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

The terms under which people invest in this country are the laws of the land, trade agreements that are relevant to their particular operations or maybe their place of operation. They are the terms. The trade agreement in this case and the other cases that would come in under this legislation specifically point to the fact that the State can continue to regulate. I can say with 100% confidence that no Government decision has ever considered whether there is a regulatory chill on the Government because of the Canada trade agreement. The Government is subject to regulatory chill at times. The Constitution prevents the Government doing certain things that political parties may want to do from time to time. That is a prevention of what the Government is doing. However, I can say with almost complete certainty that this has not arisen in the case of CETA.
I also want to contradict one point that was made earlier to the effect that there was some process to fast-track CETA. There is no process to fast-track the ratification of the agreement. The Constitution provides the ratification process for that. All this legislation is doing is enabling us to do that process in a constitutional way but that process is set out in the Constitution.
I want to be clear that the right to regulate provisions means that the mere fact that the interests of an investor are adversely affected by measures taken to protect the public interest will not amount to a breach of the agreement. However, if there is an added element of abusive treatment, manifest arbitrariness, targeted discrimination or some equivalent behaviour on the part of a party, then it is that behaviour that could bring a claim within the scope of CETA and potentially result in liability for the party concerned. The Government and the text of the agreement itself do not agree that this in anyway hollows out the protections of the right to regulate; indeed, many of those activities described would be not permitted under the Constitution in any event.

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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