Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Committee Stage (Resumed) Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland Amendment No. 27 relates to the fact that we do not know what is coming. There is the old-time phrase “a pig in a poke”, and that is what it is. We are left wide open to future agreements or arbitration mechanisms any kind. As was said, the Dáil may be a technical imprimatur in relation to this, but the Seanad, which has shown great interest in these areas, will not. Agreements will not be subject to the kind of pre-legislative scrutiny that the Government sought to have waived on CETA. They will not be subject to proper and appropriate scrutiny, even though their detail is significant and requires significant decision-making. Again, we do not know what we sign up to. Much as we do not know, the Minister of State, despite his great statements of confidence about things being inconceivable, does not know what forms of rulings may be made in relation to the arbitration tribunal. In this regard, we can look only to the facts of previous patterns of behaviour. This is the fundamental point that Senator McDowell made. This is a choice to create a special court system that is only available to corporations. It is not available to citizens concerned about the financial impact of laws or how they are unfair or inequitable. There is a reason these mechanisms were originally introduced and imposed on African countries largely through economic partnership agreements and other provisions. There was an argument that their legal systems would not be adequate or appropriate. There has been a notable pushback from many of the countries that originally had this kind of extra court, a court outside the norms of the legal order they operated in, imposed upon them. South Africa became a champion in this regard when an Italian company tried to look for compensation for the ending of apartheid laws because it frustrated its reasonable expectations. Many other countries have taken that position. It is not that the direction of travel is the new courts; the direction of travel has been to remove them from treaties. Mercosur does not have one nor is there one in the Brexit deal. They are not being included in trade deals anymore because they are a parasitic element on trade agreements, which rightly should be between sovereign regions and states and those that are mandated by a public. The gratuitous giving of power to corporations was recommended as an opportunistic element in respect of CETA but it has been absent in many current agreements. The Minister referred to regulatory impact. The risk analysis we seek in amendment No. 28 is to have clarification on the exact calculations in multiple areas, besides the hope and dream that the Minister of State has put forward. Amendment No. 29 tries to limit the scope to agreements with states that are party to the Paris Agreement. The Minister of State has talked a lot about the climate, but let us be clear. Can deals be made with countries that are entirely outside the Paris Agreement? It is possible under this legislation. That is just a reminder that we do not know what parties these deals will be made with. We do not know the terms of the future deals. However, what we and experts can accurately predict are the likely outcomes of the ICS and other investor-state mechanisms attached to the EU-Chile and CETA agreements. The fundamental question is exactly as Senator McDowell put it: why create a separate legal system if we have confidence in our legal system and in its ability to balance the public interest in the widest sense and the full sphere of the law, be that international law, European law or our own national law? It is only an opportunistic grab by corporate power, which has a historical record in this regard, and it has been resoundingly rejected by almost every country that has had the misfortune to have been subject to these kinds of investor dispute mechanisms. Ireland has not been exposed to this to the same degree as others. The Government is seeking to create such exposure and choosing to push the idea of a ratification vote and a dynamic that will become extremely difficult for future generations and Governments to undo. The Government is binding the hands of those in the future with this. Again, I hope the Minister of State will indicate that he is going to accept amendment No. 29. Will there be deals with countries that are not party to the Paris Agreement? Where is the risk analysis? If the Minister of State is doing is doing what the court said, which relates just to CETA, why is he widening it to every other kind of agreement? --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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