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

I cannot explain it any further. I will not accuse anyone of a misunderstanding but the fact is that the right to regulate is contained within the CETA agreement. It is the investor courts that are bound by that. This legislation relates to enforcement of awards and we are saying that we have drafted this very carefully to comply with the suggestion given to us in the Supreme Court case.
That has been done carefully over a period of time. It is not possible then for me to accept other amendments in relation to that, which would go against the process that we have already had to implement this legislation that will allow us to ratify CETA in a constitutional way.
The right to regulate has already been dealt with extensively in the CETA agreement. The CETA agreement does not affect the State's right to regulate and the idea that corporations could seek to ameliorate their position by taking High Court cases here is not the procedure. A corporation could potentially take a case to an investor court but the law is clear that cannot impact on the State's right to regulate, which essentially, for a large part of it, is its legislation.

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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