Arbitration (Amendment) Bill 2025: Report and Final Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel

Amendment No. 17 seeks to delete section 25A(6) and replace it with a provision that every order made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade under subsection (5) shall only have legal effect following approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas. This provision would replace the option for the Oireachtas to scrutinise orders made with an active requirement that such scrutiny would take place. It is unacceptable that there would not be a proper debate and the provisions as currently worded give extraordinary power to any future Minister or any future Government to prescribe agreements. When this was raised in the other House, TDs were told that the Government provision is standard legislation. There is nothing standard about the power that Government is seeking to give itself here, and this is about whether the State will enforce potentially huge lawsuits against itself for seeking to regulate in the public interest.
I will speak to amendment No. 19 as well. Amendment No. 19 seeks to amend section 25A(6) to remove the time limit on the ability of the Oireachtas to annul an order made by the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade under subsection (5) to include a new international agreement within the scope of this Bill. Again, I fully expect the Minister of State to stand up here and say that this is standard practice but I reiterate that there is nothing standard about this legislation and the Oireachtas, in the absence of a positive requirement to scrutinise, should not be timebound in such scrutiny.

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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