said is not correct as regards the reference to the ICSID and the UNCITRAL rules in Article 8.23. It is not correct to say that those rules allow investors to go the mechanisms to which she referred. Article 8.23 provides for rules to be applied by the CETA tribunal, subject to the rules in section F and supplemented by relevant rules adopted by the committee on services and investment. This article therefore specifies which procedural rules can be applied by the CETA tribunal and offers choices in this regard, but it is not the case that these cases are going through the old system or that the protections that have been brought in for the old system are somehow gone at the choice of an investor suing the state. That is absolutely not the case and the information the Senator has given the House is not correct.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-05-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-28