Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-09 ============================================================ Patricia Stephenson (SD), Labour Panel I will speak to amendment No. 5 around international agreements, conventions and treaties, the Paris Agreement, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Aarhus Convention, etc. This amendment is born out of the regulatory concerns we spoke about before, particularly in the context of regulatory chill and the impact this could have on environmental legislation. Under the Energy Charter Treaty, ECT, we saw companies sue EU member states for millions of euro when they tried to move away from fossil fuels. For example, the German energy company, Uniper, used the ECT to challenge the Netherlands’ 2030 coal phase-out. There is a massive range of different concerns about the impact this might have on environmental legislation in particular, and that is why I support this amendment. We do not have explicit legal protections in the Bill, as it is written, for climate legislation. Instead, we are relying on general provisions within CETA. This is a concession. Rather than enabling clear safeguards in Irish law, we are relying on interpretive assurances and broad principles that leave environmental protections exposed to legal uncertainty. Given that the scale of potential liability has been highlighted, the refusal to explicitly protect climate measures is a significant gap in the legislation. I know the Minister of State does not agree that those risks are perhaps as strong as I am putting forward. Maybe he considers them scare stories. I think that is a term he used on Committee Stage in the Dáil. We have real examples of companies in this regard. I gave the example of Uniper, the German energy company, taking out a case in the Netherlands over particularly challenging environmental concerns. Another German company, RWE, used the investment court system, ICS, mechanism to claim €1.4 billion. These cases exist. Another case is Bilcon versus Canada. In 2008, a US company challenged a Canadian environmental requirement affecting its plans to open a basalt quarry in a marine terminal in Nova Scotia. The investors planned to blast, extract and ship out large quantities of basalt. The investor-state dispute settlement, ISDS, tribunal decided that the Canadian Government's decision hindered the investor’s expectations around that. These are very real legitimate cases that we are seeing. That is why I support this amendment. Amendment No. 6 seeks to insert: “(4) For the avoidance of doubt, awards under an international agreement referred to in subsection (1) shall not be enforceable or recognised in the State if such awards were sought in a foreign jurisdiction or an international body.”. I understand this amendment comes from the very real concerns that awards will be enforceable. Companies can choose to take a case in any jurisdiction, and why would they not? If they think that they are more likely to get a favourable award in another jurisdiction, why would they not take that measure? I think that this is a strong provision, protecting public policy concerns and not allowing those awards just to be enforceable. We talked a lot before about the concerns that assets could be seized in a secondary jurisdiction. If the case is taken in another jurisdiction, it might find favourably towards the company and assets could be seized in order to fulfil whatever award is given there. I have serious concerns about that. I very strongly support both of these amendments. --- 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/2026-06-09/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-09