Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed)
Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

Does the Minister of State believe that if they do make awards, they should be enforceable? If an arbitration body makes an award in an area related to an impact of an area of public policy, should that be enforceable?
Amendment No. 21, which is grouped with this one, addresses public procurement and compliance with the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act. If actions are taken in relation to a public procurement decision based on the obligations of public duty, equality and human rights, should a measure taken in that way be subject to an award that can be enforced in Ireland?
On amendment No. 25, I will not reiterate the points I made because this relates to the public interest question we discussed previously.
When people are concerned about this, they are concerned about what the impact of the enforcement of these measures and the enforcement of fines in relation to these policies may have. There are two issues. The first is the chilling effect in terms of whether it affects public policy. I will come to that in further detail in a later amendment. The second is the cost of these awards. We are looking at awards that relate to future unearned profit, not just the loss on a previous investment but a loss based on reasonable expectations of money someone was planning to make. The awards have been stratospheric. Senator Andrews pointed to that. There have been €100 billion in awards made under these kinds of arbitration mechanisms. These powers that the Minister of State is designating, or these responsibilities in terms of the decision being given to the High Court, do not just relate to CETA. They relate to any agreements made under this legislation. They also relate to any other agreement that may be made, which may have any other form of investor dispute mechanism attached. That will be voted on by the Oireachtas, but the point is that we do not know which kinds of systems will be feeding in awards and then enforcement will be sought. Where does the Minister of State stand on this? The risks are clear. Even if the Minister of State thinks differently about the risks and believes these cases will not arise and awards will not be made in relation to measures that might be taken, why block these amendments?

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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