Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

With this amendment, we are effectively looking to ensure that the provisions of the section would not apply to an international agreement if the State is no longer party to that agreement regardless of any provisions in the aforementioned agreement. This is with regard to what we learned from the Energy Charter Treaty. Some countries were able to exit it immediately because they provisionally applied it for decades. That is an option. When others exited, they were faced with a 20-year exit clause. Ireland was one of the last countries to exit the Energy Charter Treaty, up to four to five years after there had been calls for that exit. Ireland delayed and delayed and said we wanted to wait until the European Union as a whole left, which it did, and then Ireland waited another two years. This is relevant because when we look to what we want to achieve on climate by 2030 and 2040, we would be a lot further down the way of being out of the influence of the Energy Charter Treaty if we had acted earlier when the first warnings about an exit were given. Those warnings were given by the Opposition and were disregarded by the Government. Will the Minister of State confirm that the Energy Charter Treaty can be enforced? Does it fall in here? It is one that we have exited. If we sign up to another agreement and we exit it, and during the period of a zombie clause attempts are made to enforce it, will our High Court still allow the enforcement of an agreement we have left? How long does the finger of this last?
In the case of CETA, we know it will be extremely difficult for us to leave. We can choose to give power to the investor courts but once we have done so, we cannot exit on our own from the investor court component or other components. This is the high-stakes game the Government is entering us into. We would require all EU countries to agree simultaneously to exit and there would be a zombie clause. That is just for CETA, which is one of the agreements we are talking about. There are other arbitration tribunal systems and the other trade agreements that may come in under this legislation.
If the Bill is about enforcement, will the Minister of State, by accepting our amendment, ensure that the High Court is empowered to deny enforcement and state that there will not be enforcement of any order that is made in relation to an agreement which we have left? Will we be tied to the zombie clauses? What is the Government's position and perspective in relation to this? Will the Minister of State comment explicitly on the Energy Charter Treaty in relation to enforcement of it, as well as on the question of future enforcement?

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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