Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-09
============================================================

Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

Spain has had the Instituto Cervantes, in respect of which a case was taken in London to take possession of it. It has had its air traffic control business and cases taken to seek possession of that in Brussels. There are multiple examples of the enforcement of awards in foreign jurisdictions against national assets. Ireland is a country which has national assets spread right across the world. They are also being jeopardised in relation to choosing to make ourselves vulnerable in this way, taking the bird in the hand which we have in relation to trade, which is progressing, and the fact that, increasingly, there is huge pressure for future deals not to include these investor clauses and adding our weight to the movement against the inclusion of investor clauses, and instead, sacrificing here and making vulnerable or risking that bird in the hand for something which builds on the legacy of vultures in terms of how corporations have used these clauses and mechanisms.

---

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