Criminal Law and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Instruction to Committee Dail Éireann — 2026-05-13 ============================================================ Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East This is about taking something that is currently in regulations made under the Defence Act and putting it into primary legislation. It does not change the provisions made under the regulations. This has been worked on for some time. We are simply putting it on a new statutory footing. I repeat that the Defence Forces provide aid to the civil power, for example, An Garda Síochána, at least 3,000 times a year. That support is provided every day in extreme weather conditions, in incidents such as those we have seen recently or in the scenarios I outlined in my opening remarks. This is really about putting what is already in regulations on a different statutory footing. My Department has been developing this for over a year now. As we now have this legislative mechanism to move it forward----- --- 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/dail/2026-05-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:03+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-13