Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
============================================================

Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

To clarify, I do not believe the amendment is going narrower; rather, it is trying to add detail. We still have not had an answer as to whether the three instances are included. On the basis of what the Minister of State has said, we are left to interpretation.
I wish to ask the Minister of State about the obligations to comply with European law, which we have under our Constitution. If the investment court tribunal and agreement thereon become part of European law, how does the Minister of State envisage this would be balanced against other rulings of the ECJ? Would the High Court be seeking to balance that? How would it bind in terms of a constitutional amendment? How would it bind in terms of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union? What status does the Minister of State think that aspect, which Senator McDowell has very clearly enumerated and which I agree is likely to be taken up by the ECJ, would have? How would it be balanced out?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

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