Criminal Law, Civil Law and Defence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Instruction to Committee Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-02 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland These amendments, or at least highlighting and flagging the issues in these amendments, should have been brought on Committee Stage. There is a problem with the practice of bringing a large number of significant, consequential amendments on Report Stage, the last Stage of a Seanad debate, having avoided full and proper pre-legislative scrutiny on the matters, and having bypassed proper and full debate in the Dáil. The Minister is bringing these as a motion rather than as something arising from Committee Stage debate because we were not even given the basic courtesy of these issues being properly flagged as part of that Committee Stage debate. I believe there are 80 amendments. Presumably, they were in the drafting process last week when we were discussing this legislation. If they were, they should have been signalled and discussed as part of the discussion on Committee Stage and signalled properly at that point. Again, it is just poor practice. There are individual amendments which people may support and I may even support. There are other amendments about which I have significant concerns, ones that are concerning from a civil rights perspective in terms of the question of face coverings, which we know has been flagged as a particular concern for religious minorities, those with health issues and others. There are concerns about measures that seem to contravene what the Government has previously said on section 3 and the fact that it is not planned to prosecute under it because it seems to engage with the process to significantly accelerate and increase prosecution and use of section 3 for minor drugs possession offences. There are many other issues. There may be merit in character references and so forth. The point is that none of it was teased out properly or went through the proper process. At a time when the Minister is bringing very substantial changes through the system at a very rapid pace, a question of public confidence arises. This is the point I made on other legislation the Minister introduced, but it is worth reiterating. The Seanad has a mandate and the public has a right. It is not just our mandate, my mandate or what I get to say about or it. It is the mandate we were given. It is our obligation. It is what we are elected to do. It is our job. The Minister is pushing through very significant changes in a way that inherently curtails debate because on Report Stage all of us will only have the opportunity to speak once. We will not get the opportunity to ask a question of the Minister, have the Minister reply to us and ask follow-up questions to tease out the detail on these changes. That will not be the prerogative we have. The Minister will propose the amendments, we will speak once, the Minister will say whatever he wishes to say and then we will move to a vote. That is what will happen with these amendments unless they are being recommitted to Committee Stage. --- 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/2026-07-02/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:09+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-02