Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel

Amendment No. 13 seeks to expand the compatibility list concerning awards that have never been enforceable in the State to include the Paris Agreement, the sustainable development goals, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Aarhus Convention, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and conventions of the International Labour Organization. Awards made by investor courts could undermine action to fulfil our obligations under these conventions, all of which the State is a party to and obliged to uphold.
We need to be really clear that the most prolific users of investor courts are the fossil fuel multinationals destroying our planet. More than €100 billion in public money has been awarded to private investors in investor-state dispute settlement courts. According to the most comprehensive analysis yet by the ISDS tracker, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, has specifically called out investor courts as an impediment to climate action. I note a recent report by Climate Action Network Europe demonstrating that investor courts are incompatible with a just transition.
When we speak about climate action, we all agree on the need to bring people with us and ensure a just transition for workers and communities. These courts are obstacles to that goal. They allow fossil fuel companies to exert great influence over public policy and essentially give polluters a stick to beat governments with when they decide to regulate in the interest of their citizens.

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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