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

The amendment appears to be based on the premise that somehow these investor courts, and, indeed High Court decisions, would lack transparency. This is not the case. CETA and similar agreements ensure transparency of proceedings for full public scrutiny.
All substantive materials, including the request, the written submissions by the party, the decisions of the first instance tribunal and-or appeal tribunal will be publicly available. Hearings will be open to the public. Interested parties, that is, NGOs and trade unions, would be able to make submissions, aided by publicly available materials. Any domestic proceedings are held in open court. The amendment seems to be partly premised on the fact that Irish court decisions could be made behind closed doors. That would not be the case. It would be on the news or on "Six One", if this were ever to happen. It is not going to happen. The idea that there would be any kind of enormous liability is again in the category of the scare stories we have heard. There is nothing secret about this and there is nothing secret about the Irish court system. The system in CETA has been specifically designed to be transparent and to allow for full public scrutiny.

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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